Book #113: The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell

I chose this book for our family book club for October, and I even got Tommy to read it (and agree to lead our family discussion!). Helen Russell moved to Denmark from England with her husband and basically wrote this book about why Danish people are the happiest people in the world. She takes a different topic each month and interviews people and talks to them about how Danes are unique in that aspect (like, how they raise their kids or how they deal with their health), and how those things affect their happiness or the happiness of the country as a whole. She talks about their work-life balance, the country's safety net and welfare state, their relationship between the genders, etc. I appreciated that she doesn't just make it seem like a perfect utopia--like, everyone talks about Denmark's perfect gender equality, but it obviously isn't perfect, and she talks about the downsides of it too and the places where it's still failing. But I really liked learning about Denmark's culture a little bit more and seeing what they do there and what they take for granted as opposed to in our society. I wished there were more things that could be a little more applicable to us, since a lot of them felt like things that were more circumstantial to Denmark and not things we could take and apply to ourselves (like the welfare state and the homogenous society and even the possible gene that makes you happier). She does have a handy list at the end that you can get quick tips from for making yourself happier like Danes, although the main one is "Trust more" and I have no idea how you're supposed to do that, haha. I felt like this book could have been 100 pages shorter and still relatively informative and more interesting. It honestly felt too long and I felt like some of the time when she was writing she felt like she was trying too hard to be funny. There were lots--LOTS--of asides and witty comments and it seriously could have been toned down a little bit. Is that something about the British humor or something? I don't know, it just felt a little overdone in this book. I liked learning through this book though and I enjoyed it overall, though it probably wasn't my favorite ever (because of it feeling a little too long).