The Art of Happiness at Work

I misread the title - so to be clear, this is a book about being content literally, at your workplace. Therefore, I was a bit disappointed in the narrow focus of the book. Also, the author provides way too much of a context for each piece of wisdom uttered by the Dali Lama, and hindering the ultimate message.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Very helpful for the working American. Some of our problems are still too complex for anyone to solve or ameliorate. This book helped me pause and look at the bigger picture of where I was headed and where I actually wanted to end up. I felt like this was a more applicable version to city life than "The Art of Happiness".

1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

My main issue with this book was the narration. Dr. Cutler does not have the ability to read this book and keep it interesting. I kept thinking about how bad he was, rather than actually listening to the points. And the guy who does the Dalai Lama...bad. His mouth was so full of spit, it was gross.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

i guess this was ok. As other readers have pointed out, not sure how a guy with "no profession" can give practical advice to those of us in a dog eat dog world, but it was humours and interesting at points. But the narration, and for my money BOTH GUYS, stinks on ice! I couldn't handle them, and stopped solely for that reason.

I really enjoyed this thought-provoking book. The reader who "played" the Dalai Lama was amazing, and really captured his essence. While it may seem that the Dalai Lama would be out of touch with a working western society being a Buddhist monk, Howard Cutler is able to align the thoughts and beliefs of the Dalai Lama with the difficulties experienced by working people to bring relief and understanding to whatever situations may arise. It would be even better to have an unabridged version, but I would listen to it again.

The points made by the Dalai Lama in this book (first half, anyway) were interesting, and maybe useful, but could have been summed up in less than half the time I spent on the first half of this book. I could have done without the additional, clarifying comments by Cutler after the Dalai Lama made a good point - that just annoyed me. What annoyed me most was the reading of Dr. Cutler. He should have chosen someone else to narrate - someone with more tone and inflection. His reading left me feeling like someone was reading from a text, instead of carrying on a conversation, talking with someone. That left me feeling bored, and I found myself tuning him out, which made finishing this book pointless, if I wasn't going to actually listen to it. I finished the first half, but opted to not even try the second.

I tired really hard to make it through this book, but it was so incredibly boring. I did give it 2 stars becuase in between the boredom I did gain a small ounce of insight. The narrator who is also the co-author has an extremely boring voice.

Who doesn't want to drive around with the Dalai Lama all day long? This was a great book for people who aren't very familiar with the Lama's work. He's inspirational, insightful and entertaining.

I wasn't expecting too much, but I really enjoyed this book. I thought having two different readers made it easier to listen to.

I wish I could edit it down to 10 minutes of the most salient points and listen to it on my way to work each day so I could start it off on a better foot.