I picked up "The Geography of Bliss" on a whim. The tag line "One grump's search for the happiest places in the world" had me hooked-tag line=mission accomplished. I love traveling and I figured that this book would be good insight into where I would fit in best because I am a generally happy person.
Even though the book is was written by a self proclaimed grump I really enjoyed how each place was highlighted for their strengths and done quite well I might add. There wasn't one place that was visited that the silver lining didn't become apparent. Speaking of places visited, it was quite a list that included: The Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland, Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, India and America. As you can see happiness is found in some very unique places.
Another thing I loved about this book was that it included many studies that support how humans find happiness and how bad we are at really knowing what happiness looks like to us. For example, did you know that the more choice we have regarding mundane things the less likely we are to be happy? Being a psych student this really floated my ferry. I am not sure how the non-psych reader would take all this information but my best guess is that the way in which it is slipped into each chapter isn't all that annoying and actually pretty interesting. Weiner (hehe) wrote the book in a really easy to read way, almost as though he is having a conversation with the reader.
Overall I recommend this book to kick off your summer reading for those of you that want a little more meat than a chick lit and a little less cerebral straining that some of the classics may give you.
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