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I really enjoyed this book.

I’ve been paying more and more mind to my own mental health over the last few years, and am on something of a journey of discovery with it. I’ve been reading and learning a lot about mindfulness, meditation, stress management, burnout, trauma recovery, yoga, and the whole gamut of topics around the free flowing concept of happiness.

This book was a refreshing break from that genre of happiness pornography.

This book is lighter than that, less highfalutin and much more fun.

Bill takes us through a collection of rather more tangible and explicit things he has found to bring smiles to his bearded face, through the lens of recounting to us the stories of how he came upon these divine-sent talismans of contentedness.

As Bill himself says in Chapter 2: “Regarding the positive thinking bandwagon, I’ve no quibble with the defined precepts such as ‘don’t judge others’, ‘stay optimistic’ etc, but in my experience, something less high minded and more mundane like “always put the lids back on jars” will often elicit the same amount of well-being” - and this pearl early on in the book very much sets the tone for how we will proceed.

For this book, a yoga mat will not be required - nor a background in buddhist philosophy.

I’ve always been a fan of Bill, from growing up watching his standup sets late night on Paramount Comedy channel in the UK, when I should have been in bed early for school the next day, through Black Books and up to having seen him live a little while back. With him mostly off our screens these days this book was, for me, a welcome return of his voice into my life.

Wow. I loved this book. Such an honest and frank depiction of a hell of a life so far.

I'm broadly familair with Limmy's work, mostly through YouTube, through the word of mouth of a few Scottish friends - bu I wasn't an expert on him as I went into this.

I chose this book as I am focusing more and more on mental health as I get older, and a good friend who knows me well recommended this book, as he suggested that Limmy has a lot of the same traits - and struggles with them - that I have.

The friend was absolutely correct and actually, reading this book through, it was startling how much my life has in common with Limmy's - not only our mental health struggles but even our upbringing, our career paths, our outlook.

I didn't know I was going to see so much of myself in him - or him in myself before I read this but I was glad I did. I am not alone. None of us are alone.

Thank you Limmy for sharing your story.

Conflicting feelings about this book.

There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.

I liked the darkness of it.

I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.

But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.

This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.

I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't quite gel with it; honestly if it weren't so short I probably wouldn't have even finished it.