Title: TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS (10th Anniversary Edition): ADVICE FROM DEAR SUGAR by Cheryl Strayed
Book Beginnings quote:
Friday56 quote:
Summary:
For more than a decade, thousands of people have sought advice from Dear Sugar--the pseudonym of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed--first through her online column at The Rumpus, later through her hit podcast, Dear Sugars, and now through her popular Substack newsletter. Tiny Beautiful Things collects the best of Dear Sugar in one volume, bringing her wisdom to many more readers. This tenth-anniversary edition features six new columns and a new preface by Strayed. Rich with humor, insight, compassion--and absolute honesty--this book is a balm for everything life throws our way. (Publisher)
Review: Last year I had to have physical therapy for several months. My physical therapist was a traveling PT, a person who traveled light with few strings. We would chat as she delivered my treatments but found we didn't have a lot in common. She did read, however. Books to the rescue again. She wanted to know all the titles I could recommend and in return I asked what she recommended. Tiny Beautiful Things was her reply. I hadn't heard of the book but I knew the author, Cheryl Strayed, from her memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I immediately added the book to my TBR pile of books I hoped to read soon. I am so glad I did.
Tiny Beautiful Things, the 10th anniversary edition: Advice from Dear Sugar has aged very well. I was touched by every single answer 'Sugar' gave her readers. At the time of her writing this column few people had heard of Cheryl Strayed because her very popular book Wild hadn't been published yet. I couldn't believe at the deftness with which she as Sugar got to the bottom of each problem/question. She was like the best counselor helping her patients to realize they were focusing on the wrong issue or catching them in their own deceptions. She was brilliant.
My favorite pieces of advice from Sugar were those related to grief. In the Friday56 quote the questioner, Stuck, asks if it is okay to still grieve long after the death of a baby from miscarriage. Another questioner asks Sugar how he can go on living after the death of his young adult son. A husband wonders how he can help his wife with her grief over the premature death of her mother, a mother-in-law he never met but a person whose presence is large in their marriage. Sugar's replies to all these people were so spot on, so perfect, so personal. I cry just thinking about the replies. To Stuck, she first expresses how sorry she is that her baby died. Then Sugar goes on to remind Stuck that people who tell her to get over it have not really ever suffered. "They live on Planet Earth, while you live on Planet My Baby Died." She goes on to encourage the reader to find other people who live on the same planet, who have experienced the death of a child. These are the people she needs right now.
In fact, Sugar's advice, often accompanied by stories from Sugar's own life, often points the reader to seek help. No wonder people wrote in to Dear Sugar seeking help. What a comfort her advice must have been to these people. And the advice was also practical. To the husband whose wife grieved her dead mother, she advised him to say he was sorry over and over. And also to bring up the mother conversations -- "I know your mother would be so proud of how you handled that situation at work". He couldn't undo his wife's grief but he could let her know how much he cared.
I listened to the audiobook of Tiny Beautiful Things which was narrated by Cheryl Strayed. It was a perfect decision to have the author, Sugar herself, read out the advice she had given her readers. Everything about the experience was so authentic. I'm sorry I missed the book when it was first published in 2012, but I am so glad I found it after it's 2022 reissue, which has a few updates and additions from the original.
My rating: 5 stars, the only 5-star book I've read all month.
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| My first book of the 2024 Big Book Summer Challenge, 400 pages. |
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