I’m not sure I’ve ever before said, “This is a book everyone should read,” but here we are.

HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE has been in my TBR pile for three years. I don’t know how I lost track of it, I’m so sorry I did, and yet deeply grateful to have found it now.

This is an amazing series of stories, reflections, and ideas about aging told through the stories 6 very-senior citizens in NYC. The subjects’ lives are all quite different, and incredibly surprising. The author spent a year interviewing each of them. What he learned runs very contrary to our current cultural disdain and fear of aging, perhaps (he suggests) because most of that comes from middle age people who who are terrified but ill-informed.

The author describes in thoughtful detail the quality of their days and what mattered to them, and how they found meaning and purpose and hope in the midst of all the stresses of late life aging. In this, he was able to look at their lives from their perspective, rather than from his own, which produced many wonderful and encouraging discoveries. It turns out, they mostly liked their lives. They were happy, found ways to be satisfied and things that gave them pleasure from what was available to them, rather than ruminating on what had been lost.

I loved these stories, and underlined something on almost every page.

This book has helped me as I assist my elderly parents - increasing my focus on them as people, rather than getting lost in the problems they need help with, It has also encouraged me as I consider my own journey with aging, and how I can make the choice for happiness now (as the title suggests) in faith that this investment will pay dividends in the years to come.

I will be buying multiple copies to give to my siblings, my husband, other family members. And when the quarantine is over, this will be my #1 book club recommendation.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I apologize ... my life got busy and I forgot to download this book. I'm sorry I missed reading it!

Interesting and engaging read detailing interviews with elderly individuals in their 80s and 90s. Each individual discussed specific information regarding what he/she felt constituted a happy life and advice for others.

I wished I would have read this book before my own grandmother, who would have been 96 this year, passed away. I don't think there's necessarily anything earth shattering, but it would have given me a better insight into how she was feeling and thinking!

John Leland spent a year with 6 very different individuals in New York City all 85 or older. The book could have been shorter because a lot that was in the first half seemed to be reiterated in the second. I did really enjoy the 2nd half because it was separated into chapters focusing on each individual he spent time with. I also liked that those chapters were preceded with a picture of each person.

Over all a good read, especially if you have an elder in your life that you are close to.

Nothing revelatory (you'll find the same information, lessons in other books that detail lives of senior citizens, invalids, people living in retirement homes, close to dying) but inspiring and nicely written.

I am as surprised as John Leland was at the lessons learned when he undertook (as a New York Times journalist) spending a year visiting and interviewing six elderly people. The people chosen were a very diverse group; married, single, several ethnicities, some with health and/or money issues, some without.

He expected to find that the elderly among us are a rather glum, plodding lot, focused on their aches and pains. What he found instead were engaged, vital people, who have learned to take pleasure in the now, because they don't take tomorrow for granted. Overall, he notes that petty distractions seem to have been wiped away, their wants and needs are much more simplified and they are far less interested or caught up in material things. Physical disabilities are taken in stride because it is their normal - they don't fear it. They value their friendships and relationships, but also value their time alone. One participant stated (paraphrasing here) that they felt sorry for the young as they have more worries because they don't know what will happen in the future. Whereas the elderly don't worry about it. They know they can handle life's set-backs as they've been through many. They love that their days are their own to spend how they wish. They are generally happy with their lives; having a greater sense of contentment and are more satisfied with what they have.

I love that John Leland expresses his joy and humbleness at the lessons this group of individuals taught him. He expected to come away from the visits depressed; instead he found he came away refreshed, with a new perspective on his own life. He's lucky to have learned the lessons the elderly can teach us all.

Our American society tends to minimize, and often outright ignore, the elderly. Shame on us!! They have so much to teach us. This book is a good beginning!

Many thanks to NetGalley, John Leland and Sarah Crichton Books for allowing me to read an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Sarah Crichton Books, and John Leland for the opportunity to read and review this book - should be a must read!

John Leland, a journalist for the New York Times, spent a year with a select group of "elders" - those oldest of the old in our society to see what lessons they could impart on the rest of us. What followed is this book - we get a glimpse at our society, the government and families treat this segment of the population and how we can all do better.

What is most to be gained by reading this book is the lesson that we all need to live like we are dying - since we all are. Easier said than done but the small lessons in this book - be grateful, look at what you can do and not what you can't, help others and let others help you - can make big impact in our relationships. Since I have a mother who falls into this demographic, I learned lots of things that I hope will stick and improve my relationship with my mother going forward (although it's great, we're starting to navigate issues foreign to both of us).

Highly recommended!

Happiness Is A Choice You Make is a documentation of a middle-aged man's experiences among six elderly acquaintances about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
If you love the spiritual, self-help, or personal development genre, then this is right up your alley.

A word of warning, though - this is not a book with rah-rah, you-can-do-it, seven-steps-to-greatness ideas. A large chunk of it is full of discussions about diseases, aching bodes, amputated appendages, and death. Yet it is a book brimming with laughter and hope. It is difficult to put into words, but if I would summarise it with fewer words, then this is it - RAW AND REAL. It is for people who love "raw and real".

WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT IT
In an individualistic western culture where elderly advice is not sought often and mostly discarded when it is, I was curious to see a book that wants to engage with a community of the elderly. The demographic it engages is known for its pragmatism and this shows throughout the book. The six elders whose lives are portrayed here do not have anything to sell us and they are not hoping to be celebrities of some kind - they are old, living their lives the way they know how (with all their past mistakes, regrets...) and are in some way preparing for death. In spite of this, they seem to tell us unexpected things about what happiness means to them and how to bask in it. I had a great time with this book and cannot recommend it enough.

WHAT I DO NOT LIKE
Nothing, really.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE
"Since my own marriage had just ended, I asked all the elders the secret to a long relationship. Their answers, invariably, seemed too simple. 'If you’re going to be together, you better have an awful lot in common,' John said. 'And you have to learn that you don’t always agree. We did most of the time. But you don’t make it an issue. If you don’t agree on something, you don’t agree. I was brought up in a household where my father was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and my mother was basically a Republican.'

"This struck me as too little to learn from sixty years together. Everyone knows that they should try to get along. But over the year, the wisdom in John’s remark gradually sunk in. I thought about the times I’d gotten angry that my wife could be so repeatedly wrong about something, despite my efforts to correct her. How could she want to go to Cape Cod on vacation, when she didn’t swim and didn’t like the sun? And what about those times she didn’t want to have sex, just because she was freaking out about work? We argued about the same things year after year, even month after month, rather than just accept the other’s views as valid. Instead we each expected the other to change, and got mad when it didn’t happen.

"John’s insight, then, was not so simple. There’s nothing easy about accepting things that you don’t believe."

.......

Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland hits stores in January 2018, available in all major online book stores.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for review copy.

I am grateful to John Leland for his engagement with “the elders” and for writing this book. As a middle-aged daughter of precariously-healthed parents, I found much to inspire me in “Happiness is a Choice You Make.” I’ve thought about many of the issues he discussed, but found comfort in many more. The day-at-a-time, purpose driven life that seems to drive the engine of the happiest elders is a life to which I aspire.

Happiness is a Choice You Makes is an enjoyable book about the the authors interviews and interactions with several of New York's "oldest old", people over age 85. It was very interesting to hear the author's take on what he learned from these people: what their lives are like, how they feel about being old, and the ways that the find (or struggle with) purpose and satisfaction in their daily lives.

To best sum up:
Be grateful for small things
live for today

I found this book to be very relatable. The lesson I took away from this well-written book is that we do have control over our lives as we age. The oldest of the old are wise and content when they decide what makes them happy and what doesn't. No one ever said growing old was easy but we can do it on our own terms.

A clear guide to taking control of one of the most precious commodity available to any of us - our happiness. Easy for anyone to implement and utterly life changing in many ways.