Alain de Botton has 11 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 19 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 43 ratings. The most-rated is How Proust Can Change Your Life.
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Summary
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letters, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful. Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as its subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognising love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris.
©1997 Alain de Botton (P)2010 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Essays in Love
Summary
Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.
©1993 Alain de Botton (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Religion for Atheists
Summary
The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain de Botton's inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false - and yet that religions still have important things to teach the secular world. Rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them - because they're packed with good ideas on how we live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, get more out of art, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and much more. For too long, non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing peculiar doctrines or doing away with consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.
©2012 Alain de Botton (P)2012 Audible Ltd
On Confidence
Summary
A thought-provoking essay that teaches us that confidence is not a gift from the gods, but a skill that can be learned. We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently and wryly around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential.
©2020 The School of Life (P)2020 The School of Life
Status Anxiety
Summary
We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer, to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment, from status anxiety. For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art, and politics, and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a audiobook that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking, but genuinely wise and helpful as well.
©2004 Alain de Botton (P)2004 Penguin Books Ltd
How to Think More About Sex
Summary
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 audiobook argues that 21st-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.
©2012 The School of Life (P)2012 Macmillan Digital Audio
On Seeing and Noticing
Summary
Alain de Botton believes that philosophy can help people enjoy happier lives. And in his numerous best sellers, from Status Anxiety to The Art of Travel, his unique blend of erudition and self-help has reached an audience eager to listen. In On Seeing and Noticing, Alain de Botton takes everyday concerns such as expressing sadness or being romantic and dispenses advice and observations based on the works of some of history's greatest writers, artists and thinkers.
©2005 Alain de Botton (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Art of Travel
Summary
Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.
©2002 Alain de Botton (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Architecture of Happiness
Summary
One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets we’re surrounded by. And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness 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.
Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this audiobook has at its centre the large and naïve question: "What is a beautiful building?" It amounts to a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture, which aims to change the way we think about our homes, streets, and ourselves.
©2006 Alain de Botton (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Goodbye Europe
Summary
From Paris to Prague, from the past to the present, authors and artists say farewell in this unique collection. In this audiobook you'll find personal letters, reminiscences, poetry, art and brand new fiction from some of the most talented and important voices at work today, including Jessie Burton, Alain de Botton, Matt Haig, Richard Herring, Owen Jones, Mark Kermode, Robert Macfarlane, Kate Mosse, Chris Riddell, Lionel Shriver and many others. A fascinating, funny and moving must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the times we live in, our relationship with the continent, and ourselves. Includes original pieces by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Tom Bradby, Jessie Burton, Ben Collins (aka The Stig), Colonel Tim Collins, Robert Crampton, Adam Dant, Alain de Botton, Kate Eberlen, Matt Frei, Nicci French, Simon Garfield, Former Prime Minister Jim Hacker (Jonathan Lynn), Matt Haig, Richard Herring, Jennifer Higgie, Afua Hirsch, Owen Jones, Oliver Kamm, Alex Kapranos, Mark Kermode, Hari Kunzru, Olivia Laing, Marie Le Conte, Amy Liptrot, Robert Macfarlane, Henry Marsh, Val McDermid, Hollie McNish, Kate Mosse, Jenni Murray, Sarah Perry, Ian Rankin, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Chris Riddell, Andrew Roberts, Will Self, David Shrigley, Lionel Shriver, Sunny Singh, Ece Temelkuran, Rob Temple, Bee Wilson and Sara Winman. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.
©2017 Orion Publishing Group (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
Trost der Philosophie
Summary
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 der Leben und Werke 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.
©2001 S. Fischer Verlag (P)2017 tacheles! / ROOF Music