Jennifer Niesslein

I'm torn about how to review this book. For me, it started weak, got almost to the point of unbearable, and came back strong at the very end.

The conceit here is that Niesslein, a basically content person, sets out to apply the principles of popular self-improvement to her life.

Some reasons most of the book didn't work for me: I'm not in the same demographic as Niesslein and in fact am one of the people she repeatedly slams throughout the book, we apparently don't share many core values, I live quite frugally without feeling denied, and I am someone's fourth wife. (This quote annoyed me mightily: "Or, if I had a different upbringing, I might have become any number of things -- an identity thief, a tightrope walker, someone who would consent to be somebody's third wife. I shudder.")

It wasn't nearly snarky enough to suit me on the one hand, and far too smug on the other. I get that there are people with plenty of everything and the leisure to feel discontented about what seem to me to be insanely small issues, and which seem to them to loom large- but I am hard-pressed to empathize with them.

The strongest chapter for me was the last one, where Niesslein tackles spirituality and religion from the same disbelieving ground upon which I stand.

The weakest parts include such wince-inducing passages as this: "The people who shop here are not rich, and the people who shop here at one o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon have all the class markers of being working people or their spouses-- they have perms, drive older cars with Redskins bumper stickers, wear sweatpants in public."

In sum, Niesslein is a good writer, but she and I stand so far apart on so many issues that I found little to identify or sympathize with, and I couldn't get past the smugness that infuses the majority of this book.

… (mehr)

I’ve been thinking about happiness since last summer. I’ve read books on happiness and taken notes on happiness and tried out happiness theories. Jennifer Niesslein has spent the same time and energy on what to me seems like a bigger idea: virtue. Can I become better? she asks herself in this book.Niesslein spends no time attempting to define virtue for the larger society nor does she spend any time plotting out the best ways to become more virtuous. Instead she focuses strictly on trying to improve herself.She spends little time trying to discover the best ways to improve herself, either. She seems, rather, to just pick up and try whatever is closest at hand.She fails. Yes, she fails, over and over again. She doesn’t become tidier. She doesn’t save money for retirement. She doesn’t lose much weight. Worst of all, she doesn’t become much happier; instead, she becomes filled with anxiety and fear, begins to suffer from panic attacks, and starts sleepwalking. She flat out writes, “It’s hard to change who you are, if it’s possible at all.”She admits this, but nevertheless seems to find the entire experience worthwhile. When she hit rock bottom, she ran across a guide to Zen. Something in the book helped her. So she leaves us with the thought that it was all worth it.I am not really sure that Niesslein’s book should be taken as anything more than one person’s adventure with self-help. From the start, she was trying to change too many things too fast using too unfocused a method. Oh well. It is not a book that changed my life, but I did enjoy reading about a person trying to become better even if it was just to publish a book about the process.… (mehr)