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Title details for Bittersweet (Oprah's Book Club) by Susan Cain - Available

Bittersweet (Oprah's Book Club)

How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

by Susan Cain
Susan Cain
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
3 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
3 of 3 copies available
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Sadness is your superpower. In her new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet explores the power of the bittersweet personality, revealing a misunderstood side of mental health and creativity while offering a roadmap to facing grief in order to live life to the fullest.
“Bittersweet grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.”—BRENÉ BROWN, author of Atlas of the Heart

“Susan Cain has described and validated my existence once again!”—GLENNON DOYLE, author of Untamed
“The perfect cure for toxic positivity.”—ADAM GRANT, author of Think Again

LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Mashable
Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. 
 
If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . . 
If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . . 
If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . .
 
Then you probably identify with the bitter­sweet state of mind.
 
With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence.
 
Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain, whether from a death or breakup, addiction or illness. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another. 
 
At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.
*Includes a downloadable PDF containing a Bittersweet quiz from the book

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 5, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593506073
      • File size: 218622 KB
      • Duration: 07:35:27

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Susan Cain does a spectacular job of communicating her argument that sorrow and pain can enhance beauty and contribute to creativity. Cain's voice is beautiful, full of empathy and expression. Her timing is impeccable and even a bit musical--which seems totally appropriate for the idea that sad music can be moving and cathartic for both singer and listener, a recurring theme. In addition to academic and religious research, Cain shares her own stories of loss and love involving a complicated bond with her mother and the deaths of her brother and father to Covid-19 early in the pandemic. In the end, we'd all be healthier and happier if we acknowledged our sadness and negative emotions instead of trying to banish those feelings as unworthy. A.B. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 31, 2022
      Business consultant Cain (Quiet) returns with an eye-opening take on the underestimated virtues of melancholy. She suggests that bittersweetness—“a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world”—affords the opportunity to channel “pain into creativity, transcendence, and love,” as exemplified by musicians and other artists. Cain handily traverses fields as diverse as neuroscience, popular music, religion, and business management to find instances of the transformation of pain and longing into fulfillment: the music of Leonard Cohen, for example, is “a transcendence delivery system,” and in Michigan, a hospital billing department’s culture of caring for distressed or bereaved employees resulted in collecting bills faster. Though Cain’s panoramic scope covers some familiar ground (U.S. culture’s “tyranny of positivity” has been critiqued before), this ambitious work impresses in its dexterous integration of disparate thought traditions into a cohesive, moving, and insightful whole. Like a more intuitive Malcolm Gladwell, Cain delivers a deeply felt study of the profound uses of sorrow and melancholy, a perfect manual for coping with tough times. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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