How to Be Alone: The School of Life

Girlfriend of Bill Clinton at Oxford, she now lives alone, making a book out of this alone life, out of changing world in the earth village - how so? Can you? How? Regardless, you may agree: "I liked it a lot and smiled quite a bit reading the book."

"Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us practice it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves. By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead more enriched, fuller lives."

Then, you may like to read her book:

The Writer's Way: Realise Your Creative Potential and Become a Successful AuthorKindle Edition

by Sara Maitland(Author)

 

The Writer’s Way is a comprehensive and rewarding introduction to the art of creative writing. Its no-nonsense yet accessible tone and practical contents make it the perfect guide, whether you are a raw beginner of you have started writing and are looking for friendly guidance to help develop your talent.

Distinguished author Sara Maitland has an extensive background in teaching creative writing and is the perfect companion for this journey of self discovery. She knows the potential pitfalls confronting every writer – the lack of confidence or “block” that can strike at any time, leaving you literally lost for words – and draws on her vast experience to help you tackle them. She also shares with you the unrivalled joy writing can bring – the sheer pleasure she takes in her art lending her text a happy authority.

With 40 literary exercises sprinkled liberally throughout, you will never feel alone. Whether you read it in one sitting, or take your time working through the exercises as you go, this is a terrific book to get you going and keep you going, on the writer’s way.

 

A must for beginning and experienced writers By ljm on March 26, 2013

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

Even though I am an experienced writer, I'm always on the lookout for tips and guidance to hone my craft. The Writer's Way certainly delivered. Lots of practical advice, starting with the mind set of the would-be writer. I highly recommend this book for any writers' library.

 

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How to Be Alone (The School of Life)Paperback– Deckle Edge, September 2, 2014

by Sara Maitland(Author)

IN THIS AGE OF CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY, LEARN HOW TO ENJOY SOLITUDE AND FIND HAPPINESS WITHOUT OTHERS.

Our fast-paced society does not approve of solitude; being alone is antisocial and some even find it sinister. Why is this so when autonomy, personal freedom, and individualism are more highly prized than ever before? In How to Be Alone, Sara Maitland answers this question by exploring changing attitudes throughout history. Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us practice it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves. By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead more enriched, fuller lives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In an age of moral and practical confusions, the self-help book is crying out to be redesigned and rehabilitated. The School of Life announces a rebirth with a series that examines the great issues of life, including money, sanity, work, technology, and the desire to alter the world for the better. (Alain de Botton, The School of Life Series Editor)

Self-Help Books for the Rest of Us. (The New York Times)

About the Author

 

Sara Maitland is the British author of numerous works of fiction, including the Somerset Maugham Award-winning Daughter of Jerusalem, and several nonfiction books, including A Book of Silence. Born in 1950, she studied at Oxford University and lives in Galloway, Scotland.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

Are you comfortable with your own company?

By clahain on October 5, 2014

Format: Kindle Edition

In How to Be Alone, Sara Maitland offers an interesting historical/cultural view of solitude and considers its place in modern life. She presents the meaning and value of being alone as a sort of pendulum that has swung back and forth in popularity through time. I'm not sure I agree with a conclusion based on such limited evidence. Just because ancient Romans valued public life to excess doesn't mean the same was true of other cultures in existence at the time. What about China and the Near East?

I'm also not sure Maitland makes her case that a strong preference for solitude is seen as a huge eccentricity in modern western culture. Rather, we seem to be living in an era when widely differing modes of living are acceptable. A lot, of course, may depend on profession and age. In the corporate world, being reclusive might indeed get someone pigeonholed as sensitive or introverted or a "deep thinker." School-age kids and young adults who like to be alone probably run a greater risk of peer and parental backlash than older people do. Also, Maitland doesn't really address how modern technology has blurred the lines of what constitutes "being alone." People can now carry on active social lives without ever leaving their homes. Yet, physically, they are still alone.

Maitland does admit that her previous memoir/cultural history A BOOK OF SILENCE suffered a bit from the confusion of the terms "alone" and "silence." The same confusion is present in HOW TO BE ALONE, but I don't think it's a flaw. Rather, the two concepts naturally share the same space. Kind of like conjoined twins, you can't easily tease them apart or examine one without considering the other.Read more ›

 

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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

 

Pretty good. She sounds a bit bitter about her ...

By solostyle on October 6, 2014

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

Pretty good. She sounds a bit bitter about her ex-husband, but maybe that's expected of failed relationships. She spends a sizable chunk of the book defending solitude, which kind of thing doesn't really persuade me. I'm already in love with solitude. I felt a slightly combative tone, too, which is probably needed given the audience she writes for, but I think it's an unfortunate necessity. All these are minor criticisms from a sensitive reader, but overall it's a good book. It's a great companion to a person who needs a little nudge in the right direction.

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

 

Get a dog too!

By tombarnes on February 11, 2015

 

Format: Paperback

My Mater always made me feel like a freak because I liked to be alone. One of the reviewers here, said this book should more aptly be titled ‘Its OK to be alone’ and I would agree but then that does make the title kind of Doctor Phil-ish. At any rate this book confirmed dozens of my feelings about being alone. Read this book if you lean toward the introvert-ish type of Myers-Briggs personality.
I worked at a large Library for most of my life and periodically they would have a new higher-level bureaucrat who would make us take the Myers Briggs to justify that new feather in their cap. With the exception of the feather wearer most of us came out as I’s (Introvert)not E’s(Extrovert), horrors! But we just went on turning those pages or nowadays…clicking that mouse. There are a lot of crypto-I's underpinning our huge modern bureaucracies.
The author has a good grasp on our Zeitgeist and its over worded chitty chatty I-just-drank-a-double espresso at Starbucks approved persona that is emblematic of our time. That person would say, “I just loved loved, loved, the book…absolutely, absolutely.”
But if you are a person who might have had the thought that you think more deeply and more rationally when you are alone, this book will confirm in writing, your thoughts. I would say, "I liked it a lot and smiled quite a bit reading the book."
My one bone to pick, is I do have a dog. I spend a lot of time with her. She notices stuff I do not when we are gamboling in the woods. She is a lot of work but all in all she keeps my mind off of the overly rational parts of my Self, and I like that. I would say that is the one problem with too much alone time, you do have a tendency to go a little too deep for the rest of the Dunbar tribe. A dog keeps your feet on the ground and your thoughts more comprehensibly shallow. So I recommend the book highly but I also recommend an accompanying female Labrador Retriever you do not overfeed.

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

Mostly a book other than what the title suggests

By JCher on January 15, 2015

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

I have enjoyed other books in this series and was looking forward to reading this one. The title is misleading, though. A better title would be, "Why Being Alone is Okay." I agree that a desire for solitude is okay -- but then again, I already thought that before I began this book (otherwise I would not bother picking it up at all, right?). The vast majority of the book is devoted to examining and refuting the idea that to be alone is selfish and/or pathological, including an examination of the origins of that idea. This seems to be a topic the author has been ruminating about quite bitterly, having been criticized by others for her lifestyle, and she wants to write about that -- but anyone likely to pick up this book probably does not share that view anyway and is looking for the advice the title suggests will be the subject. Not until 70% of the book has already passed (according to my kindle) does she turn from these preliminary matters to "the Joys of Solitude." The author tells us early on that her previous book was widely criticized for purporting to be about one thing (silence), but then turning out to be largely about another (solitude). I'm not surprised, and I'm afraid she has done it again.

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Product Details Series: The School of Life Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Picador (September 2, 2014) Language: English ISBN-10: 125005902X ISBN-13: 978-1250059024 Product Dimensions: 4.6 x 0.6 x 7.1 inches Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews) Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) Sara Maitland From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   Jump to: navigation, search Sara Maitland Born Sarah Maitland (1950-02-27) 27 February 1950 (age 65) London, United Kingdom Occupation writer of short stories, novelist, amateur theologian Nationality British Period 1978–present Genre nonfiction, fiction, theology, gardening Subject Christianity, saints, lives of women, mythology, fairy tales Notable works Daughter of Jerusalem, "True North"/"Far North" (short story), A Big Enough God, A Book of Silence Notable awards Somerset Maugham Award (1979) – Daughter of Jerusalem Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize (nomination, 2009) – A Book of Silence BBC National Short Story Award (runner up, 2009) – "Moss Witch" Website www.saramaitland.com Sara Maitland (born 27 February 1950, London) is a British writer and feminist. An accomplished novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency.   Contents [hide] 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 2.1 Novels 2.2 Short story collections 2.3 Non-fiction 2.4 As editor 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links   Biography[edit] Originally spelt Sarah Maitland, she was the second of six children to an upper-class London family,[1] which she has described as "very open and noisy".[2] In her childhood she went to school in a small Wiltshire town[3] and attended a girls' boarding school from age twelve until her admission to university. Maitland thought this school a terrible place and became very excitable.[4] Growing up, Maitland developed a wild reputation: in 1966 she scandalised one of her brothers by winning a foot race in a very short cotton dress.[5] On entering Oxford University in 1968 to study English, she was friends with future US President, Bill Clinton [6] "and a regular visitor at 46 Leckford Road, a house Clinton shared with Frank Aller, Jana (Jan) Brenning and Strobe Talbot".[7][8] and suffered from problems of mental disarray and inability to carry out routine tasks.[9] During her college years, Maitland was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions for this reason,[10] but she completed her course and soon turned to writing. Maitland became regarded as one of those at the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement and is often described as a feminist writer. Religion is another theme in much of her work: from 1972 to 1993 she was married to an Anglican priest. In 1993 she became a Roman Catholic.[11] In 1995 she worked with Stanley Kubrick on the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. She has two grown-up children.[12] Polly Lee is an aspiring actress and Adam Lee is beginning a career as a photographer. Since Adam left college, Maitland has moved towards a solitary and prayerful life[13] in a variety of locations, first of all on the Isle of Skye and ultimately in her present house in Galloway. She says today that she wants to avoid most of the comforts of life, especially those that intrude into her quest for silence such as mobile phones, radio, television and even her son.[14] She has described these changes in her life and the experiences leading to them in the autobiographical "A Book of Silence". Maitland lectures part-time for Lancaster University's MA in Creative Writing and is a Fellow of St Chad's College, Durham University. Maitland's 2003 collection of short stories, On Becoming a Fairy Godmother, is a fictional celebration of the menopausal woman, whilst the title story of 2008's Far North was originally published as "True North" in her first collection Telling Tales and was made into a film of the same title in 2007. The rest of Far North collects dark mythological tales from around the world. Bibliography[edit] Novels[edit] Daughter of Jerusalem 1978 (winner of Somerset Maugham Award 1979) also published as The Languages of Love Virgin Territory 1984 Arky Types 1987 (with Michelene Wandor) Three Times Table 1991 Home Truths 1993 published as Ancestral Truths in the United States Hagiographies 1998 Brittle Joys 1999 Short story collections[edit] Telling Tales 1983 A Book of Spells 1987 Women Fly When Men Aren't Watching 1992 Angel and Me (for Holy Week) 1996 On Becoming A Fairy Godmother Maia, 2003 Far North & Other Dark Tales, 2008 Non-fiction[edit] A Map of the New Country: Women and Christianity, 1983 Vesta Tilley Virago, 1986 A Big-Enough God: Artful Theology Mowbray, 1994 Virtuous Magic: Women Saints and Their Meanings (with Wendy Mulford), 1998 Novel Thoughts: Religious Fiction in Contemporary Culture Erasmus Institute, 1999 Awesome God: Creation, Commitment and Joy SPCK, 2002 The Write Guide (with Martin Goodman), New Writing North, 2007 Stations of the Cross (with Chris Gollon), 2009 A Book of Silence Granta, 2008 (hardcover); 2009 (paperback) Gossip from the Forest: the Tangled Roots of our Forests and Fairytales (ISBN 9781847084293) Granta, 2012 How to Be Alone, in The School of Life series (ISBN 9780230768086) Picador, 2014 As editor[edit] Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s, 1988 The Rushdie File 1990 (with Lisa Appignanesi) Notes[edit] Lorna Sage (1999) The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Cambridge University Press. References[edit] Jump up ^ A Book of Silence, By Sara Maitland Reviewed by Michele Roberts Jump up ^ Maitland, Sara; The Swans Jump up ^ Maitland, Sara (editor); Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s; p. 5. ISBN 0-86068-958-1 Jump up ^ Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 4 Jump up ^ Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 5 Jump up ^ Brenning, Jana Jump up ^ Hoffman, Matthew; "The Bill Clinton We Knew at Oxford: Apart from smoking dope (and not inhaling), what else did he learn over here? College friends share their memories with Matthew Hoffman"; in The Independent, 11 October 1992 Jump up ^ "Clinton's London Affair Just SAX"; in Los Angeles Times; 4 July 1993; p. 24 Jump up ^ “Is there a link between madness and creativity?“; in The Independent on Sunday, 18 March 2007 Jump up ^ "Is there a link between madness and creativity?“ Jump up ^ Brown, Andrew; "Church Group Reported for Sex Bias"; in The Independent, 9 April 1993. Jump up ^ About Sara Jump up ^ Sara Maitland: A Very Unlikely Modern Hermit Jump up ^ All Quiet on the Western Front External links[edit] Official website As of October 2013[update] appears to have been last updated in 2012. Sara Maitland at British Council: Literature Orlando Project Authority control VIAF: 12342704 ISNI: 0000 0001 1596 4097 SUDOC: 029796350 BNF: cb121345388 (data) Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sara_Maitland&oldid=679203658" Categories: 1950 births British feminist writers Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism Living people Roman Catholic writers British women short story writers British women novelists Writers from London 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English writers 21st-century English writers 20th-century women writers 21st-century women writers