The Spirited Book Club discusses New York Times bestselling author Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. The online club is FREE, register here for the Thursday, 11/3/2022 event from 2-3pm MST/PDT, 3-4pm MDT.

From Anne Lamott, the New York Times-bestselling author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Help, Thanks, Wow, comes the book we need from her now: How to bring hope back into our lives.

BOOK OVERVIEW

“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.

Candid and caring, insightful and sometimes hilarious, Almost Everything is the book we need and that only Anne Lamott can write.

REVIEWS FOR ALMOST EVERYTHING

“Part memoir, part manual and part sermon from the church of Lamott, this satisfying escape points to notes of beauty in our uncertain world.” —People

“Like a feminist C.S. Lewis, [Lamott] talks about God, politics and other unmentionables, and gently exhorts her readers, as she does herself, to find joy in a bleak and chaotic world: a leftie guru of optimism.” —The New York Times 

“By the time you finish Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott, you might find yourself just a little bit changed as a person. In the book, she candidly discusses her journey to finding hope, and it’s full of beautiful pieces of advice that you’ll find yourself highlighting on your Kindle over and over again.” —PopSugar, Recommended Books of 2018

“That is what the wise and wonderful Anne Lamott considers with uncommon self-awareness and generosity of insight throughout Almost Everything: Notes on Hope— the small, enormously soul-salving book that gave us Lamott on love, despair, and our capacity for change.” —Brain Pickings

“Plenty of us have grown to trust Lamott’s spiritual compass. We settle in quickly here, knowing just around the next sentence she might pry open our heart, and pack in truths we will mull long after we’ve put down her pages… Again and again, Lamott steers us in and out of the canyons and potholes of despair.” —Chicago Tribune

“Lamott boldly sets out to share . . . she veers from the intensely personal to the philosophical, highlighting some of the ways joy and pain are close companions in life. . . . Anyone reading with an open mind and heart will come away with more than a few nuggets of useful wisdom.” —BookPage

CLUB DISCUSSION DATES

BOOK CLUB MEETS Thursdays, November 3 & 17 @ 2:00 pm

++Book discussion facilitated by Sheri Brown

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Lamott is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Hallelujah Anyway; Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; and Operating Instructions. She is also the author of seven novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

“Lamott is a superb writer. Her voice is one-of-a-kind: deft, folksy, cheerfully hostile. . . . She is witty and funny and smart.” —The Washington Post

“Lamott is beloved by legions for her smart, irreverent take on the human condition, filtered through her unique brand of compassionate Christianity and delivered with delicious, self-deprecating wit. Lamott goes even deeper in these essays.” —People

Read more about Anne Lamott’s life, career and books on Wikipedia.