Recreation is the employment of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active and participatory, but in a refreshing and diverting manner. As people in the world's wealthier regions lead increasingly sedentary life styles, the need for recreation has grown. The rise of so called active vacations exemplify this.

Recreation, play, and fun are not the preserve of humans; nearly all creatures indulge in this to some extent. Play is essential for the development of skills, the most basic of which are motor skills in young creatures.

The choice of hours for recreation is for employees restricted by the requirements of, and agreements with, the employer (working time), and for students restricted by school hours. For people with their own business it is also restricted by the requirements of the work, such as the opening hours of the business based on wishes of customers, laws, and customs.

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Killer Children
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:05:58 -0000
In Natsuo Kirino’s novel, a juvenile killer on the run in Tokyo murders without conscience — and only in retrospect attempts to invent a philosophy to explain his crime.
Essay: Advice Squad
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:44:44 -0000
A guided tour of the books on the self-help best-seller list.
Rock the Casbah
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:34:51 -0000
Mark LeVine discovered that the Islamic world has a surprisingly active heavy metal subculture.
A Conspiracy So Immense
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:26:42 -0000
Stephen L. Carter’s new thriller involves a clandestine fraternity that works to subvert democracy.
I Married a Maori
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:27:39 -0000
Christina Thompson’s tale of New Zealand combines memoir with cultural history.
This One’s for Daddy
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:33:04 -0000
Facing the memories of a father’s short life of hard drinking, cruelty and the circumstances that helped push him to those extremes.

The Book Bench

Turf War
Elizabeth Kolbert Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:00:00 -0000
In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an American audience. At the time, Downing was twenty-five years old and living in Newburgh, New York. He owned a nursery, which he had inherited from his father, and for several years had been publishing loftily . . .
The Sister
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:00:00 -0000
This suspenseful first novel is set in a crumbling Dorset mansion and features two aging sisters, reunited after a separation of nearly fifty years. Virginia is the sensible older sister who stayed, carrying on the family tradition of lepidopterology, while the reckless and free-spirited Vivien left to lead a . . .
Readings and Talks
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:00:00 -0000
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART From the fifties until his death, in 1966, Frank O’Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art and wrote poetry during his lunch break. On July 16 at noon, the poets Lee Ann Brown, Dan Chiasson, Hettie Jones, Vincent Katz, and Philip Schultz visit the museum . . .

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