Get Happy
The New Yorker|October 23, 2023
The business of contentment.
ANTHONY LANE
Get Happy

into the on a Tuesday morning, you decide that your self needs all the help it can get. But where to turn? You were reading James Clear's "Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones" and doing well until you spilled half a bottle of Knob Creek over the last sixty pages. Now you'll never know how it ends. You tried listening to David Goggins's "Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds," on Audible, in your car, but so thrilling was Goggins's prose style that you stomped on the gas and rear-ended a Tesla. Do not despair, though. Succor is at hand. Roosting on Amazon's best-seller list is "Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier," by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey (Portfolio).

At this point, your conscience rebels. By buying a book on Amazon, you tell yourself, you will be directly funding a new angora lining for Jeff Bezos's monogrammed slippers in the master bedroom of his private yacht-not the main one but the backup vessel currently moored off Patmos. Quivering with righteousness, you close your laptop and stride to your nearest bookstore, only to bump into a dilemma: whereabouts in the store, exactly, can "Build the Life You Want" be found? It is not an easy volume to place.

This story is from the October 23, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.

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This story is from the October 23, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

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