Wednesday, May 27, 2009

14,000 things to be happy about

I saw in an article the other day that there is a book called 14,000 things to be happy about. So I searched Amazon and sure enough there it was. The author is Barbara Ann Kipfer. She is also the author of The 1325 Buddhist ways to be happy, 1,400 things for kids to be happy about, and 4,000 questions for getting to know anyone.

Here's my thoughts. Thinking of things to be happy about, great. Making a list and spending some time focusing on them, great. Sharing those things with your friends and family and finding out what makes them happy, great. Writing them in a book and charging people money to read them, lame.

I applaud Ms. Kipfer because she has found a way to make money for herself and she probably feels like her books are uplifting and help people out. However, if I ran a book store I would never carry this book or any of the other three titles I mentioned. I bet any of you reading this blog could write any of these books and have them finished in a week or two. If I was an author I would probably be very frustrated that books like this would make it on the shelf next to mine.

What do you think? Would you be interested in reading these books or do you think you could write them yourself? Am I being to hard on her? Any other ridiculous books out there that you've seen?