Customer Reviews

Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences

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In "Driving Beltless," one of 67 essays forming "Endangered Pleasures," author/temptress Barbara Holland writes that driving without seat belts, once considered "a basic civil right," now "takes its place with Eve's apple among the heady stolen pleasures."

Hidden among the summer shade trees of her Bluemont, VA home, Holland writes as a modern day Eve chronicling hidden, missing pleasures in a nostalgic, suburban Eden. Her curmudgonous "Wasn't The Grass Greener" finds her post-expulsion, wistfully remembering telegrams, clotheslines, radiators and tangible, fading societal remnants. Here she praises seasonal, small, slightly sinful luxuries readily available if occassionally politically incorrect.

Sensuality rules "Endangered Pleasures" in taste (coffee, martinis, even cigarettes), touch (bare feet, naked bodies in shower, bath and bed, wearing fur in an apologetic essay) sound (songs of youth, whistling, profanity), and above all, sight ( July 4, Christmas, books and morining paper, emotional blankets covering the four seasons, travel modes and motivations). Holland also indulges in slight sins of lust (morning sex), gluttony (justifications of the day's three meals), schadenfreude (her section on disasters and crowd behavior after the Phillies' 1980 World Series win) and supposed sloth (her defense of working and not working, and of gardening as a form of work, are alone worth the book price).

Holland also understands small, measurable triumphs of early childhood ("the first 10 or 12 years are just one triumph after another") early adulthood ("We studied for the career of being adults...we thought we had to have opinions on everything.")and parenthood ("Having a child around is more fun than being one, since we're free to leave the small world for the large one whenever we get bored.")

Some Holland-praised pleasures became unpopular for understandable, if not completely agreeable, reasons. But she correctly states many benign indulgences fell to what author Robert Ringer called "absolute morality," a governmental/societal/Puritanical mindset distrusting and discouraging pleasure as immoral and unfair while praising pain and self-denial as noble and necessary. Authors like Barbara Holland and books like "Endangered Pleasures" remind us life is too short to take too seriously or studiously, or to deny self without greater purpose. Like chocolate fudge cake, "Endangered Pleasures" should be enjoyed rarely in small slices, but enjoyed to its fullest nonetheless.

This book will make you laugh...at yourself and others who try to make life a series of grim responsibilities. Barbara Holland is such an unabashed pleasure-seeker, I had to keep checking the cover to see that it was really written by a woman! The things she embraces are truly guilty pleasures no self-respecting, typically suffering woman of the '90's would admit to. Thank God for her! As a fellow sybarite, I appluad this book's celebration of all that is deliciously decadent. What's great is reading about guilty pleasures you may not have even thought of. The overriding theme of the book is not how great martinis, bacon or naps are in and of themselves, but how anything that you enjoy that way can really lift your spirits...and if it's forbidden, all the better! In this overwrought era of taking everything too seriously, wondering what food will kill us next and what disease we'll catch, this book is like a ray of sunshine. Read this book with a martini, in the tub or just before taking that leisurely mid-day nap!

P.S. I would add to the list: gossip, flirting, buying splurges at bookstores, massages (perferably voluntary and spontaneous) dancing when home alone to music everyone else makes fun of, watching "Lifetime", any Judith Krantz novel, candles, body lotion and decolletage.

Ms. Holland is one of my favorite authors and this is my favorite of her books. This is one to treasure, to reread when life is looking particularly dreary. In "Endangered Pleasures" Ms. Holland looks at many of the things we've given up on the advice of the government, our doctors and other do-gooders. Bacon (yum), naps, calling out sick, cursing, all the things we're not supposed to do or enjoy because they're bad for our health, the economy, the nation. Read this on the bus, you'll get a seat to yourself because other riders will move away from you because you're laughing outloud.

This is one of my all-time favorite books, and I keep extra copies in various rooms around the house. In this delightful collection of essays, each devoted to a particular pleasure at risk of being forgotten in our busy lives, Barbara Holland eloquently and wittily persuades us to succumb to guilty indulgences such as bare feet, happy hour, chicken gravy, and calling in sick. She also celebrates the unabashed pleasures such as weekends, dawdling over the morning paper, gardening, and idle summer vacations. Ms Holland covers 67 pleasures in all, some of which you will instantly recognize, some of which it is never too late to start indulging in, and others that are just downright dangerous! Extremely engaging and often laugh-out-loud funny, this is a book to dip into every now and then, as a delicious antidote to the strains and stresses of modern life. It makes an excellent gift for any of the overworked, abstemious persons you know, including yourself.

ENDANGERED PLEASURES is perhaps mistitled as it's not credible to think any of the 67 things and activities listed, from the morning paper to cigarettes to bare feet to weekends to gambling to winter to babies, are actually in peril of extinction. "Unappreciated" might be more a apropos term instead of "endangered". The book's subtitle says it all more succinctly: IN DEFENSE OF NAPS, BACON, MARTINIS, PROFANITY AND OTHER INDULGENCES.

Author/essayist Barbara Holland has a remarkable talent for perceiving the small details of life and living. Or rather, a talent for remembering what she perceives and subsequently bringing it to the attention of the lumpish rest of us. For instance, on the "being there" phase of travel:

"The hee-haw of the ambulance in the foreign streets sings with a pure and alien glamour, quite unrelated to the irritating scream of emergency vehicles back home." Now, I've noticed that on my own overseas walk-abouts, but would never think it worth mentioning to the folks back home.

And, on a more sobering note, regarding the psychology of crowds:

"Face to face with, say, Adolph Hitler at a table for two, we would have jeered at his passions, protested, flounced out in a snit. In a crowd of thousands, all cheering and brandishing fists, we might have stood in the path of the electric current, felt the blood of common cause rise joyfully in our throats, and cheered too ... Deep inside each of us lurks a chained lemming, struggling to break free, and we need to keep an eye on it."

I admire Holland's talent for social commentary. She reminds me of Andy Rooney, but without the crankiness. Rooney might like to think he's a national treasure; Barbara truly is.

Ms. Holland has provided me with extensive support for all of those guilty pleasures I too often deny myself. She tells me why I should enjoy going to work, playing tourist while on vacation, hanging around the house doing nothing, eating and drinking - an all around reckless life. I leave a copy of this book in my guest room and have awaken to chuckles and guffaws, and visitors with a renewed sense of indulgence. If you ever feel guilty, buy and read this book!

This book was so good to read--Barbara Holland gives a 1-3 page defense of several habits that are generally looked at in a negative light. She defends barefeet, sleeping in, unemployment, cussing someone out, gambling, etc. It was such a pleasure to read--so many good quotes inside. A nice short read that will put a smile on your face.

As I read this book, I imagined all the self-righteous spoilsports in the world clucking and shaking their heads. "Drinking? Smoking? Eating? How sad that anyone would like such things!" Meanwhile, they count their carbs and powerwalk their way to self-delusion.

This is a great book to make you realize that life is for living and we weren't put on this earth just to worry. Real pleasures are simple and cheap and too easily overlooked. Fancy clothes, comfortable clothes, getting up early, staying up late, even going to an office, there is a lot of enjoyment in each and every day, if you just take the time to notice.

Enjoy yourself! This book gives you all the permission you need.

In a time in which responsible adults are encouraged to strictly adhere to high fiber-low fat diets, long work hours and serious workouts, Holland's essays seem delightfully sinful as she extolls the virtues of such pleasures as leisure time, red meat and martinis. The best way to read this book? On a Saturday morning, sipping coffee, when you should be working.

Anyone that enjoys walking bare-footed, happy hour, spending money, undressing, the joys of travel, the occasional use of a "bad" word, Christmas, dogs and cats, and books, among other things, gets a "thumbs up" from me.

You'd be hard-pressed not to like this book.