Rating: 
Summary: Soft. Seductive. Introspective. Great fun.
Review: A marvelous compilation of the best pleasures of life. At times it made me feel guilty for enjoying myself so much. Holland's premise that we are loosing sight of simple, wholly self indulgent pleasure, hits the nail on the head. I found things I do and others I am certain to try. She missed my favorite of all, " the sun nap". My family thinks I'm part lizard and part cat. I can't seem to get past a good sunbeam without stopping for a quick solar charge
Rating: 
Summary: Admit it! WE ALL HAVE SUCH VICES!
Review: Anyone that enjoys walking bare-footed, happy hour, spending money, undressing, the joys of travel, the occasional use of a "bad" word, Christmas, dogs and cats, and books, among other things, gets a "thumbs up" from me.You'd be hard-pressed not to like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Simple Pleasures; Your Day is Cram-Packed with Them!
Review: As I read this book, I imagined all the self-righteous spoilsports in the world clucking and shaking their heads. "Drinking? Smoking? Eating? How sad that anyone would like such things!" Meanwhile, they count their carbs and powerwalk their way to self-delusion. This is a great book to make you realize that life is for living and we weren't put on this earth just to worry. Real pleasures are simple and cheap and too easily overlooked. Fancy clothes, comfortable clothes, getting up early, staying up late, even going to an office, there is a lot of enjoyment in each and every day, if you just take the time to notice. Enjoy yourself! This book gives you all the permission you need.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended for thrifty recycling
Review: I have here a mountain of fan mail (not to mention embarrassingly lovely reviews by everyone from Russell Baker in the New York Times to the National Review to the Atlantic Monthly)recommending ENDANGERED PLEASURES as possibly the first all-purpose gift for persons over the age of reason - whatever that may be. Few will confess to having bought a single copy, read it carefully with clean hands, and passed it on, but they all say they rushed right out and bought more copies to give to those who get up too early in the morning, work too hard, eat nothing but broccoli and whole-grain pasta, and run 6 miles in the cold dark before dawn, plus additional copies for those who already eat chicken gravy, lie in hammocks, respect the sloth of Sundays, take the longest vacations they can wangle, and perhaps even replace the plastic bottle of spring water with an ice-cold martini. I am happy to have confirmed the bad habits of so many incorrect people, and perhaps rebuked the good habits of the hard-working and healthful. Why live to be 100 if it's going to feel like 200?
I encourage you to buy a whole flock of copies, but for the impoverished, wash your hands first, then give it to your beastly Aunt Hattie with the cold showers and wool undies, or the brother who brags about working 90 hours a week and no longer recognizes the wife & kiddies.
NN
Rating: 
Summary: Delightful tidbits that remind us life is lovely
Review: I keep lending out my copy of this lovely book, which is full of one to two page long reflections on the simple pleasures of life. Each one is delicious and a funny reminder to appreciate the simple things.
Rating:
Summary: For those of you who are Pleasure Seekers...
Review: I was intrigued by the title of this book so I had to get it. I needed to learn about endangered pleasures that I may not be participating in. I was reminded of the pleasures of taking naps & sleeping 'totally' undressed (without constraints) & traveling & barefeet & natural things like birds singing. It was a nice book with some worthwhile lines & PLEASURES 'to live by'. I'm just happy to know that I've been living by the book so far. Life can be a pleasure. If it's not for you...get this book.
Rating:
Summary: For those of you who are Pleasure Seekers...
Review: I was intrigued by the title of this book so I had to get it. I needed to learn about endangered pleasures that I may not be participating in. I was reminded of the pleasures of taking naps & sleeping 'totally' undressed (without constraints) & traveling & barefeet & natural things like birds singing. It was a nice book with some worthwhile lines & PLEASURES 'to live by'. I'm just happy to know that I've been living by the book so far. Life can be a pleasure. If it's not for you...get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Temptation Well-Remembered and Written in "Pleasures."
Review: In "Driving Beltless," one of 67 essays forming "Endangered Pleasures," author/temptress Barbara Holland writes that driving without seat belts, once considered "a basic civil right," now "takes its place with Eve's apple among the heady stolen pleasures." Hidden among the summer shade trees of her Bluemont, VA home, Holland writes as a modern day Eve chronicling hidden, missing pleasures in a nostalgic, suburban Eden. Her curmudgonous "Wasn't The Grass Greener" finds her post-expulsion, wistfully remembering telegrams, clotheslines, radiators and tangible, fading societal remnants. Here she praises seasonal, small, slightly sinful luxuries readily available if occassionally politically incorrect. Sensuality rules "Endangered Pleasures" in taste (coffee, martinis, even cigarettes), touch (bare feet, naked bodies in shower, bath and bed, wearing fur in an apologetic essay) sound (songs of youth, whistling, profanity), and above all, sight ( July 4, Christmas, books and morining paper, emotional blankets covering the four seasons, travel modes and motivations). Holland also indulges in slight sins of lust (morning sex), gluttony (justifications of the day's three meals), schadenfreude (her section on disasters and crowd behavior after the Phillies' 1980 World Series win) and supposed sloth (her defense of working and not working, and of gardening as a form of work, are alone worth the book price). Holland also understands small, measurable triumphs of early childhood ("the first 10 or 12 years are just one triumph after another") early adulthood ("We studied for the career of being adults...we thought we had to have opinions on everything.")and parenthood ("Having a child around is more fun than being one, since we're free to leave the small world for the large one whenever we get bored.") Some Holland-praised pleasures became unpopular for understandable, if not completely agreeable, reasons. But she correctly states many benign indulgences fell to what author Robert Ringer called "absolute morality," a governmental/societal/Puritanical mindset distrusting and discouraging pleasure as immoral and unfair while praising pain and self-denial as noble and necessary. Authors like Barbara Holland and books like "Endangered Pleasures" remind us life is too short to take too seriously or studiously, or to deny self without greater purpose. Like chocolate fudge cake, "Endangered Pleasures" should be enjoyed rarely in small slices, but enjoyed to its fullest nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Highly indulgent and addictive
Review: In a time in which responsible adults are encouraged to strictly adhere to high fiber-low fat diets, long work hours and serious workouts, Holland's essays seem delightfully sinful as she extolls the virtues of such pleasures as leisure time, red meat and martinis. The best way to read this book? On a Saturday morning, sipping coffee, when you should be working.
Rating:
Summary: Highly indulgent and addictive
Review: In a time in which responsible adults are encouraged to strictly adhere to high fiber-low fat diets, long work hours and serious workouts, Holland's essays seem delightfully sinful as she extolls the virtues of such pleasures as leisure time, red meat and martinis. The best way to read this book? On a Saturday morning, sipping coffee, when you should be working.
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