The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
This book is in a Controlled Release!
1 journaler for this copy...
Bought from the Los Osos Library book sale today.
I thought I might have read this before but bought it anyway. When I got home I saw that I had listened to the audio version. Here is a copy of my review of that version:
Better than I expected it to be.
This is a type of nonfiction book that has become popular lately: a personal journey in search of something, or following some rule, or doing some thing for a set period of time. It follows the usual format of taking us to the first stop, making observations, then inserting information from the writer's research, drawing some conclusions or asking questions, then moving on to the next stop.
In this case the subject is "happiness". Weiner wants to find the happier places on earth, based on research by so-called happiness experts. Of course these experts had to define happiness in some way or another, not always agreeing with each other. Weiner begins the journey by disagreeing with the trend among psychologists that says that happiness comes from within. He believes it has something to do with where you are.
But does it really? We go to hot places and really cold places, places of great wealth and of little. These normal measures of a good life don't turn out to be the arbiters of happiness.
What Weiner discovers is a number of conditions that tend to make people happy. Some of them are contradictory, suggesting that some people are happy doing these things or having these things near them, and others not so much. I don't think any of the discoveries is earth-shaking, really new, but finding them through the different environments puts a different spin on them and helps us to remember them.
Weiner clearly did not set out blind. He was super-prepared, as befits a former NPR reporter. He knows where he wants to go and whom he wants to meet. He has read up on his subject and his geography. Because of this his work is worth looking at. He could have written a book simply on happiness and said he'd found this and that out about it but how many of us would have bought that book? By encapsulating his findings in geography he has a hook.
Easy to read, with enough substance to keep one's interest.
Better than I expected it to be.
This is a type of nonfiction book that has become popular lately: a personal journey in search of something, or following some rule, or doing some thing for a set period of time. It follows the usual format of taking us to the first stop, making observations, then inserting information from the writer's research, drawing some conclusions or asking questions, then moving on to the next stop.
In this case the subject is "happiness". Weiner wants to find the happier places on earth, based on research by so-called happiness experts. Of course these experts had to define happiness in some way or another, not always agreeing with each other. Weiner begins the journey by disagreeing with the trend among psychologists that says that happiness comes from within. He believes it has something to do with where you are.
But does it really? We go to hot places and really cold places, places of great wealth and of little. These normal measures of a good life don't turn out to be the arbiters of happiness.
What Weiner discovers is a number of conditions that tend to make people happy. Some of them are contradictory, suggesting that some people are happy doing these things or having these things near them, and others not so much. I don't think any of the discoveries is earth-shaking, really new, but finding them through the different environments puts a different spin on them and helps us to remember them.
Weiner clearly did not set out blind. He was super-prepared, as befits a former NPR reporter. He knows where he wants to go and whom he wants to meet. He has read up on his subject and his geography. Because of this his work is worth looking at. He could have written a book simply on happiness and said he'd found this and that out about it but how many of us would have bought that book? By encapsulating his findings in geography he has a hook.
Easy to read, with enough substance to keep one's interest.
Sent to paperbackswap member.
