Audiobooks by Alain de Botton

A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from the School of Life

Brought to you by Penguin. The essential guide to mental health from the bestselling author of The School of Life This is a book about getting unwell. About losing direction and hope. About imagining that we have let ourselves and everyone down. But it is also a book about getting better. About regaining the thread, rediscovering meaning and finding a way back to connection and joy. Here, Alain de Botton follows the arc of a mental health journey, from crisis to recuperation; the moments we realize we cannot cope; the acts of selfcare or therapy in which we find respite; and the days we finally reclaim a sense of stability. Written with understanding and kindness, it is both a source of companionship in our loneliest moments - whether it's a relationship breakdown, a career setback or anxiety around the everyday - and a practical guide that will help us find reasons for hope. We are all on our own journey towards recovery. This book is for anyone ready to understand theirs. 'Alain de Botton is a brave and highly intelligent writer' Observer 'One of our most consistently illuminating writers on contemporary culture' John Gray, New Statesman ©2023 Alain de Botton (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Alain de Botton (Author), Charlie Anson (Narrator)

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El placer del amor

Escrita hace veinticinco años, El placer del amor es un compendio de humor y sabiduría, una novela provocadora que no ha perdido un ápice de su actualidad. Un día gris cualquiera, un hombre cualquiera y un vuelo de lo más aburrido entre París y Londres... y de repente, ese hombre levanta la vista y ve a Chloe, su vecina de asiento, una joven de ojos verde agua, hombros quebradizos y uñas mal cuidadas. Cuando el avión aterriza, él ya sabe que esa es la mujer de su vida. Es más: su amor es único y va a ser eterno. A la semana siguiente, los dos cenan juntos por primera vez, y poco después dormirán juntos. Empieza la aclimatación a ese país extranjero que es el cuerpo del ser amado, pero aún no sabemos si este momento mágico tiene mimbres para convertirse en un proyecto de futuro, cabalgando los fastidios de un desayuno donde falta la mermelada que más nos gusta o una cena con los padres de ella. Habrá que esperar... Mientras esperamos y leemos, Alain de Botton pone en tela de juicio ese misterio llamado amor, y en la tarea le ayudan los consejos de grandes intelectuales, empezando por Marx y siguiendo con Voltaire, Oscar Wilde y Camus.

Alain de Botton (Author), Carlos Valdés (Narrator)

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La fatiga del amor

En este libro, Alain de Botton trata sobre cómo debemos aprender a amar después de enamorarnos. «El amor necesita mucha habilidad, además de entusiasmo.» Alain de Botton La historia de Rabih y Kristen se parece a la de muchos: una mujer y un hombre se encuentran, se enamoran y al cabo de poco tiempo se casan. Aquí podría acabar la novela con un «...y vivieron felices comiendo perdices», pero en realidad este es el momento en que empieza el verdadero viaje, la fatiga del amor. Entendámonos: cuando Alain de Botton habla de fatiga, no piensa en el hastío y el cansancio que siguen al momento mágico del enamoramiento. Al contrario, nos invita a considerar la vida de pareja como un trabajo que exige voluntad, constancia y mucho sentido del humor, porque a menudo una mujer y un hombre están de acuerdo sobre lo que más importa, pero en los pasillos de IKEA pueden desencadenarse auténticas tormentas. Siguiendo las andanzas de Rabih y Kristen vamos a disfrutar de un sabroso tratado sobre las relaciones conyugales, una novela insólita donde Freud y Montaigne a veces también piden la palabra. Aquí quizá no haya tanto lugar para la pasión romántica, pero en ese transcurso de los días cabe que encontremos ocasiones, momentos espléndidos que nos compensen de tanta fatiga.

Alain de Botton (Author), íñigo álvarez De Lara (Narrator)

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The School of Life: An Emotional Education

Brought to you by Penguin. Discover everything you were never taught at school about how to lead a better life... Introduced and edited by the bestselling author of The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The Course of Love 'Alain de Botton likes to take big, complex subjects and write about them with thoughtful and deceptive innocence' Observer We spend years in school learning facts and figures but the one thing we're never taught is how to live a fulfilled life. That's why we need The School of Life - a real organisation founded ten years ago by writer and philosopher Alain de Botton. The School of Life has one simple aim: to equip people with the tools to survive and thrive in the modern world. And the most important of these tools is emotional intelligence. This book brings together ten years of essential and transformative research on emotional intelligence, with practical topics including: - how to understand yourself - how to master the dilemmas of relationships - how to become more effective at work - how to endure failure - how to grow more serene and resilient The School of Life is nothing short of a crash course in emotional maturity. With all the trademark wit and elegance of Alain de Botton's other writings, and rooted in practical, achievable advice, it show us a path to the better lives we all want and deserve.

Alain De Botton, Alain de Botton (Author), Alain De Botton, Alain de Botton, Charlie Anson (Narrator)

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Trost der Philosophie

Geldmangel? Liebeskummer? Frustriert? Ihnen kann geholfen werden. An sechs typischen Krisen aus dem täglichen Leben führt Alain de Botton geistreich und amüsant vor, wie jedermann Trost, Rat und Ansporn in der Philosophie findet. In essayistischen Porträts geht er auf eine Reise durch 2400 Jahre abendländische Philosophiegeschichte und zeigt anhand Leben und Werk von Sokrates, Epikur, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche wie ein etwas anderer - nämlich philosophischer - Blick auf die Welt das Leben erträglicher machen kann. Eine glänzende Einführung in den Gebrauch der Philosophie, die schon lange gefehlt hat. Es helfen bei: Unbeliebtheit: Sokrates/Christoph Waltz, Geldmangel: Epikur/Jürgen Tarrach, Frustration: Seneca/August Zirner, Unvollkommenheit: Montaigne/Hansa Czypionka, gebrochenem Herzen: Schopenhauer/Monica Bleibtreu, Schwierigkeiten: Nietzsche/Jasmin Tabatabai

Alain de Botton (Author), August Zirner, Christoph Waltz, Hansa Czypionka, Jasmin Tabatabai, Jürgen Tarrach, Monica Bleibtreu (Narrator)

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The Course of Love: A Novel

"The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton's name in the mid-1990s....love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods and insecurities to the page." -The New York Times The long-awaited and beguiling second novel from Alain de Botton that tracks the beautifully complicated arc of a romantic partnership, from the internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life. De Botton's essay "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person" (The New York Times, May 28, 2016), which draws from The Course of Love, was the #1 most emailed article for days.We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children-but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy-an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience-fictional, philosophical, psychological-that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.

Alain de Botton (Author), Julian Rhind-Tutt (Narrator)

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The Course of Love

Penguin presents, the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Course of Love by Alain de Botton, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt. Twenty years after his bestselling debut Essays in Love, internationally acclaimed author Alain de Botton returns to fiction with a brilliant new novel about modern relationships What does it mean to live happily ever after? At dinner parties and over coffee, Rabih and Kirsten's friends always ask them the same question: how did you meet? The answer comes easily -- it's a happy story, one they both love to tell. But there is a second part to this story, the answer to a question their friends never ask: what happened next? Rabih and Kirsten find each other, fall in love, get married. Society tells us this is the end of the story. In fact, it is only the beginning. From the first thrill of lust, to the joys and fears of real commitment, to the deep problems that surface slowly over two shared lifetimes, this is the story of a marriage. It is the story of modern relationships and how to survive them. Playful, wise and profoundly moving, The Course of Love is a delightful return to the novel by Alain de Botton, twenty years after his debut Essays in Love.

Alain de Botton (Author), Julian Rhind-Tutt (Narrator)

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How to Think More About Sex

We don't think too much about sex; we're merely thinking about it in the wrong way.So asserts Alain de Botton in this rigorous and supremely honest book designed to help us navigate the intimate and exciting---yet often confusing and difficult---experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we're entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we're supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. This book argues that twenty-first-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment. Covering topics that include lust, fetishism, adultery, and pornography, Alain de Botton frankly articulates the dilemmas of modern sexuality, offering insights and consolation to help us think more deeply and wisely about the sex we are, or aren't, having.

Alain de Botton (Author), David Thorpe (Narrator)

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How To Think More About Sex

Sex is the most intimately human experience there is. It is can also be the most confusing. Our desire to be together conflicts with our desire to avoid vulnerability and appear 'normal', leaving us detached, desensitised or embarrassed. Covering topics including adultery, lust, pornography and impotence, Alain de Botton argues that 21st Century sex will always be a balancing act of trust versus risk, and of primal desire versus studied civility. By examining sex from a subjective - rather than scientific - perspective, he uncovers new ideas on how we can achieve that balance. Pulling back the sheets on modern sexuality, How To Think About Sex offers important and surprising wisdom that proves that being good in bed is really all in your head.

Alain De Botton, Alain de Botton, The School Of Life (Author), David Thorpe (Narrator)

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

We spend most of our waking lives at work - in occupations often chosen by our unthinking younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our occupations mean to us. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people wake up to do each day - and night - to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art - in search of what makes jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying. Along the way he tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can ask about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet? Characteristically lucid, clever and inventive, de Botton's "song for occupations" is a celebration and exploration of an aspect of life that is all too often ignored and a book that shines a revealing light on the essential meaning of work in our lives.

Alain de Botton (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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The Architecture of Happiness

The Architecture of Happiness is a dazzling journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations. One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet, a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Alain de Botton (Author), Simon Vance, Simon Vance (Narrator)

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The Architecture of Happiness

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Alain de Botton's extraordinary The Architecture of Happiness, read by the author himself. Alain de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight, considering such questions as: Why do people disagree about taste? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Not to mention: What makes a window frame attractive? Rooted in the idea that architecture has the power to influence how we feel, and that we are different people in different buildings, he suggests how we might learn to build better, more attractive dwellings, in which we would stand a higher chance of happiness. 'Because it is De Botton reading, in an engagingly low-key way, the experience is amusingly close to listening to a very clever friend...' Christina Hardyment The Times

Alain De Botton, Alain de Botton (Author), Alain De Botton, Alain de Botton (Narrator)

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