Paula Poundstone has a memorable voice, so when I selected this audiobook, I was quite thrilled that she also narrates it. It made it very enjoyable. Besides that, her experiments in happiness had me giggling out loud many times. I did not know anything about her personal life, but I could see my kids in the anecdotes she told. Her kids are a hoot and act like normal kids everywhere, especially when it comes to the way they react to their mom. She is amazing in taking a normal life event and telling it in such a witty way that will have you laughing. She is also very good at self-deprecating humour. She does a great job of getting the listener to laugh at some of her simple mistakes and bigger gaffs without making it seem that you are laughing at her. I enjoyed seeing how many "Heps of Happiness" she received from each of her endeavours. I think the one I laughed at the most was the Lamborghini experiment. It was not a long book, only about 7.5 hours but I would have listened to more, I liked it a lot. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys comedy, especially if you like Paula Poundstone.

This book is a peek in the day of the life of Ms. Poundstone. I enjoyed her explanation of her scientific search for happiness. Reading this book made me happy.

Reminded me of A.J. Jacobs with a lot of info on Paula's cats & kids. Quite funny.

I'm a little gun shy when it comes to books written by funny people as in my experience their humor doesn't translate into writing, that is until I read Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan. I know that Poundstone is funny. I saved the podcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me for the drive home on the one night a week that I worked late because I knew it would make me think and laugh. Which is what this book did.

I completely understand her frustration with the educational system and with all the paperwork that educators are saddled with that interfere with classroom teaching. I recognized the situations with her children as ones I had with my own children, and oh the frustrations of living in a car-driven city. When she said that there are many places on I5 where you can't get off to turn around for miles and that she found those places in both directions, I snorted through my nose. I found myself identifying with her many times and enjoyed being able to laugh about it. Getting organized? Who has time for that?!

I appreciated her humor in her search for happiness while running a household and making a living, something most of us know well and would like to laugh about. It's the little lines she inserted that made me know I was in good company like - when you walk around the airport smiling and trying to make eye contact you look like Carol Channing panhandling. That's a mental image I won't soon forget.

We all like a book with character development and Poundstone struggles and she grows. The book was a seven-year process. What she wants for her children and what they want for themselves was a tug-of-war and she writes, "I have to remind myself that the words the Reverend Mother sings to Maria in The Sound of Music are not 'Follow every rainbow until you find my dream for you." There is plenty of pith and plenty of humor sprinkled with doses of wisdom. And then there were the parts that made me laugh out loud in a waiting room.

With the absolute mountain of self-help books out there that are promising happiness to everyone, it seems like there are also a mountain of books offering to test those books and let you know how it goes. I love Paula Poundstone and was excited to see how she would approach the topic. I think I set my expectations a little too high.
Each chapter is set up as a science experiment with descriptions of conditions, hypothesis, procedure, environment, etc. She tries things like exercise, being positive, going into nature.
Part of my problem with the book was that it was so fragmented by chapter. Ms. Poundstone took a long time to write the book so there wasn't a lot of flow.

This book came out May 9
Three stars

I have always enjoyed Paula Poundstone's comedy whenever I've had the opportunity to hear her, so I was thrilled to get a copy of her new book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, from the NetGalley. The book details her attempts to try various projects to see which, if any, would increase her feelings of happiness. Each chapter takes a look at one of the things she tried. The book starts with the "Get Fit Experiment" where she signs up for taekwondo classes. Other things she tries include getting organized, driving a sports car, giving to others (through plasma donation and volunteering at a nursing home) and mediation (among others). Each experiment is written up in a manner to appear somewhat scientific with a Hypothesis, list of Equipment, the Procedure and various Qualitative Observations, Constants, Field Notes and some Analysis of the project's ability to increase happiness.

While I expected the book to be funny, and it certainly had lots of humorous observations, I was unprepared for the many sad, alarming and depressing details the author shared about her own life. In addition to being somewhat dysfunctional herself (she claims to suffer from depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and alcoholism), she wrote quite a bit about how much she struggles financially, yet she has 16 cats (in the house!) several dogs, a rabbit, a lizard and a bunny. She also adopted 3 children, only one of whom seems to treat her with anything but contempt. Her son, she claims, has a "computer/video game" addiction, to the point that she sent him to an electronics-free school in Virginia, but she never really provided any proof of this other than to say he always wanted to use her computer. She also states, time and time again, that her children "have never watched television" although they have a TV and watch movies. So movies=good, but TV=bad . . . not sure what the justification for that was, either.

So while I enjoyed the occasional humorous observation, I was mostly left dismayed about the holes in her shoes, her lazy, deceitful children, her ramshackle house covered in "cat pee and vomit" and the fact that she doesn't even have a bed but sleeps on a sheet on the floor that she folds up every morning when she gets up. Instead of being a funny or inspiring book (which I was expecting), I read about a woman who was struggling to keep it together in the face of non-stop chaos (OK, some of it self-inflicted . . . I mean I'm a cat lover, but I stop at three). I can't really say I enjoyed the book. All of the blurbs on the front and back of the book are from various celebrities talking about how funny it was. I'm not sure they read the finished copy.

I frankly was not sure what to expect when I first started reading this book. I mainly know Paula Poundstone from "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!" on NPR, where I always enjoy her appearances, and so I thought that at the very least, this would make for a decently enjoyable read.

As it turns out, I underestimated this book immensely. When I wasn't laughing at her various, valient and also often awkward attempts to find a "hep" or two of happiness in her diverse array of experiments, I quickly found myself identifying with Paula, and at a depth and and pace I didn't foresee in the slightest. With her mixture of blunt honestly and fantastic style of self-deprecating humor, to me Paula would almost occasionally become the incarnation of the exasperation, utterly ridiculous thoughts, and myriad flavors of anxiety that we all have as just mere humans, and for the most part keep tucked hidden away to ourselves. To have her speak so openly in her book on everything from her bewilderment from the results of her most current happiness experiment to her ongoing regret from mistakes made in the past was....well to be bluntly honest myself, I found it to actually be a little liberating in a way.

I could say that in a way, reading this (un) scientific book ended up being something of an experiment of my own. I curiously dove in head first not knowing what I'd get out of it at all, and I am happy to say that I ended up enthusiastically pouring through what has turned out to be one of my favorite reads this year!

As a long-time fan of Paula Poundstone's, and an ardent hater of the self-help genre, this book made me laugh so hard out loud so much I scared my dog. I wasn't as interested in the Santa Monica yoga and crazy cat lady bits as I was with her parenting principles (like seriously limiting screen time), and her heart-warming experiences volunteering with the elderly.

What a pleasure to read Ms Poundstone's journey to find her heps (love that word whatever it is) of happiness. Kept this one by my bedside dipping into to it each evening and was so genuinely sorry to see I had finished it. I recommend it to absolutely everyone. I may even have to read it again. Thank you Paula Poundstone. I look forward to your next everything.

Comedian Paula Poundstone is determined to find the perfect recipe for happiness and in this book details a series of different experiments she set herself to help her be happy. From fitness, life organisation and dancing, Poundstone gave everything a whirl.

I liked this book for what it was which was just a comedic take on trying new things, basically. I admired Poundstone's gumption to jump in and try new things. I myself like to set myself goals but I really have to push myself if it means having to face a new group of people alone or join classes etc (to sum it up - to have any normal human interaction). I found her chapters on exercise and dance classes particularly funny and endearing though didn't much care for the day in a lambo exercise, or the organisation. I think the organisation one was someone actually employing a "professional organiser", I didn't even know that job existed.

While some of the excerpts from Poundstone's family life were nice (the all-day movie marathon, yes please), I did find some of them a bit annoying and pointless and ended up feeling like she just wanted to talk about her children and her parenting skills at times. Which is fine, except this is a book about happiness and not children. I also definitely think she had way too many cats and dogs for one house, and that's me, a dog lady, saying this.

So overall, this book was mildly enjoyable but not great by any means.

Full of wit, truisms, and self-deprecating humor, Paula Poundstone explores and reflects on many of societies ideas about how to achieve happiness: connecting to others through social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, driving expensive cars, etc. Frankly, I was often a little board with much of the filler in between her observations, and I found myself skimming the pages. Still, a laugh-out-loud read!

Paula Poundstone is a stand-up comedian who I know from her appearances on NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! quiz show. For several years, she conducted her own investigation into happiness. She developed an informal measure of happiness. A "small amount of happiness could be a 'hep.' . . . If you're lucky enough to amass four of those, you've got yourself a whole 'balou' of happiness." (These measures are named after her cats.)

In The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, she experiments with a variety of activities to test the level of happiness she can achieve. Her adventures and foibles are, as you might expect, more entertaining than particularly insightful. She tries exercise: "While doing push-ups I don't worry much about the state of the world so much. It's hard to be concerned about war in the Middle East while you can't breathe." She tries computers: "Someday science will prove that a phone call is about a hundred times more efficient for a back-and-forth exchange than e-mail." She tries social media: "Leave it to computers to destroy the meaning of one of the most valuable words in the human language." (This refers, of course, to "friendship" on social media.")

Getting her house in order, taking dance classes, renting a Lamborghini, volunteering, going to a meditation class, making it a practice to hug people she meets and other experiences contribute to her research. Most of her stories gave me a hep or two of happiness, but, to be honest, the whole thing got a little tiresome. Maybe I just don't fully appreciate her humor. Maybe I just need to take her in small doses.

Woven throughout the book are stories of her life with her children. She is an adoptive single mom, so there is plenty of craziness and busy-ness in their house. For parents of children with disabilities, the sections on dealing with teachers, ARD meetings, and transitioning out of the home are particularly instructive and insightful.

I especially appreciated what ended up being one of her conclusive thoughts. "I've long been familiar with the idea that true happiness is found in helping others, and I've always meant to get around to it." By volunteering at a nursing home, she found that serving others selflessly produces plenty of "heps" of happiness. She writes, "People need each other. Our well-being is tightly tethered to the well-being of people we do not know, most of whom look nothing like ourselves. Happiness . . . requires engagement."

The Totally Unscientific Study was intermittently funny, seemingly over-long, and occasionally insightful. But I found no argument with Poundstone's conclusions and her attitude. It's worth a read for a few heps of happiness.



Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Paula Poundstone is a master of self deprecating humor. She is unflinchingly honest and this book is an exploration of her family, her life, her excessive number of household cats--all organized as a search for happiness. Occasionally she would write with such trenchant, piercing honesty that I'd read and re-read a paragraph, such as her observation about her limited social life. I've been a fan of her deadpan delivery and humor for years and appreciated the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed it tremendously and found it less of a guidebook for happiness and more of an autobiographical look at an imperfect but deeply loved family life. And way too many cats.

Can one find happiness behind the wheel of a Lamborghini? How about in an nursing home? A dojo? Paula Poundstone's not entirely scientific inquiries of these and many other pressing questions are answered in this latest book. From getting connected to getting outdoors, she pursues each possibility with total abandon and laugh out loud results. -And down under the mirth, there's some meat as well. I know which experiments I'll be exploring.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for making an advance reading copy available in exchange for an honest review.

As an admirer of Gretchen Rubin’s _The Happiness Project_ (which looks at a single year spent in pursuit of happiness), I greatly enjoyed this book, which follows Poundstone’s similar, but in her case, seven-year quest to find out what makes for a happy life. I'm a fan of Poundstone’s work as a stand-up comic, and I expected to laugh out loud, which I did numerous times (particularly during her chapters on learning to swing dance and her unforgettable day-long rental of a Lamborghini) while reading this book. I was also struck by her kindness, self-deprecating honesty, and expansive conclusion about the elements of what makes for a truly happy life. Poundstone’s writing is sprightly, witty, and good-natured in tone, and I feel happier for having been granted early access to this book as a NetGalley reviewer. I will enthusiastically recommend it to friends and to book clubs, as I believe that reading groups will find much to discuss in this witty and original treatment of an age-old topic.

Paula Poundstone writes with the same wit as she demonstrates on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." Her search for human happiness delivered a smile or laugh-out-loud on every page.

I love Paula Poundstone's quick wit and amazing observations on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, but wasn't sure how they would translate to the printed page. I am happy to say that her written work is just as entertaining as her off-the-cuff humor. Loved it.

Interesting look into the life of Paula Poundstone and her life and ordeals with her adopted children. Has funny and sad moments and is an honest, open look at how she deals with all of the issues her children have while still maintaining a career.

This book by comedian Paula Poundstone is a laugh out loud riot. I have enjoyed her stand-up comedy, but have not read any of her books til now. She is just as funny in this book. She can take it as well as dish it out. She does not mind making jokes about herself. And she loves Harry Potter and her kids! So what is not to love? This book about her life, her kids, and relationships is a great read.