On Purpose: Ten Lessons on the Meaning of Life

Ten brief essay on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives From each of the ten essays emerges a simple, punchy maxim ('Be the hero of your own life'; 'Question authority'; 'Change your mind'). Yet from these simple starting points wonderful, wise, and accessible essays unfold, taking the reader from Austen to Auden, Baudelaire to Brecht, to answer the question: what does literature teach us about what it means to be human? Ben extrapolates the universal truths that echo time and time again in literature, and offers a toolkit to his reader to reflect on and learn from the books they read and return to.