sonk’s #CBR5 Review #44: Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

I’d heard rave reviews about Tiny Beautiful Things, which is a collection of columns written by Cheryl Strayed for a feature on “The Rumpus” called “Dear Sugar,” and had a gift certificate to a bookstore burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to give it a shot.

Strayed kind of revolutionized the advice-column genre with “Dear Sugar.” Her responses to the letters published in the collection–some of them dealing with trivial topics, some of them dealing with the deepest of sorrows–are pieces of literature in their own right, containing both advice and insights into Strayed’s own life and past experiences. Her stories (some more obviously relevant to the issue at hand than others) are heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny and make this book one to be cherished and read over and over again.

Read the rest of my review here.

Sophia’s #CBR5 Review #2: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

I first learned about Cheryl Strayed when I stumbled upon Wild at an opportune time in my life. I loved it. I loved the honesty, insight, strength, and resilience that Strayed showed in her life, and I loved the adventure of such a crazy journey. In Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar (2012), Cheryl Strayed takes all of the compassion and wisdom she has acquired throughout her own life and uses it to parse out other people’s problems.

This book started out as an on-line advice column that Strayed took over under the pseudonym of Sugar. She takes on the universal  and incredibly difficult problems of cheating, unrequited love, addiction, death, grief, relationships, and more. Strayed manages to tie in almost every one of her answers with a personal experience of her own, making this book one part incredibly insightful advice and two parts honest autobiography.

Read the rest of my review here.