Another great book from Dean Burnett.

Dean takes you on an entertaining, and at times funny, look at brain function and the key to human happiest. As with all things human nothing is that simple.

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Brain pleasing duo

The combination of Dean's humorous writing and Matt's delivery makes this an instant classic. Thanks guys!

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4 people found this helpful

good book to understand brain better

I liked humor and science being so close and at ease with each other. I think the only thing missing is to provide a bit more of advise on what to try to improve all things which make you happy. But then, author is not a life coach, he is scientist!

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Felt heavier than The Idiot Brain

I bought this book because I’d previously read The Idiot Brain and could barely put it down, but while I also found the subjects covered in this book fascinating, I found the book itself much heavier going both in print and as an audio book.

Now this looks more like a review of me than the book, but there you are. Top marks for the content of the book, not so many for the readability and delivery.

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Disappointing

I was very disappointed with this book (the audio version). Having a book devoted to 'the science of where happiness comes from' I would have hoped that at the end I would have a definition of happiness and know how it affects the brain, what causes it and so on. Unfortunately, I do not.
The book comes across to me as long-winded waffle. There is some useful nuggets of information, but they are embedded and almost hidden in a lengthy ramble. The book is more of a story about the author's journey exploring the subject rather than concentrating on the subject itself.
The author provides most of his insights from interviews he undertook with various people. To derive conclusions from the commentary of a few individuals seems to me to be quite unscientific. However, the circumstances of each interview are described in excruciating detail. How the author travelled to the interview, where they met, what they ate, etc. etc. In the chapter covering the importance of home to happiness, the author describes at length how he travelled to his childhood home and his feelings on finding it abandoned.
The narration is excellent, but I found the subject matter so dry and drawn out that at times I found myself switching off and not really listening. At other times I wanted to shout out 'Get on with it'. I think that the information provided could have been condensed into a book a tenth of the size.
In the early part of the book the author describes why you cannot see happiness in the brain with an MRI scanner for various reasons, but partly because all of the brain is active all of the time to a greater or lesser degree and emotions such as happiness affect so many parts of the brain. Therefore, it is not possible to point to certain parts of the brain and say they are responsible for happiness. Yet for the rest of the book that is exactly what he did. He kept listing parts of the brain that responded to certain stimuli, but no normal person could have possibly remembered the parts of the brain he was naming so I really did not see the point of doing that apart from trying to add weight to his ramblings.
In the end, I learned that happiness means different things to different people and that all sorts of things can contribute to happiness and some things that can contribute to happiness can have the opposite effect when experienced in excess. Not exactly ground breaking stuff.

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76 people found this helpful

Better than Idiot Brain!

Very injiyable and informative. Excellently narrated too. I will certainly listen to it again. I thought it better than his first.

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8 people found this helpful

Liked the conclusion

Lots of interesting details in the story and a good conclusion. Nothing sensational but very sensible.

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Another great book by Burnett!

I’ve listened to the Idiot Brain and Psycho-logical by Dean Burnett before and although I liked them more than this one, this is still a great read. The conclusion of a book about happiness is apparent from the beginning no matter which secret the book claims to have reached: you can’t quantify happiness and everyone is made happy by different things. Of course, Burnett does not claim to have any secret the share in reaching happiness. He talks about general things that make people happy and does not reach a conclusion. Even so, I didn’t think this book was a futile attempt in trying to cover a subject so elusive. It’s quite informative and well researched. And better in not reaching a conclusion or claiming a secret to happiness in my opinion.

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2 people found this helpful

Brilliant book - loved every minute

Fascinating and informative. Dean brings more than a touch of humour to what could be a stuffy subject and I was promoted to laugh out loud at many points.

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Riveting and Educational

Learnt so much I am going to listen again to help me remember as much as I can. It is likely if you meet me over the next few week I will share with you a nugget of insight from this book. Happiness is complex, and this book does not try to simplify it, it really does a fantastic job of explaining what and why things are happening in our brains on a neurologic level, hormones, neurotransmitters, receptors, happiness saturation and apathy, it's all in here and is so well read I thought it was the author reading his own book! Never checked, it caught my eye in the sale and I thought there looks an interesting book, and it was.

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