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Self-HelpLifestyles

Dr. Edward Hallowell

Interview by Lynn Green

<b>Taking control of life’s hectic pace</b> This article should have been finished sooner, but I had to reply to the 48 e-mail messages in my inbox, not to mention all those voice mail messages on my phone and the urgent letters that are piling up on my cluttered desk. I’m feeling frenzied, frazzled and forgetful a condition Dr. Edward Hallowell would identify as the dreaded F-state. A leading expert in the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Hallowell began to notice an interesting trend in his psychiatric practice almost a decade ago. Many people who felt overloaded and unorganized came to Hallowell to find out if they had ADD. Most did not, but were simply suffering from the frantic pace of modern life what Hallowell calls an environmentally induced stand-in for ADD. He christened the condition crazybusy and decided to write a book for the millions of us struggling to overcome it. In <b>CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD</b>, the doctor invents a new vocabulary to describe the busyness that threatens to overwhelm many harried multitaskers. There’s <i>taildogging</i> (going faster simply because everyone else is), <i>screensucking</i> (wasting time watching a screen on a computer, video game or television), <i>doomdart</i> (a forgotten task that suddenly pops into your consciousness) and our personal favorite, <i>EMV</i> (for e-mail voice): the unearthly tone a person’s voice takes on when he is reading e-mail while talking to you on the telephone. BookPage asked Hallowell for a few tips on how to survive when you’re stretched thin.

<b>How is constant busyness feeling frantic and unorganized, having too much to do different from true ADD?</b> Constant busyness being crazybusy is a condition we create. ADD is a condition a person is born with. The environment influences both, but a person has much more control over being crazybusy than over ADD. And the last thing a crazybusy person should do is take medication! The crazybusy person should take control, instead.

<b>Have you had a doomdart moment of your own lately?</b> As I was driving to the airport with my family for a trip, a doomdart hit me. I thought I had taken care of everything prior to leaving, but I realized that I had forgotten to leave a key to my house for a man who was going to do some work for us. Panic! Thank goodness I have a friend who has a key. <b>Isn’t being busy all the time a good thing? After all, most successful people seem to be busy.</b> That’s deceptive. Warren Buffet has no computer on his desk. He sits and thinks. Bill Gates takes weeks out of every year to go to a cabin in the woods so he can read and think, without interruptions. Successful people stop and think. They don’t just run around doing errands, talking on cell phones or downloading and sending emails.

<b>Would we all be better off if we gave up our cell phones and BlackBerrys?</b> No, not at all. BlackBerrys are great. The crucial point I make about technology is this: we need to be in charge of it, not let it be in charge of us. As long as you don’t power up your BlackBerry while, say, making love, then BlackBerrys will serve you well. But when the BlackBerry or any kind of technology becomes an addiction and starts to take priority where it shouldn’t, then you need to make some changes. Put yourself back in charge.

<b>What’s the first step someone should take to slow down a crazybusy life?</b> Realize that you have more control than you think. Most crazybusy people feel that they <i>have</i> to be that way. They feel that if they slow down, they will fall behind. But this is not true. If they focus on doing well what matters most instead of doing too much in a so-so fashion they will do better than ever.

<b>Help! My teenager is afflicted with screensucking and won’t do his homework. How can a parent counter the distraction of TV, computers and video games?</b> Screensucking is a huge, national epidemic, and not just among children. Adults do it, too. The solution? First, name the problem. Recognize it. Start to set limits on yourself and on your kids. Cultivate other activities, so you are not just getting rid of something but offering something better as well. Preserve the human moment face-to-face conversations, family dinner, doing fun stuff together so screensucking doesn’t become the default activity everyone resorts to the minute boredom hits.

<b>We had one more question to ask, but we’ve forgotten it. Is this early Alzheimer’s or an episode of fuhgeddomania (forgetfulness derived from data overload)?</b> Can you repeat that, please?

<b>Taking control of life's hectic pace</b> This article should have been finished sooner, but I had to reply to the 48 e-mail messages in my inbox, not to mention all those voice mail messages on my phone and the urgent letters that are piling up…
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Mireille Guiliano

Interview by Deanna Larson

Big grins will break out on faces across America when readers check out the diet menus devised by Mireille Guiliano for French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes and Pleasure, the sequel to her surprise bestseller, French Women Don’t Get Fat.

Chocolate, champagne, cauliflower gratin, duck breasts with honey glaze, pork chops with apples this isn’t crash dieting, but a liberating philosophy that imbues life and eating with joy, satisfaction and sensory sensation. Guiliano has already received thousands of e-mails describing how her approach has created newly minted Francophiles with a fresh way of seeing the world.

"The best compliment is from friends who say the book is like having a conversation with you," Guiliano says with an accent full of the energy and charm that fill her books. "I write like I speak . . . and I speak my mind."   Fans of the first book will recall that Guiliano gorged on pastries and became chubby while in America as an exchange student, and began her quest to lose the weight after a blunt comment from her father ("You look like a sack of potatoes") upon her return home to France.

Enlisting the help of family physician Dr. Miracle, Guiliano reacquainted herself with fresh, homemade food and revisited the tenets her mother and grandmother taught her about tiny indulgences. She eventually returned, svelte and stylish, to the U.S., married an American and landed a job as CEO of Veuve Clicquot, the venerable champagne house established during the French Revolution with Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, an equally impressive female, at the helm. Before Guiliano ever thought of writing a book, however, women often noted that while she traveled the world, entertained constantly and was passionate about food and wine, she didn’t become fat. Not wanting to share her personal history ("I couldn’t say been there done that," she says) she would instead shrug in the French way and say offhandedly that French women don’t get fat.

After her co-workers and friends begged her for more specific advice and began to lose weight with her approach, a Francophile friend finally persuaded Guiliano over lunch in a Paris café to sit down and write about what she had taught them.

French Women for All Seasons presents more easy recipes from family and friends featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients, along with Guiliano’s recommendations for adding gentle exercise and simple, sensual pleasures throughout the day, from dressing and working to relaxing, eating and entertaining (she even shares the secrets of tying scarves à la Francaise).

"The first one is about joie de vivre,"  Guiliano says of her books,  "the second about the art of living." Guiliano’s cheerful confidence and flair have made her popular on the speaking circuit where she presents her ideas to women’s groups and college students, and continues to inspire readers of both sexes and all ages to shed pounds and tons of anxiety. "I’ve learned a lot since the first book came out,"  she says.  "People like being made aware of quality and freshness." Call it natural female suspicion, or looking for evidence of theory in action, but women are now scrutinizing every detail of Guiliano’s life ("Oh, yes, it’s crazy,"  she says) as she moves from continent to continent, from green market to café to charity cocktail function, watching what she buys and eats for proof that her secrets really work.

And it does: The balance of indulgences and compensations can lead to good health, and she often hears comments that "it’s a shame that it had to come from someone outside the culture,"  Guiliano says. Americans apparently needed to hear the message from someone representing a culture known for its rigorous dedication to aesthetics flabby and fat is something the French won’t abide, even in their pigeons. "If I were a sociologist or anthropologist, I could write about it,"  she laughs. But Guiliano somehow manages to turn unrealistic European standards into a gentle, non-recriminatory exercise in living well in her two sensible guides.  "When you desire it, eat a rich crepe take the time to savor it and eat it with pleasure. Eating on autopilot is the biggest no-no,"  Guiliano says.  "Don’t deprive your body, because we all know everything is in the mind."

"And,"  she finishes with characteristic, no-nonsense flair, "it’s just not necessary."  

Deanna Larson writes from Nashville.

 

Big grins will break out on faces across America when readers check out the diet menus devised by Mireille Guiliano for French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes and Pleasure, the sequel to her surprise bestseller, French Women Don't Get Fat.

Self-HelpLifestyles

Sara Davidson

Interview by Deanna Larson

A flower child who attended the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, Sara Davidson epitomized her trailblazing generation. After studying at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she became a national correspondent for the Boston Globe, covering the election campaigns of Bobby Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as well as Woodstock. She helped establish the new journalism movement with articles for Harper's, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly and Rolling Stone, then became the literary voice of the baby boomer generation with her 1977 book Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties. Davidson then alternated between writing books (including the best-selling novel Cowboy) and producing and writing for television, including her Golden-Globe-nominated tenure as writer/producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."

Clearly, Davidson wouldn't accept a conventional retirement of baking bread and knitting baby blankets in a McMansion by the links. But after her children left for college, her lover abandoned her, and Hollywood suddenly stopped knocking on her door, Davidson was stripped of every meaningful role she had known almost overnight. What was she supposed to do with the next 30 years? It is so hard to make a dent in the culture now, Davidson admitted. So she picked up her tape recorder and started interviewing boomer friends and acquaintances about their own final-chapter transitions. Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives? reads like a long, meandering and fascinating Esquire profile, documenting Davidson's own experiences, and those of more than 150 interview subjects including Jane Fonda, Dam Rass, Tom Hayden and Carly Simon, along with plenty of juicy facts from studies on aging.

Boomers forge their own way and look to each other, Davidson discovered. Following the struggle with every demon inside what you should do, what you're due, a lust for joyful work and personal excellence re-emerges in this laid-back generation. There's air and possibility at the end, Davidson says. We can be freer now. We've checked off so many things. The author answered questions about the book from her home in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado.

Leap! is categorized as self-help. Do you consider this a self-help book?
I never set out to write a self-help book because I don't get help from books. I love story, I love narrative and I learn from narrative. I think people learn through story, and it's so much more enjoyable.

The book is full of anecdotes, but few directives on how to age. Was this intentional?
I didn't want to make a list of things people should do, because there's no one blueprint. This is our last best shot. At this point in life, you shouldn't give a damn about what people are thinking. I wanted to stimulate people to think and come up with what's authentic for themselves.

Were you surprised by what you discovered?
Every interview was full of surprises . . . everyone was changing all the time. Nothing was as I expected it to be. People who made adamant statements changed. I went away feeling inspired and happy and envious that I didn't have what they had. Everything I learned was affirming. It's okay that it changed. I have a very different relationship with change now. Nothing else has the solidity that's the reality.

Did the process of writing the book ease your own transition?
I was so moved that I wasn't in this alone, that I wouldn't fall that far. We all have networks, so many people we can call.

How would you sum up the aging process?
Going through the narrows that rough passage everybody has to go through. If you don't volunteer, your body or the world will force you to.

What does being relentless and fearless mean now that you've passed 50?
I'm fearless about my career future. I have no idea what work I'll do next. I don't have a stack of things lined up. I have no clue, but I have trust that it will be OK.

Every person has gifts and nobody can take those away . . . and what your gift is, matters. You have a rhythm with that one tune that's yours to play. What else is there? At the end it's going to be about the moment[s] you're fully alive, loving and being loved.

 

A flower child who attended the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, Sara Davidson epitomized her trailblazing generation. After studying at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she became a national correspondent for the Boston Globe, covering the election campaigns of Bobby…

LifestylesEnvironment

Josh Dorfman

Interview by MiChelle Jones

If self-proclaimed lazy environmentalist Josh Dorfman isn’t the Earth-friendly being of the future, he certainly is the eco-guy of the moment. Through his blog, his radio show (on LIME Radio and Sirius) and now his book all sharing the Lazy Environmentalist tag Dorfman aims to show that you don’t have to give up life’s pleasures in order to save the planet. He favors a friendlier approach, avoiding gloom and doom predictions and applying Madison Avenue techniques to the message instead. You have to understand human emotions, how we make decisions, Dorfman says over lunch at a Nashville eatery. Whatever the hooks are, that’s what still works. For Dorfman, that means adding aesthetics and convenience to the environmental equation, as he does in his new book, The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living, a compendium of ideas, suppliers and options that take reusing, reducing and recycling to a whole new level.

In the book’s 272 pages (which are printed on 100 percent post-consumer waste, as one would expect), Dorfman discusses the clever refashioning of leather miniskirts into shoulder bags; using organic, as opposed to conventionally grown, cotton, the latter being one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world ; and making bamboo flooring selections. The good news for people who want to live green, but who may not have or want to spend a lot of, well, green, is that national chains and manufacturers Macy’s, Wal-Mart, Levi’s and Nike among them are increasingly turning to these sorts of materials.

Dorfman is a smart, funny guy with whom one could easily discuss any- and everything. However, one might also come away wondering how seriously he takes saving the planet. It was just this sort of questioning of Dorfman’s environmental cred that led to the launching of the entire Lazy Environmentalist enterprise.

You see, he wasn’t brought up sans electricity and red meat by hippie parents, though he jokes about throwing Saturday bake sales as a child in honor of his family’s cause of the day. And, OK, there was the time he was kicked off a kibbutz after only a week for organizing a labor protest. But, he also has a solid business background and his environmental epiphany came while he was selling bicycle locks in China (he had to be quite the salesman since, as he says, the locks were a little more expensive than the bikes ). Contemplating the Chinese fascination with American lifestyles, Dorfman says he saw a connection between a billion bikes and a billion cars . . . and starting thinking about, not necessarily a doomsday scenario, but about quality of life. Fast-forward a few years after Dorfman earned an M.B.

A. in international business; worked in Geneva, Paris and Hong Kong; took a stab at screenwriting in Los Angeles and dropped out of a Ph.

D. program in D.C. and he had figured out a way to combine his business acumen and his growing concern for the planet. The solution was Vivavi, a furniture and home-furnishings company launched in 2003 and whose motto, Live Modern + Tread Lightly reflects the philosophy of greener living through good design.

Along with water-conserving bathroom fixtures, paints low in VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and electric cars the products Dorfman talks about in The Lazy Environmentalist he also praises Method’s all-purpose cleaners. It’s the best-looking cleaning product ever and it’s cheap, he says. It’s also available in places like Target and Costco. I love that product for all those reasons. He gets practically rhapsodic talking about TerraCycle organic plant food. Fast-food waste is fed to worms, the worms poop it out, then it’s packaged in soda bottles, he explains. Everything is recycled it’s waste and it’s packaged in waste. How could anyone question the commitment of someone who gets so excited about worm poop (especially while eating lunch)? Well, one of Dorfman’s first Vivavi employees did. He says she was almost hyperventilating when she tearfully asked him whether he truly was an environmentalist. You don’t talk like an environmentalist, you don’t act like an environmentalist, he quotes her as saying. Dorfman mulled things over and then blogged about how he didn’t mind saving the planet, but he wasn’t going to give up long, hot showers. The blog led to an offer for an Internet radio show, which led to a contract with Sirius. Now he’s bringing his laidback environmental platform My voice is: I’m your pal, man; I’m with you, he says to a new medium. Whatever the medium, his focus is the same, concentrating on what people are willing to do to take better care of the planet and mixing in a little style.

If self-proclaimed lazy environmentalist Josh Dorfman isn't the Earth-friendly being of the future, he certainly is the eco-guy of the moment. Through his blog, his radio show (on LIME Radio and Sirius) and now his book all sharing the Lazy Environmentalist tag Dorfman aims…
Lifestyles

Sara Snow

Interview by Alison Hood

Most of us had our share of candy, Coke and hot dogs when we were kids. Not so green lifestyle expert Sara Snow: her favorite snack was a whole wheat chappati chock-full of sprouts, hummus and sea kelp flakes. During my call to her home in Indianapolis, Snow spoke enthusiastically about the (dietary) quirks and graces of growing up green, her respect for family and her passion for a credo of organic living—a devotion that sparked her new book, Sara Snow’s Fresh Living: The Essential Room-by-Room Guide to a Greener, Healthier Family and Home.

How-to guides can be preachy, especially when addressing human morals and mores. Fresh Living is not: Snow’s approach is friendly, her information is accessible and the book’s “Green Bar Profiles,” brief cameos of “people from inside the natural products industry and green movement,” are inspiring. Snow walks readers through a typical American household, room by room, offering simple, easy and affordable ways to create a healthier, environmentally friendly home. “I didn’t want to advise people to go out and buy all the latest green gadgets, throw out everything in their houses and start over,” she says, “because that would do more damage than good.” Instead, Snow has produced a reasonably priced, useful guide that folks can take shopping and “scribble in the margins.” She wanted to reach everyone, wherever they were on their journey toward living a healthier, more eco-friendly life.

From kitchen to living room, bathroom to bedroom (how to make “natural whoopie”), nursery (the ecology of diapering) to laundry room and beyond to the Great Outdoors, Fresh Living helps us rethink what we put in, on and around our bodies. Did you know that green grocery shopping happens on the store’s perimeter? That’s where all the veggies and fruits are stashed. Do you have a spider plant on your counter? If so, you’ll breathe easier. Do you know the top tips for greening your car? (First, check the air pressure on your tires.) Especially insightful are Snow’s clear explanations of often confusing food labeling, hazardous pesticide use and the dangers of plastics.

Sara Snow’s definition of green—what she likes to call “fresh”—living (she thinks “green” is overused) is not only about making a healthier home environment, but also about living at a slower, more aware pace—much like the way she was raised. Daughter of Tim Redmond (a green movement pioneer and co-founder of Eden Foods) and mother Pattie, Snow grew up in a unique household where measured, low-impact living ruled supreme. “I was aware that we did things differently in our home,” she says, “and that we were part of a movement much bigger than our family. My dad and mom were involved in important work, and raised us in a very specific way.”

Elders, too, played a crucial part in Snow’s life. Though her parents swept the whole family along on the exciting green movement tide, she credits her grandparents for many of her sensibilities. “My grandparents were ahead of their times,” she says. “They were environmentalists, but they weren’t uppity about it. They would sit down in the dirt and explain the difference between a pea shoot and a weed, where food comes from and why it was important to eat food that has life still in it.” Sadly, Snow believes that many kids today lack this basic knowledge and an understanding of the slower, more earth-connected way of life practiced by earlier generations. On a bright note, though, she says that many questions she answers and consultations she has are with parents, teachers and students who want access to programs, activities and curricula about eating well, establishing responsible carbon footprints and reducing environmental toxicity.

Since 2005, Snow, helped by her previous experience as a television producer, has created TV programs emphasizing an aware, organic lifestyle. She now hosts “Get Fresh with Sara Snow,” carried by the Discovery Health channel, appears regularly on CNN and FitTV, and blogs at treehugger.com. She is an environmental activist who uses her platform to champion planet Earth. “I have a voice and I use that voice to positively encourage people who are trying to do some good. If we can simplify, buy less and start educating ourselves as consumers, we can help companies clean up their environmental practices,” she says.

To make a difference, Snow believes people need to be aware of how their slightest actions can affect their well-being and the health of the environment. “It’s about making that one small change so that you can be a little bit healthier, a little bit more environmentally conscious. Once that change becomes habit, then you add something else. One day you’ll realize, hey, I’m living a really healthy life! And that’s something you can be proud of.”

Alison Hood recycles, re-uses and gardens organically in Marin County, California.

Read more about Sara Snow on her website.

Most of us had our share of candy, Coke and hot dogs when we were kids. Not so green lifestyle expert Sara Snow: her favorite snack was a whole wheat chappati chock-full of sprouts, hummus and sea kelp flakes. During my call to her home…

LifestylesEnvironment

Bill McKibben

Interview by Trisha Ping

Environmental scientist Bill McKibben has spent the last 20 years thinking about climate change. Since the release of his 1989 bestseller, The End of Nature, he has warned that without action, global warming would reshape our environment. Now, in Eaarth, McKibben argues that the window to change the future has closed. We have created a new planet (hence the new name, “Eaarth”). Preserving our current way of life will be impossible; to even survive we must alter our lifestyles drastically.

Presenting evidence from a wide range of sources, Eaarth is a manifesto without being a polemic. It puts many of the latest natural disasters in context (let’s just say McKibben asserts that the new Eaarth is even less stable than the old) and predicts a future that will give “act locally” a whole new meaning. Readers will walk away from McKibben’s latest with much food for thought, and a changed view of our changed planet.

You build a very strong case that our planet is already changed for the worse. At this point, is there anything people can do as individuals, or is a worldwide initiative our only hope?
There’s lots that people can do as individuals and communities—at 350.org, for instance, we’re organizing a huge planet-scale Work Party for Oct. 10 this fall—there will be solar panels going up, houses being insulated, community gardens dug. They’ll help—but they’ll mostly help because we’ll use all that activity to say to our leaders: Why aren’t you doing your job, which is passing the laws that would change the price of carbon and get us really moving on climate change. We work locally and globally at the same time—that’s the odd thing about 350.org, as I try to explain in the last pages of the book. It’s campaigning that looks like the architecture of the Internet

After 20-plus years of talking about it, why do you think it’s so difficult to convince people that climate change is happening?
Because of 1) the enormous vested interest of a few of the most profitable corporations on earth and 2) the enormous inertia in all our lives. Doing something about climate will require changing, and changing is hard. 

The book contains several favorable references to Obama’s environmental policies. Do you feel the changes he’s trying to make will have any effect on our current situation?
I think he very much needs to lead us in the changes I describe above. He’s the one guy with the platform to really make the case that climate and energy are the key issues for our time, and that we have to get to work. So far he hasn’t done it very powerfully, but we keep hoping!

The Internet, along with food and energy, is on your essentials list for the future, despite arguing that the world is going to have to get more local if we are to survive. Do you think sustaining the Internet is possible in the future you envision?
Sure—the Internet doesn’t use much in the way of energy—you can take a thousand trips on Google more efficiently than one mile in a car. I think it’s a crucial survival tool for the future—it’s what will let us live more local lives without feeling parochial and shut in.

What do you think is the biggest challenge we will face on the new Eaarth?
There are all kinds of practical challenges that I describe around food, energy and so on. But the biggest may be simply getting our heads around the idea that we can’t keep growing forever, that we need to mature quickly. (That’s for us. If you live in Bangladesh, the biggest challenges will be more . . . immediate).

The first part of the book describes a future that sounds quite dire—cities submerged, crops failing, dirty air, etc. Later on you say the new Eaarth will require a back-to-basics, local lifestyle that doesn’t sound all that bad and might even be appealing to the average overscheduled, overstimulated American. But will the changed planet be able to support these endeavors?
We’ve got some margin. We use most of our cropland growing corn to feed to cows—which is good, because it means we have good soil that we could grow food for ourselves on someday. We’ve got lots of wind and sun—we can’t use them as profligately as we’ve used coal and gas and oil. The real problem is that we’re going to need to be dealing with the ever-increasing effects of an unraveling climate, which will be costly and hard. But not impossible, not if we think clearly, calmly and as communities.

As conditions change on Earth, the effects of climate change often manifest in ways we haven’t been able to foresee (for example, the deforestation of the Amazon, in addition to the changes you would expect, also put the area at a higher risk of fire and disrupted the pattern of rainfall across the continent). Is there any way to predict what other complications might lie in our future?
The inability to predict everything is part of the problem—we’re gong from a world of very predictable stability, to one full of surprises. So far all the surprises (Arctic melting, say) have come faster and more violently than people imagined. And some things have appeared very unexpectedly: the acidification of seawater, say. Let’s hope we don’t have similar surprises with methane leaking from the Arctic, or monsoons shifting.

Climate change disproportionately affects poor people and people in third-world countries. How can those of us in better economic circumstances help alleviate their burden?
Two ways. We can send them the aid they need to leapfrog past fossil fuel and into the renewable future. (It’s money we essentially owe them, having filled the atmosphere and thus taken away their ability to burn coal and oil to get rich as we did). And we can cut our own emissions dramatically and quickly, which will help slow the progress of climate change that threatens them so badly.

When your first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989, could you have predicted that two decades later you would be writing a book about how the Earth has already changed into a fundamentally different planet? What do you expect to be writing about in another 20 years?
I understood the basic science in 1989, and it’s stayed much the same. But what no one knew was how quickly it would develop, or where the red lines would be. We didn’t know in 1989 that we’d have to cut back the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to 350 parts per million; we thought 550 ppm might be safe.

In 20 years? I have the feeling we won’t yet have solved this biggest of challenges. But hopefully I’ll be writing about some of the changes we’ve made, and how well they’re working.

What do you say to those who don’t agree with the conclusions you make in this book?
Boy I hope you’re right.

 

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Environmental scientist Bill McKibben has spent the last 20 years thinking about climate change. Since the release of his 1989 bestseller, The End of Nature, he has warned that without action, global warming would reshape our environment. Now, in Eaarth, McKibben argues that the window…
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Timothy Ferriss

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Timothy Ferriss published his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, in 2007, and in a self-promotion tour de force, went from a little-known investor and business advisor to a best-selling author whose blog garners a million-plus visitors a month.

When it came time to find volunteers for his new book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, hundreds of his fans joined experiments in diet, exercise, sex and more. But the title of head guinea pig goes to Ferriss himself. He underwent thousands of blood tests, traveled as many miles and compiled hundreds of case studies on everything from weight loss to sexual behavior to learning to swim in 10 days. Ferriss took some downtime to answer questions about the new book, his obsessions and why his methods are most likely to succeed.

Your first book struck a chord with readers. What made you write your second book about body rather than work? Did you view the change in topics as a risk or a natural progression?

The wider world thinks I’m obsessed with time management, but they haven’t seen the other—much more legitimate, much more ridiculous—obsession. I’ve recorded almost every workout I’ve done since age 18. Since 2004, I’ve tracked everything from complete lipid panels to free testosterone. I’ve had stem cell growth factors imported from Israel to reverse “permanent” injuries. . . . I’ve spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade. And that was just to satisfy my own curiosity and improve my own physical machine.
 
Then I had a conversation with a WIRED magazine writer, in which we joked that the main fears of modern men and women could be boiled down to two things: e-mail overload [addressed in The 4-Hour Workweek]and getting fat. Shortly thereafter, I realized I had to write The 4-Hour Body. It is, without a doubt, a natural progression, a risk and the most important thing I’ve ever written.

Any book that addresses eating and exercise is met with skepticism, most likely because people find it difficult to remain motivated. How will your approach be more effective for readers?

Big changes seldom work. The 4-Hour Body is intended to answer one question: What are the smallest changes that produce the biggest physical changes? To illustrate the point: Even if someone has 100 pounds to lose, I wouldn’t have them start diet and exercise at the same time. Why? The exercise often triggers “reward” meals, more overeating and abandonment of the new program after a few weeks of plateauing. Instead, I have them focus on one small change that can produce three to five pounds of fat loss in a single week, such as changing breakfast to include at least 20 grams of protein. Using this small-step approach, compliance is incredible: 58 percent of test subjects I tracked indicated my diet was the first diet they’d ever been able to follow. Many lost 20 pounds the first month, and some lost 100-plus pounds total.

You recommend a Slow-Carb Diet, and characterize it as “better fat-loss through simplicity.” Tenets include avoiding “white” carbs, eating the same few meals and cheating one day a week. Why are these practices so effective?

Because the diet removes any paradox of choice. The more decisions someone has to make, the more they’ll make mistakes or give up and revert to old behaviors. The Slow-Carb Diet removes the need to think, and offers one day a week to do whatever you want. That one day—a stress release valve that also accelerates fat loss—means you’re not giving up your favorite foods forever, just six days at a time. After testing all the diets and fads, this is the best, most enjoyable approach I’ve found for sustained fat loss. I’ve been doing it for more than five years.

You’ve included explicit sexual advice in the book. Why? Did anyone try to discourage you from being so detailed?

Sex is a fundamental part of life, but there’s very little mainstream discussion of how to improve sex with real specifics. Also, most sexual advice is based on a footnote from a book, based on yet another book—there’s no testing. I tested it all, and had others replicate my success with things like the 15-minute orgasm. For many readers, this will easily be the most important part of the book. But did my publisher let me include my explicit photos? Nope. We had to make them detailed illustrations.

Anything I haven’t asked that BookPage readers should know?
At least 50 percent of the case studies are women. This isn’t a book only for 30-something guys. It’s for anyone who’d like to become the best version of themselves possible. 

 

Timothy Ferriss published his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, in 2007, and in a self-promotion tour de force, went from a little-known investor and business advisor to a best-selling author whose blog garners a million-plus visitors a month.

When it came time to find volunteers for…

NonfictionLifestylesArts & Culture

Elaine Sciolino

Interview by Trisha Ping

What do you think of when you hear the word "seduction"? Whatever it is, get ready to expand that definition after reading La Seduction, an insightful and timely exploration of French culture through its most enduring success strategy. New York Times Paris correspondant Elaine Sciolino has been living in France for nearly 10 years. She took time to answer a few of our questions about the way the concept of seduction informs just about every area of French life.

Your book is not the first to explore or explain French culture. How do you feel it fits alongside books like French Women Don't Get Fat and Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong? 
Don’t Get Fat is an impressionistic, light—and delightful—guide by a Frenchwoman to help other women become beautiful, thin and balanced in the French way. Sixty Million is a very solid, durable and readable primer on France and French life.

La Seduction is an examination of the importance of seduction in all aspects of French life. The tools of the seducer—anticipation, promise, allure—are powerful engines in French history and politics, culture and style, food and foreign policy, literature and manners. The book draws on years of reporting on and living in France. It includes interviews with Presidents and politicians; business executives and bureaucrats; writers, actors, students, professors, merchants, farmers, etc. My conclusion is that seduction is more than a game; it is an essential strategy for France’s survival as a country of influence.

One thing that struck me about the book is its even-handedness. What do you think America could learn from France's "seduction" strategy? what do you think that France could learn from America?
We Americans can learn to embrace what the French call plaisir—the art of creating and relishing pleasure of all kinds. The French are proud masters of it, for their own gratification and as a useful tool to seduce others. They have created and perfected pleasurable ways to pass the time: perfumes to sniff, gardens to wander in, wines to drink, objects of beauty to observe, conversations to carry on. They give themselves permission to fulfill a need for pleasure and leisure that America’s hardworking, supercapitalist, abstinent culture often does not allow. 

The French can learn American efficiency that leads to getting results. They can learn to acknowledge and embrace ethnic, religious and racial diversity.

"It is almost a civic duty to seduce." 

What is the biggest difference between the French and American worldviews?
The United States tends to resort to hard power, the use of force to resolve disputes—whether in Iraq or Afghanistan. The French were pioneers of soft power, the art of influencing others at the negotiating table and on the ground through attraction (translated into French as séduction). 

France’s capability to use force to subdue others disappeared long ago. It has had to rely more on powers of persuasion, learning how and when to woo the wider world. France is too weak an economic and military power to counterbalance the United States but too strong and too strong-willed to take orders from it. In a permanent wound to its pride, it has lost one of its most powerful weapons—the supremacy of the French language, which used to be the language of diplomacy and educated elites around the world. English is now the language of international business, the Internet and even diplomacy.

In recent months, however, the United States and France seem to have switched roles. Take Libya, for example. France took the lead in using military force to try to stop Colonel Kaddafi’s brutality against his citizens; it pushed through a strong resolution in the Security Council. The United States lagged behind.   

You write, "I'm convinced that American-style feminism has prevented me from easily absorbing" the reality of French culture. How would you describe French feminism? Do you think most Frenchwomen would call themselves feminists?
France is having its Anita Hill moment. When Anita Hill testified before a Senate committee in 1991 that her former boss Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, he denied everything and was elevated to the Supreme Court. But the hearings were a turning point. Women suddenly said that the "Mad Men" style of behavior they had put up with for so long at work—the leering, the inappropriate touching, the sexual banter—was not acceptable. Legislatures expanded laws about sexual harassment, and businesses began enforcing strict codes of conduct covering sexual relations in the workplace.

France, where powerful men have traditionally treated sex as a right and used it as a weapon, is now embroiled in its own battle of the sexes, involving a powerful man who could have been President and a single mother who works as a hotel maid. Dominique Strauss-Kahn has denied the charges against him. But suddenly, some French women have begun to speak out about an atmosphere that condones sexual behavior that crosses the line and may even be criminal. Women in politics have been particularly vocal in deploring a culture that tends to treat women as objects. 

But the conversation will be long and torturous. The French tend to blur the line between what is acceptable—and even desirable—in the workplace and what is not. For them, flirtation and much that is forbidden in post-Anita Hill America, is part of ordinary interaction. And it doesn’t matter whether French women use the term “feminist” to describe themselves. 

Regarding appearance, you say that in France, "the sin is not the failure to meet a standard of perfection but an unwillingness to try." This sounds somewhat similar to the American obsession with physical perfection. How do the ideas about what is achievable differ in the two countries?
[In France] It is almost a civic duty to seduce—or if one cannot appear seductive, at least not to take a prominent spot on the public stage. By no means does everyone play along, but what is striking is how many people do. During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the United States, both men and women in France questioned Bill Clinton’s judgment. That he was sexually aroused by a woman other than his wife was less of a shock than the fact that Monica Lewinsky was not especially attractive—and seemed to lack style and elegance. Men in public life, too, may be judged on their physical appearance. One reason that Barack Obama appeals to the French is his beauty. I was surprised that men—straight and gay alike—appreciate his good looks even more than women do.

The paradox is that the American quest for perfect looks is often viewed with disdain in France. A too-put-together look is a turn-off, a sign that someone is insecure and has tried too hard.

After so many years as a Paris correspondent, do you consider yourself "seduced" by France?
It depends on the day! I still get exasperated by the rigidity of so much of French life—the demand for still another obscure document to complete a dossier, the   compartmentalization of jobs that may make it necessary to be visited by three different repairmen before an oven can be fixed; the inclination to i"t’s-not-my-jobism" rather than how do I get a job done.

But I never, ever have taken living in Paris for granted. There has never been a day when I haven’t reveled in its beauty, or felt fortunate to live here. So in a sense, perhaps I have been seduced. I love to quote a character in a play by the 19th-century poet and playwright Henri de Bornier: “Every man has two countries, his own and France.” 

In my years living here, I have tried to make the country our own, even though I know that will never entirely happen. I will never think like the French, never shed my Americanness. Nor do I want to. And like an elusive lover who clings to mystery, France will never completely reveal herself to me. Even now, when I walk around a corner I anticipate that something pleasurable might happen, the next act in a process of perpetual seduction.

 

 

What do you think of when you hear the word "seduction"? Whatever it is, get ready to expand that definition after reading La Seduction, an insightful and timely exploration of French culture through its most enduring success strategy. New York Times Paris correspondant Elaine Sciolino has…

LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Grace Bonney: The design revolution is at hand

Interview by Cat, Deputy Editor

It all began in 2004—a writer in Brooklyn created a blog to fill with her design ideas, never expecting it to become an online sensation. Today, Design*Sponge is one of the most popular sources of DIY inspiration.

It was only a matter of time before Grace Bonney, the genius behind D*S, released her first book, Design*Sponge at Home, which, like the blog, is filled with gorgeous photographs and easy instructions. With Bonney’s brilliant uses of space, color and texture, every room has the chance to be a showstopper.

What is your favorite aspect of the blog come to life in the book?
I really love the way we’ve managed to cross-reference so many different homes, skills, styling tips and projects in one book. For me, the best part of a blog is how you can link to so many different pieces of information in one post, so I wanted to find a way to carry that through to the book, and I think we did. I love that you can open the book to a home tour and then flip to different pages to learn how to make something you see in the home, learn more about its history, or see a flower arrangement inspired by the home’s color palette.

What was the biggest challenge in moving from a blog format to a book format?
For me it was most difficult to make the edits. I’m so used to having an infinite amount of room to publish online, so having to narrow things down (and lose some really special pieces that just wouldn’t fit) was a real learning experience for me. But I’m glad I did–in the end it really helped me solidify what Design*Sponge’s style and aesthetic is all about.

How did you choose which projects went into the book?
Just like the site, I chose based purely on my gut. I looked for homes, projects and makeovers that grabbed me and made me smile, want to learn more or inspired the best kind of jealousy. I wanted people to have those same gut level responses every time they turned the page.

I looked for homes, projects and makeovers that grabbed me and made me smile, want to learn more or inspired the best kind of jealousy.

In the book’s foreword, Jonathan Adler calls D*S a revolution. Do you consider your blog and book a part of a revolution?
That was an incredibly kind comment and kicked off a serious bout of blushing and appreciation on my end. I don’t often sit back and look at the work I do at D*S, but I think if I step back for a moment and look at our contribution to the community, I think our team has done something really special. There’s been a huge groundswell of change within the design (and publishing) community in the last 10 years and I’m proud to have played a part in it.

How has Brooklyn shaped D*S?
Brooklyn informs everything I do on a day-to-day basis. It’s the place I call home and the energy that exists here is hard to find elsewhere. People (artists and art-appreciators alike) here are so driven to follow their passion it’s hard not to get caught up in that and really follow your heart. Without that sort of community around me, I’m not sure how hard I would have pushed to do all the projects I have over the past seven years. But when you’re surrounded with so much talent it’s the best sort of inspiration to do your best.

What is the most daunting part of DIY, and what advice can you give inexperienced DIY-ers?
I think DIY projects can seem daunting when you’ve never really thrown yourself in and gotten your hands dirty. But it’s really about pushing past that fear and not being afraid to make mistakes. My advice is to spend as much time as it takes to set up a clean work space, get your supplies in order and prepped and clean as you work. Just like cooking, when your space is clear and your mise en place are right at your fingertips, things flow easily.

What is the one thing every room must have?
Texture. I always feel sad when I walk into a space and everything is cold and smooth. I want to feel some sort of warmth in a space to bring it to life and texture does that in a snap. A quilted throw, a knitted pillow or a great wool rug can really add dimension to a space without spending a ton of money.

If you could move into anyone’s home, who’s would you move into?
I’d move into one of the many Neutra homes in Silverlake (Los Angeles)—anyone’s will do. I love the way he integrated moving exterior walls into each space so the outdoors and indoors blended seamlessly.

What was your best ever yard sale/thrift store find?
Our old TV credenza was a serious online thrift score. It was part of an estate sale on eBay and was originally a $1,000+ piece, but I got it for $200. I sold it when we moved earlier this year, but it was one of my favorite pieces of furniture for years.

What’s next for you and for the blog?
I’m most excited to hit the road for the book tour! We so rarely get to break out from behind our laptops and meet people, so this is a huge treat for us. To interact with and meet our readers is going to be the biggest reward for all the hard work we put into the book.

Grace Bonney answered some questions about the little design blog that changed everything.
Self-HelpLifestyles

Sonja Lyubomirsky

Interview by Amy Scribner

The cover of The Myths of Happiness says it all: An attractive brunette stands on her slightly browning lawn and peers over at her neighbors’ emerald-green grass and luscious flower bed.

What is it about our culture—and our very nature—that makes us place such importance on happiness? Why are we programmed to expect happiness only if we check certain boxes, such as marriage and wealth—and a perfectly green lawn?

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has been researching happiness for more than two decades. In a new book, she offers a fresh way of thinking about happiness, and smart tips on how to get it.

You write about the links between money and happiness and suggest that people embrace thrifty habits. Is that feasible in our society?

It is absolutely feasible to become more thrifty. Indeed, although overconsumption is highlighted by the media and ubiquitous in some social circles, I believe that many, many people in the West are repelled (or at least not attracted) by materialism, and, instead, practice a very experience-focused and family-focused approach to life. If you are not one of those people, then my and others’ research suggests ways that you can thwart poor consumer decision-making and curtail overspending—for example, by spending your money on experiences (a dinner with friends) rather than possessions (e.g., a nicer stereo).

You offer great advice on choices that will lead to happiness. Which of those tips do you find most personally difficult to follow?

A recurring theme in the book is the importance of trying to appreciate what you have and see “the big picture.” One of the strategies that I use is to ask myself after a crisis or a really bad day, “Will it matter in a year?” Yet this is not always easy to follow. My favorite anecdote is one day when I was telling my husband, Pete, about what a great strategy this is and how well it works. Just when I finished talking, my daughter, who was then 7, walked in and her long, beautiful hair was completely entangled with gum. I just lost it! I started yelling at her: “How could you do such a thing?!” And Pete started laughing. “What were you just telling me? Will this matter in a year?” “But it will matter in a year!” I cried. “I’m going to have to cut her hair off and it’s still going to be short a whole year later!” Though that was clearly not an occasion in which I used the strategy effectively, I still try to practice it as often as I can.

You write that “the effects of sharing troubles and obtaining help from a friend, companion, lover, family member, or even a pet are almost magical in their power.” Why is that?

I allude to an occasion in the book when I was heartbroken over a break-up and I was crying for hours; then I picked up the phone and talked to a close friend about what happened and my despair dropped from about a 10 to a 2 or 3. I wasn’t suddenly joyful, but I was no longer so distressed. It really shocked me how just one social interaction—the act of sharing with a close other—would have such a powerful effect. Of course, a great deal of research confirms my experience. When we have social support, we experience pain less intensely, we bounce back quicker from adversity, and we even judge hills to be less steep.

If you were to give a family member or friend one piece of advice about being happy, what would it be?

If I had to give one general piece of advice to anyone about how to attain and sustain happiness, it would be to nurture their interpersonal relationships. Investing in relationships—expressing gratitude, doing kindness, trying to be empathetic, and staying positive and supportive—will probably contribute to your happiness and health more than anything else. (But work is a close second!)

What is the greatest misconception that most people have about happiness?

My book describes several misconceptions about happiness, but I think the biggest is the one that I call “I’ll be happy when_____.” That is, we believe that we may not be happy now, but we’ll be happy when Mr. Right comes along or we get a new boss or we have a baby. The problem with these beliefs is not that they’re wrong—they’re right, but only in part. We likely will be happy when or if those events come to pass, but that boost in happiness is likely to be short-lived.

Do you think people can overthink happiness?

People can definitely become too focused on happiness and its pursuit. New research shows that if we are wrapped up in trying to become happy to the exclusion of other goals and if we are constantly monitoring our happiness (“Am I happy yet? Am I happy yet?”), then such efforts may seriously backfire. My recommendation is to keep the pursuit of happiness in the back of your mind but to focus primarily on those goals that will get you there—e.g., absorbing yourself in meaningful goals, investing in relationships, expressing gratitude, etc.

What makes you happy?

Freud suggested that lieben und arbeiten—“to love and to work”—are the secrets to well-being, and that has certainly been true for me.

The cover of The Myths of Happiness says it all: An attractive brunette stands on her slightly browning lawn and peers over at her neighbors’ emerald-green grass and luscious flower bed.

What is it about our culture—and our very nature—that makes us place such importance on…

LifestylesAnimals

Theron Humphrey

Interview by Joelle Herr

Have you met Maddie yet? She’s a ridiculously photogenic brown coonhound rescue with white speckles, huge, flappy ears and eyes that tend to squint, seemingly indicating a certain level of bliss (and/or sleepiness).

A couple of years ago, Maddie’s owner, Theron Humphrey—feeling unfulfilled by his corporate job, stung by a recent breakup and pondering the direction of his life following the death of his grandfather—set out to travel the country, to meet and photograph one new person each day. At his side was Maddie.

During the yearlong, 65,000-mile road trip, Humphrey discovered Maddie’s uncanny sense of balance and started taking photographs of her perched atop everything from a scooter to a horse to a fence to a tree. These guaranteed-to-put-a-smile-on-your-face photos have been collected in the recently published book, Maddie on Things.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Humphrey is back on the road, this time on a tour to promote the book—visit www.maddieontour.com to see the schedule—and also continue work on a documentary called Why We Rescue. We spoke with Humphrey about the book when he and Maddie were in Baltimore, about to head to DC for an event at Politics and Prose. 

Tell us about how the book came about.
The Maddie Project just happened organically over time. I was out on the road traveling America to shoot a documentary [Why We Rescue] to get stories from everyday folks, and Maddie came along with me. I rescued her right before I started traveling. Over time, I just started to point my camera at her.

Was there anything that Maddie couldn’t balance on?
We just got really good at picking out things she could balance on. Early on, you try a couple of things and realize that it has to be a certain width and has to be stable and bolted down. You just get better at figuring out what to try and what not to try. 

Maddie is perched pretty high in some of the photos. Were you ever worried about her falling? 
No, I mean, we were doing it for only so long. She’s so well trained to stand still, and she just has great balance. For all of them, I could stand on my feet and put her up there, so none of them were too crazy. She’s never fallen. 

You guys were on the road together for a year. It’s hard to imagine because she's so adorable, but does Maddie have any typical-dog habits that kind of got on your nerves?
[Laughs] Yeah, Maddie’s really food-driven. We always ate together. These days, whenever there’s food, she’s always in my face. When we were on the road, it was just the two of us, and she was good company, so I dealt with it and maybe even slightly encouraged it. But now, we go to people’s houses to eat, and we have to put Maddie in a separate room because she’s just conditioned to think that when there’s food around she gets fed, too. But that’s all right. 

That’s not too bad. What would you say might have gotten on her nerves about you during your year on the road?
Oh man [laughs], probably that we had some long days of driving. I’m sure if she had her pick she wouldn’t have chosen to be in the car for eight hours. She would have rather been in the woods. But she would hunker down, and we’d get some miles in on the road, and she would fall asleep—and play afterward. 

What was your favorite day of the trip? 
We had a really awesome day in Moab, Utah. We went hiking in Arches National Park. I got up to the top, and there were a couple hundred people around the rim taking photographs of this giant arch, beautiful and epic. . . . When I lifted Maddie up to take a photo with my cell phone, everyone around the rim started cheering—I was holding this dog above my head in front of the arches, and the lighting was pretty awesome. It was kind of cool to have this whole group of people I didn’t know, just like “yeah, there’s a dog!” It was a moment. 

Did you ever have any bad days? Ever think about calling it quits?
Oh, yeah, definitely. . . . Maddie would run off into the woods and come back covered in cow shit. I’d be like, “Maddie, why did you do that? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t have any way to wash you!” There were perils like that, of traveling with a dog, but more often than not, it’s an awesome experience. 

You’re back on the road to promote the book now. Where all are you going?
The book tour has 45 official stops. Concurrently, we’re shooting the documentary—taking portraits of people and their animals, recording oral histories, and trying to change perception of rescuing adopted animals, showing people that they can be a joy in your life.

Tell us about your next book.
I don’t know exactly, but I know it’s going to be something with Maddie and sandwiches.

Whatever the next book turns out to be, one thing's for sure: We want more Maddie.

All photos from Maddie on Things. Used with permission from Chronicle Books.

Have you met Maddie yet? She’s a ridiculously photogenic brown coonhound rescue with white speckles, huge, flappy ears and eyes that tend to squint, seemingly indicating a certain level of bliss (and/or sleepiness).

A couple of years ago, Maddie’s owner, Theron Humphrey—feeling unfulfilled by his corporate…

NonfictionLifestyles

Laura Weir

Interview by Anna Christensen

Laura Weir distills all her wisdom about how to be comfortable, contented and snug.

“I’m an 84-year-old granny!” Laura Weir says with a laugh, but if that were true, she’d be the most posh granny you’d ever met. Weir is the editor-in-chief of the London Evening Standard’s weekly magazine, a former senior staffer at British Vogue and the author of Cosy: The British Art of Comfort, a book for anyone who worships at the altar of wool blankets, rain on roofs and noses in books. (And that’s cosy with an s, mind you, as the queen intended.)

Despite her impressive resume, Weir feels like your most engaging and comfortable friend, the one you curl up with on the couch, glass of wine in hand and a movie on the television to half-watch as you laugh and chat into the night. As we settle into our Facetime conversation over the Atlantic, she’s loose-limbed and relaxed, throwing her elbows onto the table in front of her and resting her head on one hand.

“I always thought I was quite lazy, really, and I just liked staying in,” Weir tells me. “But to actually repackage it and reframe it as a cosy sensibility allowed me to draw upon a lot of knowledge that I didn’t know I had.” 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Gift books for homebodies

This propensity toward so-called laziness seems at odds with the outward life of a busy writer and editor. How did someone with days that move as quickly as Weir’s come to write such a charming book about lying around and taking country walks?

“It’s exactly that,” Weir says, leaning in and nodding enthusiastically. “I have such a busy life. But I feel like I’ve always been the queen of cosy. When I’m not working, I’m at home on the sofa or in bed with my cat, just to switch off.” Realizing this might feel familiar to others with hectic lives, Weir wrote a column about this lesser-seen part of her life for the Evening Standard. A book publisher read the column and agreed with Weir, and the rest is warm and candlelit history.

This isn’t the first time the concept of comfort and well-being has moved to the forefront of the world’s consciousness. It would have been difficult to miss the rise of hygge, the Danish equivalent of cosiness that sparked an onslaught of books, candles and Pinterest boards only a few years ago.

“Hygge is actually very authentic, and it takes a lot of effort,” Weir says, pondering the differences between the Danish and British ideas of comfort. “Nowadays, hygge has been cultured as very stylish, where I think that the British cosy has an eccentricity to it which is like a patchwork quilt.” She pauses. “And obviously there’s tea.”

“British cosy has an eccentricity to it which is like a patchwork quilt. And obviously there’s tea.”

As any cosy acolyte will attest, tea is a serious thing. “It’s about this idea of having a moment,” Weir says. “We’re all seeking those moments to have a bit of time to ourselves. When you’re making a cup of tea, that’s literally the only time that so many people have to stop, and think, and take a breath.”

Despite her packed hours, Weir is clearly in no mood to make anything in her personal life move any faster. Mentioning that she is in the process of remodeling her kitchen, she shudders at the notion of adding a convenient hot-water tap. “What’s so wrong with filling a kettle?” she says.

One of the largest trends over the last few (politically fraught) years has been, in essence, to retreat back to our dens and wrap ourselves securely in blankets, burrowing away from the outside world—cosiness as anesthetic. “The more turbulent the climate, the more we seek solace in the things that we can control,” Weir says. “Whether you look at the political climate in the U.S. or back in England with Brexit on the horizon, certainly the sentiment moves away from risk-taking and towards wanting reassurance.”

But cosiness isn’t found only in solitude. There’s often a relational quality to it, a desire to share that safe space with the important people in our lives. Weir shares her space with her young daughter, trying to re-create for her the sort of simplified childhood Weir had. “My parents were never preoccupied with what other people thought. They never kept up with the Joneses. My memories are very much just being with my mum and my dad and my sister, camping and going sledging, and there always being a fire on. Probably because we didn’t have central heating!”

Cosiness may seem like a light and frivolous concept, but it offers reprieve from worries about an uncertain future. As Weir so gently reminds us, cosy is being in the moment, enjoying everything that remains precious and beautiful about life and sharing it with people we love.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Cosy.

Author photo © Gabrielle Cooper

Laura Weir distills all her wisdom about how to be comfortable, contented and snug.

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