Happiness TM is like taking Coupland's social commentary & apocalyptic ideas, mixing it with Adams' brand of "oh look at me taking the piss out of my self importance", factor in Vonnegut's optimistic negativity & mix with a double shot of Thank You For Smoking, only replace a tobacco insider with an editor... I can go on forever like this but all this requires a frame of reference.

The idea is brilliant, I cannot think of a better apocalypse for a satire than mass-happiness. Cynical yet uplifting, corny yet unexpected, having the sort of narrative causality that will slaughter common sense & with a good dose of bite-sized pop wisdom that begs to be quoted. Consider:

"The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are."

There is much to be enjoyed in this book if you don't let that sometimes ingratiating tone get to you.

Oh. Also not recommended if you are any of these categories : hippies, capitalists, Buddhists, people who are in love with the concept of Heaven. Sorry. ( )

I got this book not knowing what to expect. I was just looking for something new to read. I hadn't heard of the book or the novelist before. I was pleasantly surprised. "Happiness" is a funny parody of the publishing industry--more specifically self help industry. While I didn't laugh out loud while reading this book, I did find myself feeling amused much of the time. ( )

Funny and fantastic, the author imagines a world without any need for self-improvement because one book has worked for everyone. Instead of peace and prosperity, the world turns into a realm of blissful robots living in communes. Makes thought-provoking arguments about bliss vs. happiness, how life is inherently short on joy, and why our constant yearnings are actually good for the world. ( )

Protagonist: Edwin de Valu, low-level editor for Panderic Press
Setting: present-day, an unnamed city that's the publishing center of the US
Fiction/Standalone

First Line: Grand Avenue cuts through the very heart of the city, from 71st Street all the way to the harbourfront, and although it is eight lanes wide, with a treed boulevarde running down the middle, the Avenue feels claustrophobic and narrow.

Edwin de Valu, a low-level editor for Panderic Press, is usually stuck editing the self help books for the publishing house's catalog. He's also responsible for slogging through his fair share of the slush pile--all the unsolicited manuscripts that come to Panderic daily. Just before a meeting with the chief editor, Edwin takes a look at a gargantuan thousand-page typewritten manuscript. Not finding a self-addressed, stamped envelope in which to put the form letter turndown, he simply dumps the manuscript in the trash. At the meeting, he's told that the very foundation stone of their self-help catalogue, "Mr. Ethics" himself, has been arrested for income tax evasion (and for burying IRS agents in his backyard). Edwin is given the task of finding a self-help book to replace Mr. E's, and the only thing he can come up with is the monster he threw in the wastebasket. After all, there may be a way he can prune it down to 300 pages. He has no idea what he's about to unleash upon the country.

Canadian Will Ferguson credits a book publicist with the idea for his first novel. The publicist said, "I'll tell you one thing. If anyone ever wrote a self-help book that actually worked, we'd all be in trouble." I have to admit that I read the entire book with one particular friend in mind: one who openly expresses a loathing for self-help books. (It's not a favorite of mine either.) By page 27, I knew I was hooked: Panderic publishes the "Chicken Broth" series of books, and book #217 is titled Chicken Broth for Your Fallen Arches. The chief editor of Panderic gathers awed looks and hushed whispers: he spent six years as a fact-checker for Tom Clancy.

Ferguson's thoughts on how a country could collapse if given a self-help book that actually works are funny and also very thought-provoking when carried through to the idea of what happiness really means. Although it bogged down a bit after the book was published and became a runaway success, I still found it a hilarious satire on the world of publishing and the human condition. ( )

This book was given to me before a trip that I was taking, and I got a little emabarrassed because I kept laughing at the book while on the filght.

The humor is very black, but it makes you question what being happy really means. ( )