In exchange for this heapin’ helping of almost nothing, QoH is an utterly infuriating book. There’s a structure to almost every chapter:
1. ‘I will here refrain (I say yet again) from discussion of wider economic or societal prescriptions, instead focusing on what an individual can do in the present circumstances.’
2. ‘Some people are unhappy because of X!’
3. ‘Anyway, here are the sweeping economic and societal prescriptions which could eliminate this problem. On to the next topic!’

It’s certainly true that he was ‘ahead of his time’ in becoming a hippie dormroom revolutionary a few decades ahead of time, but I remain unimpressed.

‘…This pursuit [of pleasure] is conducted by all at a uniform pace, that of the slowest car in the procession; it is impossible to see the road for the cars, or the scenery, since looking aside would cause an accident; all the occupants of all the cars are absorbed in the desire to pass other cars, which they cannot do on account of the crowd; if their minds wander from this preoccupation, as will happen occasionally to those who are not themselves driving, unutterable boredom seizes upon them and stamps their features with trivial discontent. Once in a way a car-load of coloured people will show genuine enjoyment, but will cause indignation by erratic behaviour, and ultimately get into the hands of the police owing to an accident: enjoyment in holiday time is illegal.’

‘I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’

There’s a little addendum I wanted to add to your great summary, it comes from the questions and answers at the end:

Basically, a great way to reappraise a threat is to use humour, think of the funny side of the situation or laugh at the threat. This will dampen down your threat response helping you deal with the situation more positively.

Thanks Tom, (in a robotic voice) “Good Job!”.

I mean, taken alone, the Colour of Magic is a reasonable clever, perfectly alright fantasy parody, and Strata is top tier dime store Sci-Fi.

Then you flip through them after reading Night Watch, and, well, they don’t look half as good by comparison.

It would have been more obscure but funnier if I had made that ‘The Names of “James”‘. Duly noted.

Pentadact: This is a really cool site by the way, I love the posts and the comments section is actually worth reading. I have one question though; your site was originally called James (if I remember correctly), why was that?

It’s that part that trips me up. Otherwise you can rationalise what is happening, but then, didn’t he say that rationalising was on the opposite side of good? :) It’s all very interesting.

A lot of the ideas his ideas overlap this talk as well. So I’m sure you’d enjoy it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conquest-Happiness-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415378478

Yep, that’s true. I call it the idea-room :-)

That trick he talks about in the questions afterwards, with noticing when your brain slips between its data-input and narrative modes – focusing on absorbing data input is something I typically do a lot when I’m bicycling somewhere (generally between my home and the university), but after watching this video I deliberately focused on returning to input mode when I slipped into narrative mode, and it was actually a pretty zen exercise.

I felt the same way about all his other advice – like, it’s stuff that you actually sort of know, but you haven’t really been conscious about it before. It feels like now that you know about it, you can use it much more effectively.

Thanks for the link :-)

As ever there’s some synchronicity to be found here. Two days ago your interview with Chris Taylor and Danan Davis had me ‘reading against it’ about the dark sides of persistence that Taylor was unspeaking at every moment, which led me to a(nother) masturbatory inner Two Minutes’ Hate against predatory Facebook Amway games, which led me to think about games which rather than negative or neutral value, actively improve the quality of the user or the user’s life. That finally led me to reread Phill Cameron’s post about how his exposure to the exquisite verbs in paranoid backstabbathon Solium Infernum codified, and therefore buffered, a stressful IRL confrontation.

If only all the time I spent staring at the web were half as worthwhile!