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Book News, Guests | December 14, 2009

How to Be a Vampire

4 comments By Amy Gray

Oh, hi. I'm Amy Gray. I like smoking, carbs, and words. I live in the (currently) sleek humidity of Melbourne, Australia. When not lying... Continue »

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1. 
   $10.49 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   How to Be a Vampire: A Fangs-On Guide for the Newly Undead

   Amy Gray

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wescoat, October 28, 2008

This was a book-length tome that should have been condensed to an article in the New Yorker, though I'm not sure the New Yorker would have put up with Daniel Gilbert's relentless affinity for cheesy jokes. It is not a book about how to be happier, which to be fair, is made clear in the opening pages. It is a book about what makes us happy, or better, how our endless quest for happiness is skewed by our silly, silly brains. It's an interesting premise, I guess, a study of how our inability to truthfully evaluate the past, present, our future prohibits our happiness, but Gilbert's manifestation of it is surprisingly tedious. His writing is so asinine and willfully goofy, "Stumbling On Happiness" should have taken me 2 hours to read, but it took me weeks in actuality because it was so annoying to keep returning to it. I'm one of those compulsive readers that has to finish every book I start, even when I don't like it, and I think that trait, more than anything, hurts my chances at happiness, at least in regards to this one. "Stumbling" is a bad example of a bad writer combining his badness with many, many, tedious references to other studies and writings done by other people who are not him. Really, this book is a gathering of research, and while I'm impressed with how much Gilbert must have had to sift through (no doubt with help from tons of assistants) to sort it all out, the end result is neither enlightening nor entertaining. I don't know what I was looking for going in, but it wasn't this. the book was recommended by an 18-year-old coworker, who said it was "amazing." I've learned to no longer take book recommendations from teenagers, and I've learned that I don't care enough about happiness to read a whole book about it. I guess I'm just a morbid guy. Or maybe I'm a happy guy. If anything, Gilbert's book has shown me that really, deep down, I'm neither, and never will be.

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