The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World | Eric Weiner | I'd love to travel this happy trail!

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The Geography of B...

	The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World Eric Weiner Twelve, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 80 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Humor and Armchair Travel

I bought this book for my husband (the lovable grump), but couldn't resist reading it. Weiner's book is a quick and enjoyable read. His humor is more sophisticated than Bill Bryson's (to whom he's been compared) and the places he covers are off the beaten path (Bhutan, Iceland, Moldova...). Read it if you enjoy a laugh, are curious about what makes people happy, or if you love to travel. It's a great book to give as a gift--I must have recommended it to more than a half dozen people since reading it a few weeks ago!

I'd love to travel this happy trail!

I told you about this book last week, when I spent many happy days curled up in the comfy chair at Starbucks reading about all the places on earth that would make me happy or miserable. This book, by Eric Weiner (yes, pronounced whiner), takes a whirlwind tour of some of the happiest places on earth. And some of the most miserable places on earth. I wondered if the book would wrap the pursuit of happiness up in a neat little bow, but it doesn't. Instead, it offers a look at how the geography of where you live impacts your life.

Place. That is what The Geography of Bliss is about. How place--in every aspect of the word--shapes us, defines us. Change your place, I believe, and you can change your life.

This quote, by the author on his website, truly sums up the book. So what did I learn in exchange for those afternoons spent with The Geography of Bliss?

1. People have an innate "fit" with certain places on the globe. Unfortunately these are not always the places they are born or are living. Also, Moldova apparently fits no one.
2. Iceland sounds amazing: cozy, book-loving people living on an ice cube.
3. The closer you look at happiness to evaluate whether you have it, the less likely you are to be happy.
4. Most happiness appears to spring from trust and the ability to give yourself to something larger than yourself, something worth pursuing.
5. The author has an amazing ability, born most likely of his journalism career, to connect with local people and develop the sense of community in a short time. I envy him this ability and tried to analyze how he did it. Still working on that!

After meeting a bartender appropriately named Happy, the author offers this interesting summation of his stance.

But Happy [the bartender] is wise, for only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

Good lessons to learn, and a good payoff for a few days traveling the globe vicariously with the author. I'd love to hop on a plane and follow the happy trail myself! I leave you with a quote that perhaps I should paint and hang on my wall!

The Icelandic saying goes, `Better to be barefoot than without a book!'

Living in the paradise of South Florida, perhaps I may change that to "Better to be barefoot WITH a book."

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A search clouded by one's own perspective

Weiner travels to a variety of places with the hope of finding happiness. In trying to understand happiness, he relates much to his own experience. So he spends quite a bit of time comparing American culture/expectations with the culture/experience of those he visits. As well, as he tends to be someone who is not generally happy - or knows how to be happy, this tendency does affect his search (mostly by his being a bit lost about why others claim happiness).

The book tends to be fairly informative, especially as a means of understanding American culture. Yet, it wasn't the most exciting. It was more of a report on how some people found happiness than a book that provided insight into how to be happy. The chapter on Iceland (which I admit is as far as I got before I needed to return it) was the chapter I liked best. Happiness seemed a bit less illusive in that chapter. Weiner describes the Iceland understanding of happiness as being failure - or at least having the freedom to fail. Perhaps my resonation with this chapter has more to do, however, with my own personal bias that happiness has to do with being able to be fully oneself. And it is in the freedom to fail that people have the freedom to discover who they are - and be fully themselves...

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Happiness comes in the most unexpected ways

I suppose for most of us the idea of reading a book about happiness seems, well, superfluous. We all have our little ways of getting happy, right? It might be settling down to a bowl of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, or hiking in the woods, or vegging on the sofa watching an old movie. But what Eric Weiner has done in this book is to transport us to the most unlikely of places and expose us to the most unlikely customs....eating rotten shark's meat in Iceland or having everything done in Qatar by immigrants so no one has to lift a finger. I found this a most interesting tour of the world's cultures by someone genuinely interested in trying to answer the question of what really makes us happy. In the end, it made me happy just reading about these places and these customs. A most enjoyable read. Good for myopic Americans to read - by the fire, with ice cream, or any old way.

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Fun good read

This book is humorous and thought inducing. Written in a style similar to Bill Bryson, I found it to be knowlegeable and inciteful. I would highly recomend it.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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