The pleasures and sorrows of work by Alain de Botton

It seems quite ridiculous or unwise to ask this question now if work gives you more pleasures or sorrows, since the news bombards us all times with stressful unemployment sorrows. It seems having a job or get employed should be the happiest thing under this tough climate.

However, one does not feel happy if a job only provides financial security but not with personal fulfilment and satisfaction. Or worse if one drags oneself coming out from bed for a job that one hates.

De Botton is a philosopher and maybe he has never worked from 9 to 5, and five days a week on a daily routine. He still has very good point of views about pleasures and sorrows of work. In this book, he selects jobs to make his philosophical expressions on jobs ranged from warehouse, logistic management, biscuits manufactory, counsellors, and painters, etc, jobs that not normally you would give a second thought beyond its surface. He does not give guidelines on how to or what if. Only when you read it you may find how much emotion that you might have lost along way of a long working life.

However, as much as I enjoyed the reading I also felt much stressed in reading a book with such tiny print text. Surely one needs a magnifier to go through it. The book has a large numbers of photos and they are equally interesting though.