A Short Guide to a Happy Life
by Anna Quindlen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anna QuindlenEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2000-10-31
ISBN: 0375504613
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of A Short Guide to a Happy Life
Book Review: A GREAT graduation gift
Summary: 5 Stars
I highly recommend this book as a graduation gift, wedding gift, and as a gift to new mothers! I love it! Every now & then I get it off the shelf and read it ALOUD to myself...it is much more powerful when read aloud. Anna Qundlen's words of wisdom put everything in perspective and get me back on track to being the mother, wife, and friend I want to be, but often lose sight of in my hectic life. It is a quick read and very inspirational.
Summary of A Short Guide to a Happy Life
"I'm not particularly qualified by profession or education to give advice and counsel," confesses author Anna Quindlen, as she begins this tender little instruction book. "It's widely known in a small circle that I make a mean tomato sauce, and I know many inventive ways to hold a baby while nursing, although I haven't had the opportunity to use any of them in years."It is precisely this commonplace form of wisdom that make readers trust and respect Quindlen. She uses her candid, heart-to-heart narrative voice along with her novel-writer descriptive skills to show readers how good we have it: "Life is made up of moments, small pieces of mica in a long stretch of glittering gray cement." Later she urges readers to "Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face." The format smacks of "gift book," with an abundance of pleasing, artsy photographs. Don't be ashamed to fall for the packaging, though. This is one of those books that could remain in the living room for years or in the family for generations. --Gail Hudson
"Life is made of moments, small pieces of silver amidst long stretches of tedium. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won't happen. We have to teach ourselves now to live, really live...to love the journey, not the destination."
In this treasure of a book, Anna Quindlen, the bestselling novelist and columnist, reflects on what it takes to "get a life"—to live deeply every day and from your own unique self, rather than merely to exist through your days. "Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us," Quindlen writes, "because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives." Her mother died when Quindlen was nineteen: "It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason....I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted." But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? In A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living.
In this unusual and beautiful book, Anna Quindlen reflects on what it takes to "get a life" -- to live deeply and uniquely, rather than to exist through our days. "Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us", Quindlen writes, "because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives...". Quindlen's mother died when Anna was 19, and Quindlen says her life divided, then, in half -- into Before, and After; and in this book she offers a vision of how she began to live After. "I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted". But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? Beautifully designed, with evocative photographs, "A Short Guide to a Happy Life" offers guidance on how to live with awareness, and the vitality that comes from knowing how to look at the view.
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