Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It
by Geoff Dyer
Buy on AmazonMordantly funny, thought-provoking travel essays, from the acclaimed author of Out of Sheer Rage and “one of our most original writers” (New York Magazine). This isn’t a self-help book; it’s a book about how Geoff Dyer could do with a little help. In these genre-defying tales, he travels from Amsterdam to Cambodia, Rome to Indonesia, Libya to Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert, floundering in a sea of grievances, with fleeting moments of transcendental calm his only reward for living in a perpetual state of motion. But even as he recounts his side-splitting misadventures in each of these locales, Dyer is always able to sneak up and surprise you with insight into much more serious matters.…
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"It is a series of essays on the places he’s visited. It’s not one journey but a scattering of essays. He is a counter-cultural hippy figure and that comes across in his book – there’s a chapter on taking dope in Amsterdam. He is also horny and has a lot of sex. He is not an older gentleman just travelling around – he is a hipster, a dude. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I guess because it’s not a travel book in that sense. It’s a book about his mind, which I think is both interesting and funny. And he is charming as a writer. He is constantly flitting with ideas about all sorts of stuff – not big ideas, but things such as how easy it is to lose your hotel room key and why grass is green (literally). There is lots of stuff in it, hung together by the force of his personality. You would have a hard time describing it to a publisher. In this age where books are supposed to be about one thing, whether it’s Henry VIII or the Crimean War, it’s a very nice change. The title is supposed to be in praise of slacker-dom and not doing very much. It’s not about yoga at all."
Illuminating Essays · fivebooks.com