Synopses & Reviews
From beloved author and columnist Anna Quindlen, comes two timeless bestsellers,
A Short Guide to a Happy Life, and
Being Perfect. These two treasures are now packaged together and make the perfect gift for someone special.
In A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Anna Quindlen 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? Here, Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living.
In Being Perfect, Anna Quindlen shares wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about “the perfection trap,” the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free. Quindlen believes that when your success looks good to the world but doesnt feel good in your heart, it isnt success at all.
She asks you to set aside your friends advice, what your family and co-workers demand, and what society expects, and look at the choices you make every day. When you ask yourself why you are making them, Quindlen encourages you to give this answer: For me. “Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am. . . . That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.”
At the core of this beautiful book lies the secret of authentic success, the inspiration to embrace your own uniqueness and live the life that is undeniably your own, rich in fulfillment and meaning.
Synopsis
At the heart of this beautiful and insightful book about how to shape a life that is meaningful to you is "the perfection trap" and how to avoid falling into it. Like
A Short Guide to a Happy Life,
Being Perfect provides wise, practical advice on living, with an important twist.
In Being Perfect, Quindlen pinpoints, and invites us to laugh at, a lifestyle that has become all too familiar one that emphasizes the pursuit of perfection in the eyes of others, the conquest of the world's good opinion, rather than focusing on the most important goal of all, "Giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
Beautifully written and designed, with evocative photographs, this treasure of a book gives inspiring guidance on how to create a life that is uniquely yours, a life fulfilling despite its flaws, a life that comes from the center of you.
Synopsis
Anna Quindlen offers deep truths from her life to motivate and inspire you to become your most authentic self. "Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and its good opinion. . . . What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
In Being Perfect, Anna Quindlen shares wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about "the perfection trap," the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free. Quindlen believes that when your success looks good to the world but doesn't feel good in your heart, it isn't success at all.
She asks you to set aside your friends' advice, what your family and co-workers demand, and what society expects, and look at the choices you make every day. When you ask yourself why you are making them, Quindlen encourages you to give this answer: For me. "Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am. . . . That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart."
At the core of this beautiful book lies the secret of authentic success, the inspiration to embrace your own uniqueness and live the life that is undeniably your own, rich in fulfillment and meaning.
Synopsis
The bestselling novelist and author of the phenomenal bestseller A Short Guide to a Happy Life returns with more irresistible advice and wisdom. At the heart of this beautiful and insightful book about how to shape a life with meaning is the perfection trap, and how to avoid falling into it.
Synopsis
A few times in your life, someone will tell you something so right, so deeply true that it changes you forever. That is what Anna Quindlen, author of the timeless bestseller
A Short Guide to a Happy Life, does here.
In Being Perfect, she shares wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about “the perfection trap,” the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free. Quindlen believes that when your success looks good to the world but doesnt feel good in your heart, it isnt success at all.
She asks you to set aside your friends advice, what your family and co-workers demand, and what society expects, and look at the choices you make every day. When you ask yourself why you are making them, Quindlen encourages you to give this answer: For me. “Because they are what I want, or wish for. Because they reflect who and what I am. . . . That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart.”
At the core of this beautiful book lies the secret of authentic success, the inspiration to embrace your own uniqueness and live the life that is undeniably your own, rich in fulfillment and meaning.
About the Author
Anna Quindlen is the author of four novels Blessings, Black and Blue, One True Thing, Object Lessons and five nonfiction books: Loud and Clear, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and How Reading Changed My Life. She has also written two childrens books: The Tree That Came to Stay and Happily Ever After. Her New York Times column "Public and Private" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek.