Zindel V. Segal

Very insightful, and with loads of respect for people struggling with depression. They really know their audience. A tad repetitive, but well, that's meditation for you.

The little stories about people trying the techniques got on my nerves a bit, to me they felt like sales pitches instead of examples.

This book has great insights, but is too abstract to start meditation. I hear there's a companion workbook, which I will be checking out.

I'll definitely read this one again, it feels like one of those books you can read again and again and you'll pick up something different each time.… (more)

This has taken a long time for me to read, although I would've finished it earlier if I had realized how close I was finishing (after 83% it's pretty much resources). I started per friend's recommendation when I was suffering from depression. And the book helped. I wasn't very good at doing the exercises, but the book gave me ideas. My problem was that the book was somewhat long winded sometimes... It's good that there are examples, but they went on and on. Also the chapters were super long, which wasn't the easiest thing to deal with while your functionality is low. Of course the book mentions that you should actually follow it when you're feeling better and that while suffering from depression, it might be too much. Also, I don't think I'm chronically unhappy, my depression was directly related to my PhD, so maybe I'm not totally the target group. However, I think the methods described here would work (or are working, I'm just doing it through Headspace) for me as well. Probably would work for most people.

TL;DR: I think the meat of the book was interesting, but the way it was presented was not best suited for me.… (more)