Earlier this week I mentioned that our book club is reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project this month, but I hadn't finished the book yet then so I didn't review it.
Basically, this is the story of one woman's year-long project to increase the happiness in her life and the lives of those around her. Rubin covers some excellent topics in this memoir-cum-inspirational book: How do you know whether you are happy? What are the foundations of happiness? How can each of us be happier in the lives we have now? She also provides tools for starting your own Happiness Project and a list of further reading materials.
Rubin admits that she liked the idea of a Happiness Project better than she liked some of the things she did as part of it. I liked the idea of a Happiness Project book better than I liked the actual book. I give the author points for trying to be totally honest with her readers, but I still found many of her stories to be whiny and annoying. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that she and I have totally different senses of humor; I would have been much more tolerant of the "what I needed to fix" sections of narrative had they been what I considered witty. OK, my bad. I'm probably also slightly jealous - how dare she say she cared more about one bad book review than about an earlier book hitting the bestseller list? Does she know how many would-be writers would give anything to be published, let alone give birth to a bestseller?
If you would like to check out Rubin's writing or the Happiness Project concept for yourself, I suggest you visit the blog she started as part of her Happiness Project and has kept up since then: http://www.happiness-project.com/
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha
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