This selection of non-fictional work from the author of Life, a User's Manual, demonstrates Georges Perec's characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour and accessibility.

Perhaps the most widely read thinker of all time, Confucius transformed Chinese philosophy with his belief that the greatest goal in life was pursuit of 'The Way': a search for virtue not as a means to rewards in this world or the next, but as the pinnacle of human existence.

A slim volume featuring Georges Perec's writings on the simple task of arranging books and what it can reveal about life One of the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth century, the novelist and essayist Georges Perec was a true original who delighted in wordplay, puzzles, taxonomies and seeing the extraordinary in the everyday. In these virtuoso writings about books and language, he discusses different ways of reading, a list of the things he really must do before he dies and the power of words to overcome the chaos of the world. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives--and upended them. Now Penguin brings you a new set of the acclaimed Great Ideas, a curated library of selections from the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

In these inspiring essays about why we read, Proust explores all the pleasures and trials that we take from books, as well as explaining the beauty of Ruskin and his work, and the joys of losing yourself in literature as a child. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

In this intimate memoir, Ruth Rosengarten explores the subject of evocative objects through a series of interconnected essays. Evocative objects reflect our attitudes to our own lives and how we seek to display ourselves to ourselves. They are therefore, closely linked to our memories, and how we filter, process and reconstruct them. Rosengarten explores the themes and associations invoked by her own evocative objects, which are frequently shabby things of no material value. They are, importantly, often objects that, in their materiality, bear traces of actions, of something-having-been. Through the associative pathways that these objects have paved, she discusses her experiences with the losses she has undergone, her family’s migrations, and what it means to be a childless woman. This leads her to address the question of what will become of her storied objects and the memories attached to them when she is no longer in existence. This memoir offers an interdisciplinary approach to collecting and compiling fragments of one’s life, paying close attention to the evocative objects that embody us. In doing so, these essays explore loss, memory, childlessness, longing, family history, literature and art theory through material entities which reveal the immaterial ‘things’ at the heart of this study. This book is sure to be of interest to anyone stimulated by memory work and the relationship between humans and their possessions

"With the advent of the printing press in Europe, the possibility of assembling a personal library became more and more attainable for the cultural elite. In this book, Andrew Hui traces the historical development of the Renaissance studiolo, a personal study and library, from Petrarch to Montaigne, considering literary representations of the studiolo in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe as well as its presence in the visual arts. He explores the ways in which Renaissance writers and scholars engaged with these personal libraries, both real and imaginary, as places for research and refuge, and the impact of their legacy on writers of our own age, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Hui is interested in how these workspaces shaped the interior lives of their occupants, and how the bookish sanctuary they offered was cast as both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Painters of the period, for example, depicted such Biblical figures as the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome in studies surrounded by books, and some writers extolled the studiolo as a space for salutary self-reflection. But other writers suggested that too much time spent reading and amassing books could lead to bibliomania: it drove Don Quixote to madness, Faustus to perdition, Prospero to exile. Individual chapters focus on the invention of the studiolo as seen through Federico da Montefeltro's Gubbio Studiolo and Raphael's School of Athens; Rabelais's parodies of erudition and classification; the transformation of private study into self-conscious spectacle in The Tempest; and more. While primarily drawing on works from Renaissance Europe, the chapters range across time and geography, incorporating a more global and comparative approach by drawing on texts from the classical tradition of China. Throughout the book, Hui weaves in accounts of his own life with books and libraries, arguing that to study the history of reading, scholars must also become aware of their own history of readings"--

"Sorted Books is many things at the same time: a series of sculptures, or photographs, or site-specific installations; a collection of short stories, or poems, or jokes; a work in which the 'found object' is subject alike to chance and the most painstaking choices; a delicate conceptual game with the horizontal and the vertical. But it is first of all an act of reading." -- from the introduction, by Brian Dillon.

A Pretty Woman tale turns toxic and deadly in this provocative thriller of sex, obsession, and murder from Robyn Harding, the “master of domestic suspense” (Kathleen Barber) and the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Swap and Her Pretty Face. Natalie, a young art student in New York City, is struggling to pay her bills when a friend makes a suggestion: Why not go online and find a sugar daddy—a wealthy, older man who will pay her for dates and even give her a monthly allowance? Lots of girls do it, Nat learns. All that’s required is to look pretty and hang on his every word. Sexual favors are optional. Though more than thirty years her senior, Gabe, a handsome corporate finance attorney, seems like the perfect candidate, and within a month, they are madly in love. At least, Nat is…Gabe already has a family, whom he has no intention of leaving. So when he abruptly ends things, Nat can’t let go. But Gabe’s not about to let his sugar baby destroy his perfect life. What was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement devolves into a nightmare of deception, obsession, and, when a body is found near Gabe’s posh Upper East Side apartment, murder. Emotionally powerful and packed with page-turning suspense, The Arrangement delves into the sordid, all-too-real world of shadowy relationships between wealthy, powerful men and the young women who are caught in their web.

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.