Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Published 2006 · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Psychology, Science & Nature
How hard is Stumbling on Happiness to read?
Stumbling on Happiness scores 27 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 30 out of 100
- Accessible popular science. Technical concepts explained with humor.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Cognitive science concepts grounded in everyday examples.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Rich with research findings presented entertainingly.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Gilbert builds arguments through jokes and examples before revealing the point.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- Analytical and humorous rather than symbolic.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Self-deprecating humor and ironic commentary on human foolishness.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Each chapter builds to clear conclusions.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Clear chapter-by-chapter progression through related topics.
How Stumbling on Happiness is regarded
Stumbling on Happiness holds a literary regard score of 43 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.