"I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen," Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything. Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest--when we are, as she puts it, "doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated"--the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. "All truth is paradox," Lamott writes, "and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change." That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but "to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'"

In this profound and funny book, Lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward. ( )

Did I read this when it first came out in print? I think so, but hearing [a:Anne Lamott|7113|Anne Lamott|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1489601640p2/7113.jpg] read it aloud...that was delicious. And a dose of Hope is never too early or too late, so why not begin this year here? ( )

Read my interview with Lamott here: https://electricliterature.com/anne-lamott-on-how-to-hang-on-to-hope-51c708bae71...

Here's the intro I wrote for the interview:

If the bleak daily news cycle has you grasping for some comfort, you’re not alone. Google searches for “anxiety symptoms” hit an all-time high in October, according to Google Trends. With the swearing-in of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and news that climate disaster is closer than we thought, hope may be the farthest idea from our minds.

It’s easy to assume that the only people who possess cheery thoughts like hope are those willfully not paying attention. But as Anne Lamott shows us in her essay collection, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, faith can exist side-by-side with uncertainty, as humor can with doom.

Almost Everything, as you might expect from the title, includes a little bit of everything, connected by the central threads of humor and resilience against adversity. The essays in the collection are small morsels, offering tastes of Lamott’s wisdom about enduring themes like faith and family.

The rest of Lamott’s oeuvre spans decades and genres. Her first novel, Hard Laughter, was published in 1980. Since then, Lamott has published 18 books, including novels and essay collections. While her welcoming style often uses wit, she has covered topics, like alcoholism and cancer, that many other writers find difficult to render on the page, much less joke about.

It’s more important than ever to find humor in the darkness. As many of us stand up to resist ingrained systems of oppression, whether in the voting booth or in our daily lives, with each setback, it becomes easier to see the problems of our time as insurmountable. But if we lose hope, we’ll stop fighting, and our struggle will have been for nothing.

Almost Everything offers a dose of levity, but it doesn’t stray from the truth. At a time when many of us, myself included, require that kind of irrepressible wit just to get by, I had the privilege of talking to Lamott about her new book, writing, and staying hopeful in these uncertain times. ( )

I couldn't get past page 85. For the first two chapters, the author's rants about everything and anything were cute. After that, nothing new was said. I didn't pay to be this author's therapist. ( )

This is a collection of somewhat random essays and thoughts about hope, in various contexts. Written from a loosely Christian perspective without any preaching, this doesn't say anything new but expresses familiar ideas in different ways.

The essence of the book is to take each moment as it comes, and to accept ourselves and each other, knowing we are loved. The only people the author judges are fundamentalists of almost any kind.

Recommended if you're reasonably open-minded and don't mind a bit of minor bad language.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2022/12/almost-everything-by-anne-lamott.ht... ( )