Tiny Beautiful Things (10th Anniversary Edition): Reese's Book Club: Advice from Dear Sugar

I created a review for this book on Goodreads, so I will share what I wrote there, here -I don't fancy myself an arbiter of what other people should or shouldn't read, so I hope it makes the point ridiculously clear as to how amazing this book is when I say - You should read this.I cried many times reading through the stories and advice given throughout this book. It will strike a chord because of two reasons - One, it's so damn honest. This is a book full of genuine love, truisms, hope, desperation, pain, redemption, forgiveness, and above all, life. And two, Cheryl Strayed is a damn good writer. If your gripe with this book is "that she talks about herself too much", then the points and the morals of these stories have gone right over your head. It is all explained right in the beginning of the book - radical empathy. She is telling a story, and getting vulnerable with her own raw, real experience to connect through a medium that is difficult to connect through, to complete strangers, and sharing her life with us to hit home, with a sucker punch to the core, the value and the validity of the advice she is in the midst of giving. To show she understands. To show she means it. And to show she isn't perfect, either. No one I've ever met is as honest and open as Cheryl Strayed, and I am so thankful that a book like this exists, and that she exists - because I have learned so much from her.Do yourself a favor...learn from her too. <3

I first bought (and read) Tiny Beautiful Things when I was at a low point in my life. Two days before, I found out that the company I loved working for and the job that I was flourishing at were closing. I spent two days in bed crying and finally picked up my kindle to distract my mind. I had never read or heard of Dear Sugar or Cheryl Strayed (before Wild at least). I read it through twice without putting the book down. I laughed, I cried, I found something that resonated in parts of me that had gone cold. I can't even start to tell you how much this book meant and continues to mean to me. Through the worst times of my life, I constantly turn back to this book. Sugar is sweet, nonjudgmental, understanding, and most of all, not afraid to tell it like it is. She's the best friend I wish I had in my ear to help me through some of the trials of life. The book is such a wonderful combination of advice, memoir, humor, and tell it like it is advice. It's hilarious, sad, and most of all honest. You can tell she's spent hours mulling over every piece of advice that she gives. It's cut through the bulls*** honest. It's what so many young adults (and many others) need to hear. I've bought this book for so many people since. It's that book that you know will touch people. I would recommend this from the top of the tallest building in the world. If you're debating reading this, just stop. Stop and go read it now. It's a quick and moving read. Just do it, you won't regret it.

Strayed does wonders with this book. Each letter is essential and, as a whole, walk one through a very comprehensive range of emotions and situations. For me it was soothing to read during a not so easy personal time, her responses to readers always guiding me to find light and relativize my own approaches to life. She is authentic, her responses are incredibly well constructed and powerful, and in the few pages she delivers a magic to simple and not so simple topics. She doesn’t simplify anything, nor complicate anything - and that balanced viewpoint is so refreshing and utterly necessary today.

This is my first review ever, so this will be like a story, if I may write my review like a story. Honest and raw.It was a sheer coincidence that I saw this book while browsing in the infamous book store Powell's, in Portland, Oregon. I was visiting from California. I was traveling with a broken soul. I was traveling with a big bag of grief on my back. I didn't know what to do with this bag, some days it felt light, others felt like I was carry a dead body. I never carried a dead body before; I didn't know how to get rid of it. I was never taught how to; nor was I taught what to do with love, first love, real love, true love, love. Experiencing love and grief for the first time, I find are two very similar feelings: you're never really prepared, meaning you don't know how to deal with either, they both can cause you confusion and disorganization, you experience emotions you never thought you would or could feel, and it feels like it will always stay with you. There's no such thing as closure.So there I was in Powell's carrying my big bag of grief, not sure what I was looking for, but I was looking. The bright red cover attracted my attention. I never heard of Cheryl Strayed before and I'm glad I didn't. If "Tiny beautiful things" wasn't my first exposure to her work, things may have been different. I began my journey of learning, acceptance, and realization. Cheryl's book was the lesson I was looking for. Actually, everyone else's grief story was my lesson. I learned that it was okay for me to feel this way, that going through it, is the moving on process.I wanted to scream on the top of my lungs and tell everyone to read this book. So I began telling, but no one heard of it, until I was in New York. When I met another creative individual, at 2:30am we exchanged our love and lost story. As I began to ask if she read "Tiny..", she completed my sentence and screamed YES! Then I screamed YES! It was an instant bonding moment. We bonded over grief! We chatted for a few more hours and exchanged contacts. About a month later, I contacted her and express how happy I was to have met her. She felt the same and then she shared with me another book that helped her. A book I never heard of, but another book with a lesson that no one really teaches you. We are in the self-taught era, let's go with it. Not learning is the biggest sin.To wrap it up, this book gave me a lesson, this lesson brought me a friend, a friend whom past me onto another lesson."Tiny.." helped me unload. My bag of grief is much lighter now... Thank you.