The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

Genre: Stunt Memoir

Synopsis: 

Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

From the publisher

Review:

This book started out so well and was quite inspiring!  I really enjoyed reading about Rubin's pillars of happiness through about July.  I found some of her suggestions on how to make herself happier could also apply to me and although I have not implemented them so that they have become a habit, I have tried some things out and they are in the back of my mind.  I felt like the second half the year pillars were not as strong and not as interesting and that made the book drag.  I felt that at the beginning Rubin really talked about what she did and how it went versus later in the year she just talked in abstracts and didn't really talk about applying it to her life.  She started a blog at some point during the year and would write in her book comments that her blog readers posted and I found this to be very annoying and much too long!  Rubin got quite wordy at times with some of her pillars and didn't say enough about others.  Overall, I would say this book is OK-read the beginning and skim the end!

Rating:

3 1/2 stars