The Happiness Project by Gretchen Ruben

The title of this book might be quite off-putting and dismissed as American pyschobabble to many of the British public. When I first came across this book my reaction was much the same,  but months after I first read about it on a bad day after a series of bad days, I decided to reserve this book on the online library system. Why? Because who doesn't want to be happier? The book is Ruben's memoir following a year in her life where she implements tasks and resolutions for herself in order see if she can in fact make herself happy. The fact that this book has been published means that Ruben did find herself being happier and there might even be hope for me.

I liked the style of this book. The memoir that follows someone in a set amount of time (usually a year) is a genre that I have become very familiar with and very fond of over the last few months. Ruben even comments in one of her chapters that she is part of a new trend called 'method journalism'. I now have a name for my new genre obsession. 

Ruben was open and honest about her short-comings and failures throughout the year and sometimes offered more of an insight into her marriage and parenting than I was comfortable with but I see how this might be useful to other readers. The tasks that she set for herself were often so small that it is easy to see how people forget about them in everyday life, for instance laughing and having good manners. What becomes clearer in the second half of the book is that happier people are usually better people and vice versa, though the reverse is not so shocking.

This would be a great book for almost anyone because it will appeal to those (like me) who just want to challenge themselves to be happier with all that they are blessed with and it will be useful to the sceptics because it doesn't ask anything of you. This book pops up in the 'self-help' category, something I'm entirely in agreement with, but unlike so many self-help books doesn't ask you the reader to do any of the things that Ruben is doing, it is merely telling you about them. Since the publication of the book Ruben has started a little empire of self-help encouraging others to start their own happiness projects for which she charges which I find to be ethically dubious. The book, however, has none of that feel about it and I genuine believe that Ruben underwent this project to change her own life and not start an enterprise from it and as a result this book as a stand alone thing keeps it's integrity.

Rating: ★★★