3.67 AVERAGE


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.

This book was massively entertaining and I enjoyed it immensely, but I found that, oddly, the entertaining nature of the read somehow interfered with my ability to retain the information it presented. I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't really remember any of it, which is weird.

From the intro on-,this book was pretentious and annoying. First book I abandoned in probably more than a year.

While several topics in this are covered quite well, and in more detail by Daniel Kahneman (experiencing vs. remembering self) and Johnathan Haidt (rider and elephant), this was in pretty good read. The last 25% was pretty interesting and covered some new concepts about how we are all much more similar while we see ourselves as unique or exceptional.


Interesting read and pretty well written. The funny guy but (predictably) provides a not so funny conclusion though; at least for the others 'unlike' myself :) read it if you like psychology, social behaviours and the likes. Another support to my belief that our brains are delusion engines and it plays an important function : to keep us being robots!

This book makes some very good points about psychology and the way we perceive and construct our past, present, and future happiness. Unfortunately, I found Gilbert a bit quick and loose with his "evidence", referencing an incredible number of studies (without many questions about their methodology), which unfortunately made it appear that he had searched the psychological journals for articles supporting the particular point he wanted to make, and when he found it, he gladly cited them. Now, perhaps I am wrong and he has searched high and low, critiquing, refuting, and selecting only the best... but that's not the impression the book leaves you with. However, if you can put those things aside, I think there are some good take-home messages that could change the way we make decisions about our future happiness.

My introduction to positive psychology could not have been any better.

Interesting book about why we make the decisions we make and how they are fundamentally flawed. It doesn't offer much in the way of solutions, except to say that asking others who are in the same situation is a good way to judge how happy that decision will make you. I'll try to keep this in mind as I make big decisions in life.

[author: Daniel Gilbert] has written pretty close to the perfect popular science book. It's a fascinating topic, articulately written and structured, told in an approachable and humorous style.

Gilbert's topic is happiness: how we achieve it, or more often don't. He illuminates the psychological processes by which we remember past emotional experiences, how we experience present emotions, and how we predict how we will feel in the future. As you might expect given the title of the book, we don't do a great job. When we want to predict how a decision will make us feel, we imagine ourselves after that decision is made. But imagination is influenced by our present circumstances, and by our imperfect memory of the past, so in the end how we think we'll feel is rarely accurate.

Don't read this book thinking it will tell you how to be happy. But do read it to be informed and entertained, and to gain a little insight into the ways in which you don't know you think.

This book explains every reason you will never ~truly~ be happy. Depressing read, but well written.