Having read both of Gretchen Rubin's happiness project books, I get the impression that she's a fragile and snappish person. She means well, but she falls short of some self-appointed ideal pretty often, then punishes herself for it with mantras and rules. Mostly, I read this with an air of detached fascination, imagining a frazzled, Type A, controlling woman running around Manhattan making elaborate sets of laws for herself to follow. Not a behavior or impulse goes unexamined. Wouldn't it be ea...

When I read complaints about Gretchen Rubin's original Happiness Project or her new Happier at Home, they center around her having an ideal or enchanted life. In some ways, this is true. She is not writing about finding happiness amidst financial or marital struggles. She is not trying to be happy in a career or location she hates. She is not trying to overcome major adversities in her life. However, she is not giving advice to people in those situations.She is writing to those, like her, who kn...

I wanted to like this book. It actually makes me a little sad that I really don't. I found that this book is so close to being a carbon copy of The Happiness Project that I had a "haven't I read this before?" sensation throughout. I haven't read her blog regularly in ages, and I haven't read her other book in quite a while, but still I have the feeling--repeatedly--that I've read this before.Many of the resolutions the author picked are the same or nearly the same as her previous resolutions. Wi...

I feel this book reveals more about the author's neuroticism than her philosophy. I was struck by her little obsessions, flippant dismissal of the opinions of others while acting like her opinions are the gospel truth, and her self-absorptions. It seems the more one has to say they are happy, the less happy they really are. This quest for happiness is simply a mask for the desperate boredom of a wealthy woman who has everything, but too little that challenges her. All in all, Ruben is really a p...

Loved this book. You have to read it for yourself...but here are the top things I learnt. (You can also access this on my blog: sukasareads.blogspot.com)MISE EN PLACE, French for "everything in its place". Mise en place is preparation, but it's also a state of mind. Nothing is more satisfying than working easily and well. Having more order in my cabinets & closets made me feel as though I had more time in my day. There's a surgeon's pleasure that comes from sheer order, from putting an object ba...

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from a Dorothy Parker book review: "Some books are meant to be tossed aside lightly, and others to be hurled violently." I did not have great expectations when my turn came up to read this book from the library reserve list. I was more than mildly irritated by her first book, but since the topic is interesting to me, I decided it would be worthwhile to read the second. As expected, this is a gumbo of over-thinking, statements of the obvious, passive ag...

yeah, just okay. i read the happiness project & found it o be a bit more prescriptive & obsessive than i may have preferred. so my expectations for this follow-up, which is basically a happiness project loosely centered around the home, weren't stratospheric. even so, it was a bit of a disappointment. now that rubin is a bestselling author, some elements of her personal life are available for public consumption, such as the fact that her father-in-law isn't just some kindly old grandfatherly cha...

I really liked this. I don't agree with everything covered, but there is definitely some great stuff discussed. I appreciated the practical tips and tidbits, the use of quotes (I love quotes), and the succinct and memorable one-liners she uses to summarize a key idea ("choose the bigger life," "act the way I want to feel," "make the positive argument," etc.). I often find these ideas running through my head. Many of these things almost seem obvious once they are pointed out, but I probably would...

Everyone in my profession loved Gretchen Rubin's first book, The Happiness Project, so I felt a little cowed by the enthusiasm and never reviewed it for fear of stepping on any toes. The first book was well-written, exceptionally well-researched, charming after a fashion, and so self-indulgent that I found myself talking back to the book as if I were talking to the characters in a TV show. The book made me feel, in the vernacular, very "Grrrarrr!"So, maybe Rubin's become a better writer, but mor...

Gosh. I spent the last 30% of the book rolling my eyes at least once every five minutes. Now my eyeballs hurt. I'm a pretty whimsical person, but this was too much even for me.I spent the first half of the book expecting each sweet anecdote to lead somewhere, but eventually accepted that they simply DON'T. Most of the stories tail off without a point, and several tail off without any resolution - she has an idea, spends 20 paragraphs explaining it, then her husband shuts her down in four words,

Should I talk about the book or the fact that I just looked online at pictures of Gretchen Rubin’s apartment ( she has employed an interior decorator) and the feeling that “she is one of us” totally disappeared...I am sorry that I looked. I still love her writing and her ideas and the feeling of adventure I get every time I read something she has written but will the idea that she “struggles with the same issues that I do” remain or will the reality ruin future readings? This book saw some repea...

Fortunately I ended up enjoying this just as much as "The Happiness Project". I had wondered how much new stuff there would be to write on the subject, but I actually thought she managed quite nicely, and there were even some things I preferred about this book compared to THP (of course there were also some things I preferred about THP, but I had expected nothing else).As the title indicates, this book focused on being happy at home. It wasn't about changing your life, it was about making your h...

Fans of the show Ally McBeal will know what I'm talking about when I say "smile therapy": this is when John's therapist recommended that he smile more, and it would result in a general sense of well-being. What it actually resulted in was him walking around with a crazed grin and dead eyes as he braved his day's horrors as an attorney. I bring this up because a) Gretchen Rubin is a Yale-educated attorney who almost certainly once watched Ally McBeal and b) a lot of her advice boils down to this:...