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

New York, NY HarperCollins: HarperPaperbacks, 1996. Paperback First Edition Thus; First Printing indicated. First Edition Thus [1996]; First Printing indicated. Very Near Fine in Wraps: shows only light tanning to the pages, but especially deep at the insides of the front and rear cover panels; the pale yellow background field has been sunned at the backstrip, blanching it slightly, but the titles thereon remain bold and clearly legible. The binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 12mo. 182pp. Trade Paperback. 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.