Review: Joyful (by Ingrid Fetell Lee)

My Rating:  4 stars

Full disclosure:  self-help books aren't usually my cup of tea.  Not that there is anything wrong with self-help books, it's just that I usually don't get much out of these types of books, for one, and two, non-fiction books of any kind generally take me much longer to read, so I prefer not to spend precious reading time on them when I could use that time to instead choose something from my mile-high, teetering TBR stack. Given this context, I very likely would not have picked up Ingrid Fettell Lee's Joyful on my own if it hadn't been chosen as a monthly read for one of my book clubs. While the subject matter (the aesthetics of joy and how to find it in our surroundings) is one that I'm definitely interested in reading about (which usually also plays a huge role in whether I choose to read a non-fiction book or not), I worried about the timing and the impact to my already tightly-packed reading schedule.  

Now that I've finished, I'm actually glad I decided to pick this one up, as I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.  I think this was due to the fact that I didn't approach this book from a "self-help" perspective in terms of how I could apply the author's advice to bring more joy into my own life, but rather, I went into it from the perspective of a "fascinating learning experience" about the aesthetics of joy and examples of how each element manifests itself in the real world.  Prior to this, I had never read a book that broke down the elements of joy in such detail and I definitely learned a lot, even though some of the examples that the author provided didn't have much practical application for me personally.  My favorite chapter was the one about "play", probably because I could relate most to what was described in there, but I also liked the later chapters where the author brought all the concepts together and showed us how to recognize the different aesthetics in a single environment.

Another aspect I liked about this book was the writing, which flowed seamlessly and, perhaps most importantly, was accessible.  For me, the way a non-fiction book is written has a huge impact on whether that particular book will be a "hit" or a "miss" for me (even if he subject matter is one that I'm interested in). What I appreciated about Joyful is that it didn't feel overly scientific when I was reading it, even though some parts of it did cite statistics and results of scientific research.  While the book did take me longer to read than usual, tit wasn't because the concepts were hard to understand or anything — rather, I tend to take longer to read non-fiction books overall because of my own obsession with absorbing every single detail so as to make it worth my while, which of course requires additional focus and concentration on my part.

I'm definitely glad I read this one and would definitely recommend it, especially to those who like reading non-fiction.  While each person's reaction to the concepts that Ingrid Fettell Lee presents here will undoubtedly vary (especially depending on whether you've read other works on the same subject in the past or not), I liked this one more than some of the other "self-help" books I've read.  Also, given the year I've had, I feel it's quite appropriate that I got the chance to incorporate a book about joy into my reading journey, regardless of whether the concepts covered in the book "helped" me or not.  A worthwhile read overall!