Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living
Author: Jason Gay
Average Rating: 3.72
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From The Wall Street’s Journal’s most popular columnist comes a hilarious and heartfelt guide to modern living.
Four times a week, millions of people—men and women—turn to Jason Gay’s column in The Wall Street Journal. The Journal has made him the face of their television marketing campaign, and he is the most tweeted writer to the paper’s 4.32 million Twitter followers.
Why is Gay so celebrated? It starts with his witty, fan’s-eye-view of the sports world, which he loves but doesn’t take too seriously. But his most celebrated features are his “Rules” columns, which provide untraditional, highly amusing but useful advice for maneuvering through the minefields of everyday life. Rules for the Office—”Your job is your job and, yes, people are talking behind your back.” Rules for Managing Money—”Or, at least that $45 you owe me. C’mon, you had three California rolls and two beers, with tip that’s $45.” Rules for Family Gatherings—”And other happy things that should maybe make you run for your life.”
In this, his first book, Gay presents his case that happiness is not a matter of grand accomplishments like climbing Mt. Everest (which, as he points out, is expensive and stressful) but conquering the small everyday challenges, like putting pants on before 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday.
Little Victories is a life guide for people who hate life guides. Whether the subject is rules for raising the perfect child without infuriating all of your friends, rules for how to be cool (related: Why do you want to be cool?) or rules of how to tell the difference between real depression or just eating five cupcakes in a row, Gay’s whimsical essays make you laugh, and then you think, “You know, he’s kind of right.”