I recently read what I thought was a great book, it's got a pretty full on title - How to Be an Existentialist or How to Get Real, Get a Grip and Stop Making Excuses by Gary Cox. Existential philosophy appeals to me in a big way, once I got my head around it and I regularly need to go back and get my head around it again!

Gary says this on the front of the book - Many people have the silly idea, gleaned from movies, adverts and glossy magazines, that life is perfectable. The idea that other people out there somewhere have achieved the perfect life. So, they feel dissatisfied with the life they have or even downright cheated out of a life they think they deserve but don't have, the life no one has. They yearn for a life of perfect happiness that is impossible, while failing to take control of the life they do have and make it more rewarding through decisive, realistic action. Existentialists are nihilists because they recognise that life is ultimately absurd and full of terrible, inescapable truths. They are anti-nihilists because they recognise that life in fact does have a meaning: the meaning each person chooses to give his or her own existence. They recognise that each person is free to create themselves and make something worthwhile of themselves by striving against life's difficulties.

Sounds a bit hard core, doesn't it. But it's a great book and I think this approach is spot on. Click here for a brief interview with Gary at The Philosophers Magazine.