Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Grechen Rubin | Rating: ★★☆☆☆“How about this,” I suggested. “Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”
As a note, this novel was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for a review. This does not effect my opinions in any way.
I had heard about Gretchen Rubin before, The Happiness Project being one of those books which is surrounded by enormous buzz, but Better Than Before is my first experience with her writing. I have to say that while she is extremely thoughtful and talented, this book wasn't all that good to me. And that's unfortunate, because I had such high hopes for it -- alas, some things just aren't meant to be everyone's cup of tea and this simply wasn't mine.
The weird thing is, though, when the book shined and was truly helpful, boy was it good. There are quite a few passages here and there that I marked and wrote down because they are helpful and beautiful, but it just couldn't save the rest of it for me personally. I guess this goes to show that even if the book isn't entirely for you, you can still almost always find bits here and there that speak to you in a way that the rest neglects to.
