What We're Reading: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott
From the author who taught us that writing and life was best accomplished "bird by bird", or one slow mindful step at a time, comes her message of finding hope in the midst of chaos. Published in 2018, readers today in pandemic spring will recognize themselves in the first sentence: "I am stockpiling antibiotics for the apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen."
Title: Almost Everything: Notes on Hope
Author: Anne Lamott
Genre: Self-help book, Memoir, Essays
Read Great Things 2020 Categories: A book of short stories or essays; A book suggested by a Durham Tech Librarian
This book was read by Susan Baker, Reference Librarian.
Why did you choose to read, listen to, or watch this?
When I saw this book patiently waiting for a reader in my public library's Overdrive online books, it was the right book at the right time, a message from an old friend.
Note: Overdrive is available through most public libraries--ask if you'd like us to point you in the right direction. If you've already got a library card, you can look up the Libby app (which works with Overdrive).
What did you like about it?
Every day I compulsively check the news. Every day the headlines are scarier, more dire, uncertainty building on uncertainty. I needed to read about hope. Or how someone else, anyone else, had found it.
For me, reading anything by Anne Lamont is like visiting someone you feel you must have known for years, someone who writes with her heart wide open and all her scars showing--years of poverty, mental health challenges, life as a single mother--nothing is hidden. She's willing to dig deep into her hopes, dreams, frustrations, spiritual musings, into her own personal crazy, and take her readings with her. You can follow her down the rabbit hole of her wonderings and believe or not, agree or not…but she just might make you feel a little less alone. And she's funny. You just want to embrace someone who can laugh at herself the way Lamott does.
What feeling did it leave you with?
I left this book feeling there was more space in my thoughts for some bigger ideas about how we move through our lives, always seeking and sometimes finding hope, and reminded that we're all alone in this together.
Who would you recommend this to?
Anyone who needs to look for a little light and enjoys the very personal shared journey characteristic of Lamott should check out this book. You'll like it. You may even cling to it.
In all fairness, it's not for everyone. Lamott is both highly progressive and hugely spiritual. She is very clear that readers may not share her beliefs, but her beliefs, wide and inclusive and far reaching as they are, do permeate this and all her works. Also, she rambles. Her logic train always takes the scenic route, and this may prove challenging for readers who like their ideas straight to the point, straight scotch in a glass with no ice.
What would you pair this with?
I would pair this book with a glass of wine from Northern California (where she lives) and a crazy quilt made by someone's grandmother-- bright and warm and jumbled. I'd dig out an old tie dye shirt, draw a peace sign on it, and hold an old cat in the warm sun, with "Imagine" by John Lennon playing in the background.
Are there any books, podcasts, or films you'd recommend to someone who liked this?
Well, if you need some more Anne Lamott, she does TED Talks, too!
And if you want to learn more about the author, The New York Times calls her
the "leftie guru of optimism."
If you like this book or the idea of it, there are several other uplifting reads you might also seek out.
And if you're in the mood for a little poetry, you can check out some Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" both on the Poetry Foundation's website and a neat little video the library's Facebook page posted.
Anything else?
Because we began this review considering our search for hope, and because we need hope now maybe more than ever in our lives, let me end with this well known quote that speaks to this, from Bird by Bird, an earlier book by Lamott:
"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."
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