The Happiness Hypothesis
I just started reading Dave's latest book--well, one of his latest (he reads like 4 at a time). It's called the Happiness Hypothesis. Our neighbor (also major reader) lent him a copy and Dave really liked it, so we bought our own copy. Dave's on his second read. I'm on my first.
I think I'm going to like it a lot.
I think I'm going to like it a lot.
For one: The cover is a photograph of someone riding an elephant--while the elephant swims (the viewpoint is taken underwater--so you see the elephant's legs.
SEE?
Isn't that cool?
For two: The intro hooked me,
"What should I do, how should I live, and whom should I become? Many of us ask such questions, and, modern life being what it is, we don't have to go far for answers. Wisdom is now so cheap and abundant that it floods over us from calendar pages, tea bags, bottle caps, and mass email messages forwarded by well-meaning friends. We are in a way like residents of Jorge Luis Borges's Library of Babel--an infinite library whose books contain every possible string of letters and, therefore, somewhere an explanation of why the library exists and how to use it. But Borges's librarians suspect that they will never find that book amid the miles of nonsense.
Our prospects are better. Few of our potential sources of wisdom are nonsense, and many are entirely true. Yes, because our library is also effectively infinite--no one person can ever read more than a tiny fraction--we face the paradox of abundance: Quantity undermines the quality of our engagement. With such a vast and wonderful library spread out before us, we often skim books or read just the reviews. We might have already encountered the Greatest Idea, the insight that would have transformed us had we savored it, taken it to heart, and worked it into our lives.
This is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attept to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations--to question it in light of what we know from scientific research, and to extract from it lessons that still apply to our modern lives."