What could be more relaxing and interesting than a conversation with a learned friend about what pleasures us? Bloom doeosn't shrink from describing the more depraved pleasures humans claim to like, nor does he ignore the mundane and ordinary things that make our lives interesting and fulfilling. And at the end, he mentiones the BIG questions of transcendence and truth, possibility and destiny. But what struck me now, perhaps at this time in my tiny life, so constrained by circumstance and my own limited nature, is that man appears to crave nature, and contact with the natural world brings a deep and abiding, one might say life-giving, pleasure. At a time when man is struggling to understand and control or contain the forces of nature, nature itself appears to be the key to our survival as a species, and to ignore, desecrate, or belittle it will, if nothing else, make us miserable. I put this on my "religion" shelf, only because, at the end, Bloom mentions Dawkins, and introduces the concept of science inducing in us an awed wonder that "makes life worth living."