Books I Love-- PART ONE (these books are meant for adults not my younger friends).

I think about this book every day. I think this book combined with Taylor Swift's cannon has given me the map to navigate anything. It's a Guide for Life. I reread it over and over. If I had to pick a favorite book, it might be Little Weirds.

From Amazon: Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times best seller about love, heartbreak, and being alive - "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders). 

You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of Obvious Child. But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed. 

I loved every page of this book by ebullient Molly. It's about loving people even when they have flaws, overcoming insurmountable grief, and putting yourself out there. It's a master class in resilience.

The Blurb--

At age four, Molly Shannon's world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress.

From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly! spans Molly's time on Saturday Night Live—where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother.

Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly!, written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

"When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron is a book that really helps with radical acceptance and dealing with hard changes in life.

Amazon describes it as a transformative guide that draws on Buddhist teachings to offer practical advice on facing life's inevitable challenges. Chodron explores the nature of suffering and impermanence, urging readers to embrace difficulties as opportunities for growth. The book emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and meditation in cultivating a compassionate and resilient mindset. Chodron's teachings inspire a shift in perspective, encouraging readers to find peace and wisdom in the midst of chaos and uncertainty.

This book is quality beach reading. It was an easy, fun read based in London that resonates for anyone who has to date on-line or experiences changes in friendship as life changes.

Summary from Good Reads: Nina Dean has arrived at her early thirties as a successful food writer with loving friends and family, plus a new home and neighbourhood. When she meets Max, a beguiling romantic hero who tells her on date one that he's going to marry her, it feels like all is going to plan.

A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.

Dolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.

This short little book was a game changer for me, particularly helping me learn to not take behavior personally and to redefine what "doing my best" entails.

A description of the book reads: "In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

Don Miguel Ruiz has dedicated his life to sharing the wisdom of the ancient Toltec. For more than two decades, he has guided others toward their personal freedom. Today, he continues to combine his unique blend of ancient wisdom and modern-day awareness through journeys to sacred sites around the world."

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner - This is a beautiful novel my Dad once told me was one of his favorites. It's a beautiful story about marriage and death. The blurb says " 'One of the finest American authors of the 20th century, Wallace Stegner compiled an impressive collection of accolades during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a National Book Award, and three O. Henry Awards. His final novel, Crossing to Safety is the quiet yet stirring tale of two couples that meet during the Great Depression and form a lifelong bond."

This I do the audible version of when I feel gloomy. It's a combination of new age concepts and CBT, and I let it wash over me but take it with a grain of salt. But I kind of think it's....working?!!!

Summary from Amazon: Super Attractor, Gabrielle Bernstein lays out the essential methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams. 

This book is a journey of remembering where your true power lies. You'll learn how to co-create the life you want. You'll accept that life can flow, that attracting is fun, and that you don't have to work so hard to get what you want. Most important, you'll feel good. And when you feel good, you'll give off a presence of joy that elevates everyone around you. 

I love all Sally Rooney books so it was hard to choose. This is just Part 1. I loved Frances.

The summary: A sharply intelligent novel about friendship, lust, jealousy, and the unexpected complications of adulthood in the 21st century

Frances is a cool-headed and darkly observant young woman vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend and comrade-in-arms is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, Frances and Bobbi catch the eye of Melissa, a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into Melissa's world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband, Nick. However amusing and ironic Frances and Nick's flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy, and Frances' friendship with Bobbi begins to fracture. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally, terribly, with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile her inner life to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances' intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gemlike precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth and the messy edges of female friendship.

Great story of Marblehead native Rob Delaney. A “hilarious, raw” (Rolling Stone) memoir about love, sex, parenthood, work, substance abuse, and everything else that makes life wonderful and/or horrible. I love all the North Shore stories.

The description-- Rob Delaney is a comedy superstar. In his first book, he traces his journey from middle-class theater geek to public menace to devoted family man and passionately engaged model citizen - from his youthful obsession (and pen pal relationship) with heavy metal band Danzig and an episode of drunken bungee jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, to his court-ordered stint in rehab and the miracle of his son’s birth. All together, these essays make clear why it is he is so darn lovable - and so funny.

"Magnificent." (People Magazine) The instant New York Times best seller: laugh-out-loud, deeply insightful, and emotion-filled essays from multitalented actress, comedian, podcaster, and writer Casey Wilson.

Casey Wilson is my parasocial best friend (we all have them). I love her to the Moon and to Saturn and every essay in this book made me laugh.

In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human

nature.

Whether she’s extolling the virtues of eating in bed, processing the humiliation over her father’s late in life perm, mourning her mother's passing, or revealing her patented method for keeping the mystery alive in a marriage, Casey is witty, candid, and full of poignant and funny surprises. Humorous dives into her obsessions and areas of personal expertise - self-help, nice guys, cool girls (not her) and how to receive visitors in the bath - are matched by touching meditations on female friendship, anger, grief, motherhood, and identity. 

Reading The Wreckage of My Presence is like spending time with a close friend - a deeply passionate, full-tilt, joyous, excessive, compulsive, shameless, hungry-for-it-all, loyal, cheerleading friend. A friend who is ready for any big feelings that come her way - and isn’t afraid to embrace them.

There are many more, these are just a few

Let me know any books you loved or have made an impact on you

Does Reading a Book Cure Most Problems?

• Yes
• No

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