I'm going through a stressful period on my life now and thought that perhaps meditation could help alleviate that. I jumped at the chance to read this book and get started. I didn't expect the way meditation was presented in this book, mostly anecdotal musing meant to be funny. Unfortunately I didn't find them amusing and thought it distracted from the message of the book. The authors claim a passion for meditation but that was not conveyed. Essentially I took away a few things from the book, You can meditate anywhere, you can meditate for as long or as short as you like, and everyone's mind drifts, focus takes practice.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own

I felt like a lot of the meditations were exactly the same. Maybe that was the point but I just didn't get it. A lot of them were the exact same length and consisted of the exact same process. I wanted to learn more about meditating that I felt the book offered. It was more, I tried the following meditations with my celebrity friends and they worked for me or them. I just was looking for more.

Love this book. So many books on mindfulness meditation really speak to those who already believe in the concept but don't know how to do or. This one speaks to those who secretly think "what's the point of all this?" but have nowhere to voice that skepticism.

A lighthearted, practical guide to meditation for people who are weirded out by the woo-woo. Dan Harris's self-deprecating sense of humor is a pleasure to read, and his skeptical-but-earnest attitude toward meditation and mindfulness matches up with my own. His funny personal anecdotes and pop culture references make this super readable. There are lots of short, situational meditation suggestions throughout the text—my personal favorite is "surf the urge," a means of stopping oneself from doing something impulsive (like Harris says about himself, I have a tendency to spout half-baked thoughts before I've had a chance to fully process them, so I will absolutely be deploying this to stop myself from unnecessarily acting like a jerk). Definitely a book to pick up if you've been meaning to start meditating but find it somewhat intimidating. This is highly accessible thanks, largely, to the narrative through-line (the story of Harris and his friend/meditation mentor Jeffrey Warren on their cross-country meditation teaching tour). I've been meditating for a while, so some of the early chapters (establishing basic principles of mindfulness meditation) were slightly tedious for me, but on the whole this is an engaging guide.

I gave up on this after reading about 1/10 of it. It was trying too hard to be funny.

Easy to read with lots of good tips on how to mediate and why. The author has an engaging self-deprecating style.
Thank you netgalley for the review copy.

A good introduction how-to book for beginner meditators. I enjoyed Harris' first book and picked this one up on the follow up. Reads very much like a beginning meditation series thanks to the input of Jeffrey Warren, the meditation guru here. The book is somewhat organized by "reasons why people don't meditate", but the format is so following all of the other books available for beginners, I suspect the objections were laid on top of the outline after the fact (in part because some seem to be a little odd - does anyone really choose not to meditate because they think it's too selfish to do so?) All in all, recommended for beginners who have stereotypes of meditation as religious or hippy-dippy. Otherwise, pick another book because Harris' overdone ego and the constant muscle flexing will be off-putting.

This is an interesting book; part narrative, part self-help book, part introduction to meditation. It has some scientific background for it's recommendations, but mostly it is the author's journey through skepticism of the practice all the way to full acceptance and educating others about the practice. It wasn't my cup of tea (if I"m going for a self-help book, or educational book, I prefer a little less narrative), but for some people it might be exactly what they need.