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Oliver Burkeman: The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (2012, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 5 stars

A witty, fascinating, and counterintuitive read that turns decades of self-help advice on its head …

A Surprisingly Uncynical - and Delicious - Antidote to Poisonous Positive Thinking

5 stars

Starting with the subtitle, "The Antidote" positions itself against "positive thinking" - the sort of mind-over-matter faith in the future that pretty much every other self-help book espouses, a doctrine that author Burkeman neatly and thoroughly dismantles with copious endnotes. But there's no lazy cynicism here, in a search for happiness via unconventional and counterintuitive ways, and a surprising amount of, well, positivity. From Seneca and the Stoics to memento mori's and a shrine to Saint Death, Burkeman guides the reader on a whistle-stop tour of philosophies that reorient our ideas about happiness, success or even the self. I absolutely devoured it - it's also, in parts, very funny! - and think it might become an annual read, or at least a great starting point on further reading.

Perusing Rambling Readers is getting expensive. This is the second book I've bought this week after seeing reviews on Rambling Readers.

I recently read "Four Thousand Weeks" and was surprised that, although many of Burkeman's conclusions aligned with Stoic teaching, I remember no explicit mention of Stoicism in the text. It will be interesting to read this book and then go back and read "Four Thousand Weeks" again and see what changed in the nine years in-between.