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Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The Wall Street Journal's popular columnist Jason Gay delivers a hilarious and heartfelt guide to modern living.
“The book you hold in your hand is a rule book. There have been rule books before—stacks upon stacks of them—but this book is unlike any other rule book you have ever read. It will not make you rich in twenty-four hours, or even seventy-two hours. It will not cause you to lose eighty pounds in a week. This book has no abdominal exercises. I have been doing abdominal exercises for most of my adult life, and my abdomen looks like it’s always looked. It looks like flan. Syrupy flan. So we can just limit those expectations. This book does not offer a crash diet or a plan for maximizing your best self. I don’t know a thing about your best self. It may be embarrassing. Your best self might be sprinkling peanut M&M’s onto rest-stop pizza as we speak. I cannot promise that this book is a road map to success. And we should probably set aside the goal of total happiness. There’s no such thing.
I would, however, like for it to make you laugh. Maybe think. I believe it is possible to find, at any age, a new appreciation for what you have—and what you don’t have—as well as for the people closest to you. There’s a way to experience life that does not involve a phone, a tablet, a television screen. There’s also a way to experience life that does not involve eating seafood at the airport, because you should really never eat seafood at the airport.
Like the title says, I want us all to achieve little victories. I believe that happiness is derived less from a significant single accomplishment than it is from a series of successful daily maneuvers. Maybe it’s the way you feel when you walk out the door after drinking six cups of coffee, or surviving a family vacation, or playing the rowdy family Thanksgiving touch football game, or just learning to embrace that music at the gym. Accomplishments do not have to be large to be meaningful. I think little victories are the most important ones in life.”
— From the Introduction
From the Hardcover edition.
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"Gay makes his debut with a hilarious, heartwarming set of essays covering such mundane topics as parenthood, exercise, office life, travel, and the holidays. He presents the book as a riff on his popular Wall Street Journal sports column, organizing the entries around his rules for life (which include 'don’t serve soup at a dinner party,' 'spend a little more money on flowers,' and 'you really should listen to more Stevie Wonder'). He frames these rules with two key events: the birth of his children, Jessie and Josie, via in vitro fertilization, and the shockingly swift death of his father from pancreatic cancer. Along the way, readers will alternately feel the urge to laugh and cry at Gay’s irreverent, witty writing. His insights on each topic are spot-on yet gentle. Any readers who pick up this book will finish it convinced that following Gay’s rules will make their lives more enjoyable, and perhaps even make them better people."
— Publishers Weekly
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A title for everyone, not just sports fans, and all will root for Gay and his “little victories” and feel inspired, too.
— Booklist -
“There are a lot of books out there on how to stop and smell the roses. This is a crowning addition to that genre, making us laugh at our ridiculous human self-importance and showing us how to savor the everyday little victories.”
— Amazon.com, editorial review -
[H]ilarious.... [A] tasty collection of advice about, for instance, mastering the office Christmas party or how to dress a slightly exhausted hipster dad.
— People -
Gay...balances insights with a droll, self-deprecating outlook....no small feat given the difficulty in providing guidance that is at once relevant--neither too specific nor too vauge--and also genuinely funny.... [A] rollicking good read.
— Kirkus Reviews -
I loved this book. Jason Gay's Little Victories is funny, wise, direct, deceptively straight-forward and incredibly moving. As soon as I was finished reading it, I put it in the mail to my father, along with a reminder of my love. Such reminders, after all, are what we are here for, as this story—well—reminds us.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear -
“Jason Gay’s rules for living will make you laugh out loud, and also make a whole lot of sense. This is an advice book that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is all the more valuable for it.
— Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit -
“The thought of leaning in makes my neck ache, and taking seven steps to accomplish things only makes me want to lie down. Thankfully, Jason Gay has written a life guide for people like me—and you. He can't get the hang of grilling corn—and he's okay with that. He's faced cancer, unemployment, the death of a loved one, and fathered two kids after many setbacks—I think pretty much all at the same time—and has written a unique, heartfelt book about what he's learned from it all. Thanks to Jason, I've crossed trekking to the South Pole off my to-do list. Instead I'll focus on something that'll really make me happy: eating brownies while listening to some pre-1978 Stevie Wonder. See? You can do this! We all can!
— Diane Muldrow, bestselling author of Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book -
Little Victories manages to be hilarious, helpful, and profound, in one unpredictable mix. It made me happy.
— Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives -
“A hilarious, heartwarming set of essays covering such mundane topics as parenthood, exercise…Readers will alternately feel the urge to laugh and cry at Gay’s irreverent, witty writing. His insights on each topic are spot-on.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A title for everyone, not just sports fans, and all will root for Gay and his ‘little victories’ and feel inspired, too.”
— Booklist -
“If you find the very idea of reading a life guide preposterous (or even offensive), Gay’s pithy, memorable, and often hilarious collection is just the life guide for you.”
— BookPage -
“Balances insights with a droll, self-deprecating outlook…[A] rollicking good read.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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A November 2015 LibraryReads Pick
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A BookPage Top Pick for November 2015
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An Amazon Best Book of the Month for November 2015
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A 2016 Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor
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About Jason Gay
Jason Gay is a daily sports columnist at the Wall Street Journal. He has written for publications including GQ, Rolling Stone, Outside, the New York Observer, and Vogue. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he plays adequate tennis, dreadful basketball, hideous golf, and races a bicycle very, very slowly.