Dan Kieran

As we jet off on holiday, passing from airport lounge to hotel in our desperation to escape our everyday lives and find some better weather, we'd do well to ask ourselves what on earth we're doing. Do we really travel any more, or do we just arrive? This book calls on us all to reassess why we travel and what travel has become.

The Art of Slow Travel

The Idle Traveller

Tom Hodgkinson

The Book of Idle Pleasures is a restorative gift book for the stressed out, tired and hassled. An antidote to our non-stop culture, it is a welcome compendium of timeless delights. The book lists and reflects on 75 simple pastimes and proves that the best things in life really are free: lighting fires, skimming stones, catching falling leaves, whittling, staring out of the window, dreaming, doodling or taking a nap. The Book of Idle Pleasures is a celebration of pleasure for its own sake in a world of consumer overload.

The Book of Idle Pleasures

Setting out on the entrepreneur’s path can be intimidating. It will not only test your creativity and commitment but push you further than you thought possible. It’s also one of the most rewarding journeys you will ever make. 

Dan Kieran, co-founder and former CEO of an award-winning publishing platform and self-confessed ‘accidental entrepreneur’, takes you through all aspects of running a business: from initial idea to getting started, building a brand, growing a team, raising money and dealing with investors, and perhaps most importantly, developing a founder’s mindset and managing your own mental health. 

When you are unsure of who — and what — to rely on, Do Start will be your trusted guide. Until, finally, you discover that the real win is not the company you build or money you make, but the person you become. 

How to create and run a business (that doesn't run you)

Do Start

Surfboard

A Riotous Romp in Search of British Democracy

I Fought the Law

Aylak Zevkler Kitabi

Ian Vince

With a top speed of 15 miles per hour and fuel efficiency of a penny a mile, a decommissioned milk float is the ideal vehicle for an epic journey between England's most easterly and westerly points. After planning the entire trip on the back of a beer mat, buying a 1958 decommissioned milk float on eBay, and charging its tired batteries, the team set off from Lowestoft to Lands End. On the way, they discovered that their float needs to charge for eight hours for every two hours it spends on the road. Relying on the milk of human kindness, they were at the mercy of strangers every night, sometimes even using other people's cookers just to keep the show on the road. En route, they were treated to tea and rock cakes by the Vice President of the Women's Institutes, succeeded in blacking out a Cornish campsite while charging their float (now dubbed The Mighty One), stayed with the monks at Buckfast Abbey where they undertook a vow of silence ,and, drove 500 miles to Tintagel, the birth place of King Arthur, only to find it had closed—all in the name of discovering lost England. You may be thinking: why on earth don't these men drive a car like normal people? But this is no ordinary journey. This is an eccentric odyssey through the English countryside. Three Men in a Float is about all things English and the pleasure to be had if you are prepared to slow down, get out of your car, and go off the beaten track.

Across England at 15 Mph

Three Men in a Float

Quick -- what's the worst, most mind-numbing, humiliating, horrendous, horrific job you can think of? They're all here. The worst jobs in the world. Firsthand accounts of one hundred horrible jobs guaranteed to make you groan, laugh, and maybe, just maybe help you feel a teensy bit better about your own place in the rat race. Painstakingly assembled by the geniuses behind the British humor magazine The Idler, this collection includes the gloriously gory details of such occupations as: hospital launderette, gas station worker, weed sprayer, bank teller, janitor's assistant, and telemarketer. It's a hilarious romp through the stinky cesspool of employment hell, with helpful commentary from those who speak of crap jobs from hard-won personal experience. So curl up with this guide and be grateful for the job you have...or grab the want ads now!

100 Tales of Workplace Hell

Crap Jobs

The Surfboard is Dan's Kieran account of a week he spent in Cornwall building a seven-foot surfboard, even though he had never surfed in his life. Interspersed with the story of making the board - the intricate craft he had to learn, and the clarity of mind that came with that challenge - are reflections on the last six years; the obstacles, rewards and realisations he encountered while starting and then running a successful company. He went to Cornwall at a time when he felt he had reached the limit of his development at a person and as a leader- he had to find a way to push beyond his preconception of what he could do. This startlingly honest and original book is an indispensable guide to exceeding your own limitations and making great things for their own sake, out of love.

The Surfboard

Dem Alltag zu entkommen; das erhoffen sich viele vom Reisen. Sie steigen in ein Flugzeug, um so schnell wie möglich irgendwo anzukommen. Dort legen sie sich neben andere Touristen an den Strand oder haken ihre Listen von Sehenswürdigkeiten ab und wundern sich am Ende, wenn sie seltsam unbefriedigt nach Hause zurückkehren. Dan Kieran entwickelt eine Philosophie des Reisens, die sich jenseits von Massentourismus und Top-Ten-Attraktionen abspielt. Er hat unterschiedlichste Fortbewegungsmethoden erprobt: zu Fuß gehen, mit Bummelzügen fahren, auf einem Floß treiben. Er hat sich dem Zufall, dem Chaos, der Natur ausgeliefert und dabei die Erkenntnis gewonnen, dass die richtige, die langsame, Art des Reisens den ganzen Blick auf die Welt ändert. Vor allem geht es um die innere Haltung. Der Slow Traveller wirft als erstes alle üblichen Rituale über Bord und befolgt die Maximen: mach keine Fotos, kauf keinen Reiseführer, lass alle Sehenswürdigkeiten weg, vermeide gute Hotels, heiße Katastrophen willkommen. Das Abenteuer kommt dann ganz von allein. Ein erhellendes, Buch, das jeder lesen sollte, bevor er die nächste Pauschalreise bucht.

Slow Travel

Die Kunst des Reisens

"This new issue of the Idler has a unique and outrageous cover designed by Damien Hirst. The theme is sex and inside we have- a conversation with Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity; Michael Bywater on brothels; the sex dream diaries of a liberated female; Neil Boorman on why everybody's talking about it but no one's doing it; and Nicholas Lezard, Jay Grffiths and page three girls in the country. PLUS we meet Ian Brown, nicest man in pop and Kevin Godley of Godley and Creme. PLUS Chris Yates, Dan Kieran and an expanded "How To" section"

Carnal Knowledge

The Idler Book of Crap Jobs

Idler Publications Staff

Following the huge success of Crap Towns, loafer's bible the Idler presents the even funnier Crap Jobs. Drawing on the resources of the Idler's hugely witty audience, Crap Jobs is a side-splitting trawl through the worst job experiences ever. From the North Sea Ferry cabin cleaner to the artificial chicken inseminator, read tales of degrading exploitation and humilitation, of bosses from hell and co-workers from purgatory. A unique combination of mordant humour and biting social satire, Crap Jobs tells of stress, misery and rebellion in the darkest most satanic warehouses, offices, call centres, hospitals, restaurants and factories in the UK.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Raoul Vaneigem

Jeremy Deller

Keith Allen

Chris Donald

"WHAT IS THE IDLER? HE IDLER is a magazine (well, OK, like Granta it's published in book form, so perhaps it's a 'periodical') that celebrates freedom, fun and the fine art of doing nothing. The Idler team believe that idleness is unjustly criticised in modern society when it is, in fact, a vital component of a happy life. Each issue we bring you a unique and varied collection of features, reviews, interviews, short stories, photography, cartoons, art -- and lots and lots of humour. We aim to comfort and inspire you with uplifting philosophy, satire and reflection, as well as giving practical information to help in the quest for the ultimate idle life."

Dan Kieran

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