Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness

I often struggle with what to rate a book that I liked but did not love, and although Goodreads says 3 stars is "I liked it" it feels like a low number. But 3.5 isn't an option, and I am not to the "I really liked it" point of four stars. It was an entertaining listen. Paula Poundstone can be funny. I always enjoy hearing her on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and I have actually attended one of her live shows also. But in this book, and in the live show, I found her not as entertaining as she is in the small amounts at a time on NPR.

In this book, she decides to use herself as a guinea pig and try putting herself through various experiments, trying out things that are supposed to make you happy. These range from getting fit to getting organized to meditation to fast sports cars to going hiking, swing dancing, and charity work. And more! In each chapter she describes the plan, what she did, and what the result was, interspersed with various anecdotes and descriptions of her life. The amount of fun she poked at her kids in a published book made me cringe - did they give permission for this to be published about them, and at 12 years old, are they really capable of making that judgement? She also seems weirdly paranoid about keeping her son away from computers, to the point of sending him to a summer camp for months to keep him completely offline, and sending him to school in another state because it's one of the only ones she could find that does not use computers. While there is undoubtedly valid reason to limit screen time and to be aware of the effects that mobile devices have on concentration span, in this day and age she is definitely not doing her son any favours by raising him to be computer illiterate. Exactly what kind of job does she think he's going to get?

Much of the book was amusing, with occasional moments of outright funny. Many of her concerns - for example with the quality of the US education system - are entirely valid. Overall though I ended up feeling slightly uneasy about the environment she lives in and apparently raised three kids in. I'm glad that in the process of writing this book she found some things that do increase her happiness; I hope they help. The book was an entertaining listen on Audible (read by the author herself) but I do not think I would want to listen again.

This was funny; it had me laughing all the way through. I had been introduced to Paula Poundstone through NPR and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, but the book gave me a little more insight into her herself. I am happy to see that she works with what she has and finds the humor wherever possible instead of curling into a ball and deciding that it just doesn't work. She takes what she can out of each experience and builds on it! And it sounds like he's doing a fabulous job with her kids, her dogs, and not least of all her cats! She is trying to determine what makes a person happy, and in the end, she determines that happiness is not an all in one thing. Happiness comes in little bits and pieces, mostly driven by happy individual experiences, and, what she doesn't say, and accepting attitude.
Fun book!