Book Review for the Nonfiction Read-aThon book #1: The Happiness Project

Book: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

Source: Library

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

There was a lot of good stuff here that makes you think about things but the writing is dull and long winded. I also found the introduction or the Getting Started portion of this book to be wordy and a little pompous and not to mention boring. The way she described how she was going about creating this happiness project felt like it was the complete opposite of trying to take time to enjoy her life. It was so overly detailed and complex.

The author had the idea for creating The Happiness Project because she felt as if she was no longer enjoying the life that she had. She was so busy with her daily life that it was making it impossible to enjoy it.

The project seemed like a good idea, with each month she focused on areas she wanted to work on. The author would see if by improving those things would it improve how happy she was. Throughout the chapters the author details her problems and how she went about fixing them. However, you don't really get a sense that she's actually enjoying doing any of the things she's doing other than for a project.

Some of the things I got from this book are:

- Be yourself.

- Take time out to have fun and focus on things you enjoy doing.

- Respect others and yourself.

- Do things for others.

- Don't take people and things for granted.

- It's okay to indulge every now and then.

- Not to continue reading a book if you don't enjoy it.


Yes, these are good things but they can be found in other books and articles or from searching online. Did this book make me want to do my own Happiness Project? No, because I'm generally a happy person and I enjoy doing things that make me happy.

I think this would have been a much better read if the author's writing wasn't so wordy and didn't include so many quotes from various sources as well as responses from her blog. The writing didn't feel engaging nor inspiring, it mainly read as just a project the author created just to write a book.