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

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

Barbara Holland. Little Brown and Company, $25 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-316-37057-8

``Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots,'' declares Holland (Secrets of the Cat), introducing this collection of entertaining, genteel meditations. As the subtitle hints, the author, living in the Virginia countryside, is no sybaritic renegade but a woman who can find happiness in antinomies like ``Working'' and ``Not Working,'' ``Buying Things'' and ``Saving Money,'' and ``Going Out'' and ``Staying In.'' She writes with conversational ease, and some observations linger: To the miserly, ``a penny spent is a penny mourned''; mail is ``one of life's small recurring pleasures''; sports, ``unlike life, are played according to rules.'' Holland even reveals that she drives without using her seat belt. Illustrations. (Mar.)