The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the… (2009)

This book is a very good choice if you are trying to be more self aware and bring more happiness into your life. Even though the author's life is completely different then mine, her ideas and principles can easily be applied to my life. I would recommend this book in small bites, it helps to really think about what she's saying and to digest how the ideas can be incorporated into your own life. I would definitely recommend this book. I originally borrowed if from the library, but I plan on purchasing a copy of it because I can see myself coming back to this book again and again. ( )

Rubin wanted to spend a year applying happiness advice. She consulted philosophers and scientists, fiction and non-fiction, and worlds modern and ancient. From these readings, she came up with resolutions to try in 11 areas of her life (vitality/energy, marriage, work, parenthood, leisure, friendship, money, eternity, books, mindfulness, attitude). Each month, she focused on one set of resolutions, and the twelfth month was an attempt to apply them all.

I like the premise, and the execution has much going for it. Each chapter reads something like an overview of techniques for living a happier life. Much of it overlaps with current popular works on happiness, but if you aren't familiar with those works, Rubin's book contains great pointers. I enjoyed Rubin's honesty. Both in the book and on the companion blog, she revealed her successes and her failures. She was forthright with sharing the practices which did not work for her and let us know when going against common wisdom worked for her.

Perhaps because she was trying to describe too much in too little space, the book ended up primarily descriptive rather than reflective. She described what she was trying, why she tried it, and the results, but the moments of reflection on how things were going or why certain things worked and others did not were perfunctory.

The other thing that bugged me about the book was the way that Rubin would integrate comments from her blog. Since the blog was being written during the project, the comments do provide useful alternate perspectives. However, her way of integrating blog comments was simply to drop a bunch of comments into the related part of the text. There was no synthesis, no analysis.

Thus, in the end, I found this to be a good book, but not a great one. It was a fun read, but I don't feel that it had any lasting impact on my ideas about happiness or how to make my life happier. Those less familiar with the literature she referenced might get a lot more out of it. ( )

At the start, I was very enthusiastic to read this book but by the time I got halfway through, I was still waiting for the "Eureka!" moment where it all seemed worthwhile. It was mostly skippable and some parts were just frustrating (starting a collection for the sake of starting a collection? Plugging in birthdays of friends? A bit hollow...).

I suppose I was expecting a more memoir approach and it seemed more self-help manual than anything else. Dull. ( )

I read this book because one of my friends shared a beautiful passage of this book in one of her stories. I instantly fell inlove with this because I felt like the author mirrors several of my personal views in life. This is a definitely good read, something that will empower you to be more happier in life. ( )

There was a lot of good stuff in the book, and the writing was very casual and easy to read. There were some small annoyances (e.g. waaaaaay too many pages were covered with paragraph-long quotes from the comment section of her blog), and one really big one. The first couple months focus on her actions and her marriage, and her main resolution was to stop "nagging," i.e. stop asking and expecting her husband to take an active role in the mental load of parenthood and marriage, and if she wanted tasks done it was better to just do them herself than ask someone else for support. My feminist heart cringed every time she accused herself of "nagging" or "needing gold stars" i.e. some acknowledgement for her work in keeping the house and marriage running. Telling women to take on more and expect less from their partners is NOT the key to happiness, and I shutter to think of how many women have read her book and felt like they just needed to change their own expectations of support and partnership, and just take on more, to be happier. ( )