On my night table: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

"However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable features of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative. Our choice of occupation is held to define our identity to the extent that the most insistent question we ask of new acquaintances is not where they come from or who their parents were but what they do, the assumption being that the route to a meaningful existence must invariably pass through the gate of remunerative employment."
So Alain de Botton begins the fourth chapter of his latest book. Reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that he is a much better writer than I.
(But hey, I did just write "than I," not the grammatically incorrect "than me." That counts for something. Right?)