I feel like this review is liable to have more words in it than the book did. I’m years late to the hygge train – I was vaguely familiar with the concept when it got big in America a couple years ago, but never really paid attention to it. Well, here I am now, and let me make it clear that I am a convert. There’s finally a word for the feeling I feel with candles lit and a thunderstorm outside! That powerful feeling of coziness and well-being. It narrows down the decorating style I’m into and the ways I like to spend my time. Since reading The Little Book of Hygge, I’ve been more cognizant of creating hygge in my life, and more grateful for it when it falls into my lap. Can’t recommend it enough.
But this isn’t a review of hygge, is it? It’s a review of this book, which was just okay. Such a short book should not be tedious, but it was. Half the book is just (I’m sorry, but I’m gonna say it) really boring Danish folk art that’s cute for the first ten pages and then…well, see the cover of the book? That’s also half of the content of the book. It used the same examples of hygge again and again and again, and when it seemed to run out of things to say, it just ended up listing cozy places in Copenhagen and monthly activity ideas – it sounds cute, but somehow by the end of that section I found myself irritated and skeptical of the author’s aggressively twee life that’s apparently nothing but bonfires on the beach with good friends, canning parties with good friends, holidays with good friends, long bike rides with good friends… I feel like it was aiming for aspirational and mostly hit that mark, but toward the end I just felt like a crabby American rolling my eyes.
So, hygge lifestyle: 10/5
This book, but as an article: 4/5
This book as a book: 2/5