The Joy of Worry

by Ellis Weiner, Roz Chast (Illustrator)

Stressed out? Wringing your hands? Great! You're on the path to success, enlightenment, and happiness. Author Ellis Weiner and illustrator Roz Chast, experts in the field of fretting, reveal how to maximize worry, harness its power, and achieve personal goals -- wealth, great sex, safer driving, and world travel. Through focused worrying, dedicated practitioners not only lose weight, they even control exactly where they will shed the pounds. And if they're pregnant, they can worry for two! Let us now abandon our quest for inner peace and embrace that gnawing tension!

Genres: Humor

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2004

Reviews

[elstaffe]

Art was fun, the rest didn't work for me all that much (but humor is subjective, your mileage may be better, etc).

Pull quotes/notes
"The following three excerpts are taken from the ancient Chinese text known as The Art of the Vexatious. Thought to have been written and circulated around 460 B.C., it became the basis of the universally practiced martial art Tai Kwan D'uh-oh. The book takes the form of a series of poetic epigrams addressed to a warlord, whom the author refers to as 'Noble Worrier.'" (40) oh boy. Everyone knows that punching down is the funniest when it's racist! At least he didn't go with "Confucius say"

"ARTISTIC: Worry and obsess about something weird. The artist is assumed to be the hyper-individualist, the one who can afford to embody qualities the rest of us can't. Openly fret about some private, kooky concern.
You say: 'How would life be if you could close your ears but not your eyes?'" (72) this one did genuinely make me think about the world would be different if this were true for every single person. Not just the close your wars part, but the inability to close your eyes part

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very silly, entertaining book about worrying about anything and everything. While this could have just been a few cartoons, it was still fun to page through, and it made me realize the futility of worrying about lots of things that take up space in my head. I thought it was written by Roz Chast, but it was only illustrated by her.

[Charity · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I absolutely love the illustrator, Roz Chast. Her illustrations didn’t disappoint. There were definitely some funny, relatable things in the book but at the end, it felt like it probably could have been condensed into a pamphlet, of some sort, and said the same thing.

[Millie · Rating 1 out of 5]

not funny, very thin

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, it was ok. Some chapters were pretty funny but in other chapters the joke stretched thin.

[mehg-hen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fun and the drawings are great. The different levels of worry are very fun and you will laugh.