The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life
- Author: Ian Bogost
- Page count: 240
- Started on: 2026/08/01
- Finished on: 2026/08/05
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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I first discovered Ian Bogost through his writing about games, shortly after he became “internet famous” for creating Cow Clicker, a satirical Facebook game about… clicking cows. He now writes for The Atlantic and has just published the book The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life.
The book is about finding joyful moments in everyday life, mostly by reconnecting with the physical world. It starts with recognizable examples, like tracing the edges of a sofa cushion with your index finger, feeling the diagonal ridges on modern paper coffee cups, or shifting gears in a manual-transmission car. The second part of the book focuses on how we lost so many of these moments through digitization, automation, and what Bogost calls dematerialization. The final part shows examples of how to reclaim that sensory life.
The Small Stuff is a relatively thin book, but as I often find with books built around a single central idea, the entire idea could have fit in a single essay or a series of blog posts. In fact, Bogost is currently exploring many of the same ideas in an eight-week newsletter series for The Atlantic. But finding joy in everyday experiences is something dear to me, so I enjoyed reading the book despite that.
