Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Gretchen Rubin is extremely good at marketing herself. She's methodical, as someone who would start a project to get happier would logically be. And most people would admit that they could use a little more happiness than they have, which is the only reason I can imagine for this book being on the bestseller list. As other reviewers have noted, it's shallow to the point of being difficult to read. Not only shallow in its research, but it lacks any kind of deeper meditation. She takes snippets of self-help and holy books, and "guest content" from any Internet randoms who had decent Google SEO, and applies them to anecdotes about herself and her husband. And just in case you didn't catch the drift the first time, it will be reiterated. She recommends an admirable amount of organization and scheduling, but last I checked, that's more the kind of thing that makes a Palm Treo happy, rather than a person. And honestly, I felt guilty for even wasting time reading about some rich woman's problems with all of the natural disasters and political unrest going on in the world. I wonder if any of her blog posts and tweets have ended up on whitewhine. com? Anyway, you can get all the nice quotes from one of those page-a-day calendars, with the added bonus of knowing what day it is, so I'd go with one of those instead of buying this book.