Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

In May 2020, we read Karen's pick, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed.  The book is a collection of letters written to the advice columnist Cheryl Strayed, aka 'Sugar' and Sugar's heart-felt, loving, and when necessary, direct responses.  The authors of the letters asked questions on topics such as love, love-triangles, cheating, wanting out, wanting what someone else has, loss, difficult parents/siblings/spouses, disillusionment, death, mistakes, forgiveness ... basically anything and everything.  Although some went in thinking this might be light reading, the book was anything but given all the topics it covered and the depth of the responses.

We were all impressed by the advice.  Not only is Sugar able to answer the questions that people ask, but she uses information from each letter to tell the advice-seeker what the 'real' issue is, even when not obvious.  To add to this, Sugar describes detailed experiences and lessons she has learned from her own life as they relate to the topics in the letters.  This woman has lived. But we marveled that even if we had a similar, difficult life, we probably wouldn't be as eloquent or insightful in relating these experiences to other people's problems as beautifully as Sugar does.

Some themes appeared in the book and can be applied to anyone's life even without a specific question. These include the importance of love, the fact that you know in your gut when something is not right and often your body tells you so, you can't change other people but you do have control over your own behavior, everybody can do better than give up, sometimes you need to set boundaries, and so many more!  It probably would have been great to read as a young adult.

The book inspired some to ask the group a question and get advice from fellow bookclubbers.  Interestingly, the advice was not always the same and revealed different perspectives.  And that's the beauty of it - we are all the same as we move through this life, all quarantined, all loving our families, and all facing challenges (note Lisa is in a hospital!), and yet, we are all so different.