Lots Of Candles Plenty Of Cake

Download or read book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Quindlen] serves up generous portions of her wise, commonsensical, irresistibly quotable take on life.”—NPR This edition includes an exclusive conversation between Meryl Streep and Anna Quindlen. In this irresistible memoir, Anna Quindlen writes about a woman’s life, from childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age. Considering—and celebrating—everything from marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, parenting, faith, loss, to all the stuff in our closets, and more, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves. As she did in her beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen uses her past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages. Quindlen talks about: Marriage: “A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn’t believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.” Girlfriends: “Ask any woman how she makes it through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she will mention her girlfriends. ” Our bodies: “I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and in the years to come.” Parenting: “Being a parent is not transactional. We do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: We are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.” Candid, funny, and moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen’s status as America’s laureate of real life.

Download or read book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, New York Times bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen shares the events of her own life to illuminate our own. From childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, Quindlen tells life as she has lived it. She acknowledges the passing years, from the generational shrinking of underwear to facing the fact that her knees make ’this noise like Rice Krispies’ when she exercises. Despite its downsides, she says, aging brings wisdom, and a perspective that makes life satisfying and even joyful. Honest, witty and moving, this irresistible memoir celebrates all our lives.

Download or read book Being Perfect written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Nanaville written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The perfect gift for new parents and grandparents this Mother’s Day: a bighearted book of wisdom, wit, and insight, celebrating the love and joy of being a grandmother, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and #1 bestselling author “This tender book should be required reading for grandparents everywhere.”—Booklist (starred review) “I am changing his diaper, he is kicking and complaining, his exhausted father has gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, his exhausted mother is prone on the couch. He weighs little more than a large sack of flour and yet he has laid waste to the living room: swaddles on the chair, a nursing pillow on the sofa, a car seat, a stroller. No one cares about order, he is our order, we revolve around him. And as I try to get in the creases of his thighs with a wipe, I look at his, let’s be honest, largely formless face and unfocused eyes and fall in love with him. Look at him and think, well, that’s taken care of, I will do anything for you as long as we both shall live, world without end, amen.” Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood, and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she’s taking the next step and going full nana in the pages of this lively, beautiful, and moving book about being a grandmother. Quindlen offers thoughtful and telling observations about her new role, no longer mother and decision-maker but secondary character and support to the parents of her grandson. She writes, “Where I once led, I have to learn to follow.” Eventually a close friend provides words to live by: “Did they ask you?” Candid, funny, frank, and illuminating, Quindlen’s singular voice has never been sharper or warmer. With the same insights she brought to motherhood in Living Out Loud and to growing older in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, this new nana uses her own experiences to illuminate those of many others. Praise for Nanaville “Witty and thoughtful . . . Nanaville serves up enough vivid anecdotes and fresh insights—about childhood, about parenthood, about grandparenthood and about life—to make for a gratifying read.”—The New York Times “Classic, bittersweet Quindlen . . . [Her] wonder at seeing her eldest child grow into his new role is lovely and moving. . . . The best parts of Nanaville are the charming vignettes of Quindlen's solo time with her grandson.”—NPR

Download or read book Still Life with Bread Crumbs written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014 THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life. Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined.

Download or read book Living Out Loud written by Anna Quindlen and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-08-25 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Anna Quindlen, hailed by the New York Times as “America’s resident sane person,” offers a collection of “engaging, fresh, [and] funny” (Chicago Tribune) essays about growing up, becoming a parent, spirituality, and more. “The lightning bugs are back. They are small right now, babies really, flying low to the ground as the lawn dissolves from green to black in the dusk. There are constellations of them outside the window; on, off, on, off. At first the little boy cannot see them; then, suddenly, he does. ‘Mommy, it’s magic,’ he say. “This is why I had children; because of the lightning bugs.” The voice is Anna Quindlen’s. But we know the hopes, dreams, fears, and wonder expressed in all her nonfiction, for most of us share them. Quindlen first vaulted to national attention with her “Life in the 30s” columns for The New York Times, and this wonderful collection of her early work shows why this Pulitzer Prize–winning author remains in the spotlight.

Download or read book A Short Guide to a Happy Life written by Anna Quindlen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Alternate Side, Anna Quindlen’s classic reflection on a meaningful life makes a perfect gift for any occasion. “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.