I picked this up because I recognized it was one of the titles on Potok-fan's wishlist. I decided to give it a whirl before sending it on, even though it wasn't a book I had been aware of previously, or whose cover would have appealed to me. I was pleasantly surprised. I expected a self-help book from the title and back cover blurb, but it is more a series of psychology lectures about the mind and perception that explain why we are often disappointed when reality does not match our expectations. The cultural references used by the author in his examples are highly amusing and I would imagine attending his classes would be fun.

Reserved for Potok-fan.

My fairy godmother sent me this book out of the blue. She's obviously an expert in happiness, creating it, not just stumbling upon it!

I was a little disappointed, though, when I began reading. I had loved Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" (link to come), and was hoping for something similar. Both authors are university lecturers, but there the similarity ends. Gilbert writes like someone trying to keep the students awake, with frequent jokey asides or silly phrasings. Sometimes they're funny, and I agree with ghir that it could be fun to attend one of his lectures, but sometimes (especially in the beginning) the jokes in print just irritated and distracted me.

Still, the book was full of interesting information. It certainly left me feeling a little better about buying more camera than we needed last year - I am not alone! :) And I find it oddly comforting to read about how well people bounce back from tragedy.

I had realized by midway through the book that another difference between Haidt and Gilbert is that Gilbert is out to entertain (and teach), whereas Haidt really does seem to want to improve the lives (or at least the happiness quotient) of his readers and students. Turns out Gilbert knows this himself, since he confesses (and jokes, of course), on page 245, My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.
Hmmm. Perhaps I should have taken heed of the warning at the end of the "Foreward", if your future self is not satisfied when it arrives at the last page [of this book], it will at least understand why you mistakenly thought it would be.

I don't want to end on that sour note, though. I did enjoy learning a lot from this book. I am now reassured that having the same restaurant meal every year on my birthday could be a better choice than having something different each year, and as a researcher, I love the finding that puzzles make us happy, so much so that solving the puzzle is less happiness-inducing than finding a new puzzle! :)

This book is reserved for a yankee-style swap on bookobsessed.com. Our theme is nonfiction, and I hope somebody will be excited by this book despite my mixed review. It was the first book to be revealed in play, so there should be plenty of time for the right reader to choose it.

Thanks, ghir!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed this off today to Aceofhearts, who won it in the non-fic book swap.

received in the mail. Thanks !

My mom, AceofHearts, passed away from breast cancer on September 17, 2013. Aside from being one of the best people I know, she was an avid reader and took immense pleasure in Bookcrossing, her book club, and reading many great books. Unfortunately she didn't get around to reading this book.

We had similar tastes in books and would share them whenever we read something we enjoyed. This book sounds interesting so I'm going to keep it to read.

DNF.
I've really been struggling with non-fiction during the pandemic. I think I need a made up world to help me take my mind off things, as almost every non-fiction I've picked up over the past 2 years has been DNF or skim to the end. Unfortunately this one was no different. I'm sure it's me and not the book so I'll probably release this to a little free library so someone else can enjoy it.

To the finder of this book: I hope you enjoy reading this book. Please keep it or set it free when you're done. If the book is of no interest to you, please release it into the wild for someone else to find and enjoy. I hope you will make a journal entry so its journey can be tracked and to let me know the book has been found. You can remain anonymous if you wish, but if you join BookCrossing, you are in for a great experience.