Jennifer Sader

Gretchen Rubin read "The Happiness Project" herself, and I loved her goofy, cheerful voice. She genuinely sounded happy! Her projects are nerdy and offbeat, but they feel authentic.

The projects feel less fun without the author's infectious, silly enthusiasm to win me over. The narrator isn't bad, she just isn't as genuinely excited about the projects and resolutions. This makes the experience sound less exhilarating and more exhausting. I also don't like her use of actual character voices for Gretchen's daughters, who sound like Rugrats. These are small things, but they definitely shaped my experience of the audiobook.

This book is definitely informed by the author's experiences with "The Happiness Project." She feels the need to remind readers that she knows how lucky she is to be able to be living a writerly life in New York City. She responds to some of the criticisms of the last book in this one in a way that feels defensive. I hope she realizes that many people enjoyed the book exactly as it was, and though we might envy her freedom and her great Manhattan apartment, we enjoy the chance to live vicariously through her experience. I appreciate her willingness to write so openly about her life and her experience. The people who did not like the last book are not going to be interested in reading this one.

I am not ready to tackle such a huge number of resolutions and projects all at once, but I like many of the ideas here. It's nice to think about giving more attention to greetings and goodbyes, for example. It's a good idea to remember that 15 minutes of unpleasant work each day can make me happier in the long run.

If you liked "The Happiness Project," you will probably enjoy "Happier at Home." If you haven't read "The Happiness Project" yet, read it first, because this book doesn't stand completely on its own, it relies heavily on material covered in the first book. Besides, as I said, the first book was more fun.

I'd hoped to learn some new things about how a healthy body works, but this was mostly a collection of oddities. There were some interesting moments, like learning that organ meats have more vitamins than vegetables. I think it was just a bad fit for me.

I have only listened to part of the book, which I purchased on impulse without listening to the sample. The narrator's voice would be more suited to scientific or other scholarly content. His voice is reminiscent of a narrator from an educational program.

This book really could have used someone who had a more mellow and relaxed style, and who could pronounce French correctly. I'm feeling conflicted -- I am really interested in the content, but I'm not sure I can get through the rest of it.

From now on I will always, always listen to the sample before purchasing.

There is some important and interesting information here, but the narrator is not a great audiobook reader. So many of the better readers use their voice to help guide the listener to what is most important. This one seems excited about everything, which, ironically, made the book feel monotonous. She might do better with a different kind of book. Until I checked, I thought the book had been read by the author.

The story was well-told and the characters were complex and believable, even though the adventure itself was a bit unlikely.

Harold's first breakfast away from home, alternately encouraged and heckled by the B&B guests.

I love Harold but I think Maureen is even more sympathetic, to me.

I was in tears at the end but will not say any more for fear of spoiling it.

There are a lot of important reflections on marriage here -- it seems that Harold and his wife had to spend time apart to really see each other.

This book uses stories to illustrate the history and current understanding of genetics. I first heard about this book on Radio Lab, and this book uses the same kind of narrative style to engage listeners in serious science through compelling mysteries and human dramas. I would recommend it to other amateur science geeks.

I bought this title on sale for $4.95. I really got caught up in the story of a suburban teen who is dragged off to a frontier camp with her family to live as if it were the 1890s. Their lives are much harder than even the most die-hard Little House fan could imagine. The story is a compelling soap opera: Will Gen win the heart of the cute guy? Will Nora ever stop being a nasty know-it-all? Will Pumpkin the chicken get to live?

I listened to this book when I was having a cancer scare with one of my pets. I thought knowing more about the disease might help me to understand how much treatment to pursue and when to let go. Thankfully, he is still doing well almost a year later.

I thought I knew what cancer was until I read this book, and now I have a much better understanding that cancer is not really one disease, and the idea of finding one "cure" is probably a pipe dream.

The history of the disease and its treatment and research are skillfully written and narrated here. It was hard to think of the first children's cancer wards where almost every child died, and learn that the much better survival rate we have now was built from their suffering.

I was afraid that this book would be a painful slog, but it was quite interesting and hopeful. I highly recommend it.

If Audible offered refunds, I would return this book. I kept almost falling asleep and I barely got through the first few chapters before giving up on it.

I found this book very enlightening. Once you start thinking about relationships in this way, it makes some of the day-to-day arguments a lot easier to avoid.

After listening to this, part of me suspects that "anxious" and "avoidant" types are just two sides of the same coin -- people who are insecure about relationships and have different kinds of defense mechanisms. I wonder this especially because I have seen someone who seems to be "avoidant" flip to "anxious" when she is in a relationship with another "avoidant" type.

It's hard to believe that "secure" types are really in the majority, because it seems like there are so few of them around, either in popular media or in my day-to-day life. Maybe "secure" is not a type at all, but a way of interacting with others that shows that you have learned to let go of your defenses a bit and interact more maturely.

The authors don't seem to agree with me on these points, and suggest for most of the book that people don't change their basic attachment style, though they suggest in some places that people can learn to be more secure. Maybe they simplified things into a typology to make this theory easier for a general reader to understand, but it left me with a lot of unanswered questions.