Bittersweet, Shauna Niequist, and Tigers, Oh My!

Note: Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled programming (I'll tell you about the awesome time we had picking olives in Extremadura), but today I wanted to take a minute to a.) tell you about this awesome book, and b.) give away an early Christmas present.

Visit Shauna's website

 I once read a quote that the most powerful words in the English language were "me, too". 

If that's so, Shauna Niequist has penned one of the most powerful books on the planet . She writes collections of personal essays about going to Africa and going out for breakfast and everything in between, and they might as well be titled "Me, too"  because they are basically essays about her, but also about you and me, and our lives and her life and how we are all learning from each other in unexpected ways.

I wrote last year about how much I loved her first book, Cold Tangerines, when a friend unexpectedly handed it to me. I drank it up in one day, and then felt unaccountably good for days afterward, like I had taken vitamins or gone for a long morning jog. Neither of which I do, by the way, but other people tell me that they feel nice, and they're good people, so I believe them.

In Bittersweet, Shauna has written a big grand love letter to compassion and to honesty and to the pricklier side of life. It's a collection of essays on growth and loss and eating cold pizza at 2 a.m. Somehow Shauna manages to write in prose and poetry at the same time, telling stories about mundane details of life with such wit and sparkle that I feel like I am sitting next to her in some cozy coffee shop on a drizzly day, getting stories and advice from a best friend. 

On a more writerly level, holy cow can this girl write similes. Her work is chock-full of them, like seeds in a ripe pomegranate (see what I did there? with the simile?). Reading her books is a total sensory experience - you smell, you touch, you hear the scenes she lays before you. It's absolutely skillful, and I am thoroughly impressed by it.

My favorite books are the ones that I walk away from feeling like friends with the author.  If this is true, Shauna is one of my besties.

She just doesn't know it yet.

Shauna and her publisher must be in the Christmas spirit, because they're allowing me to give away one signed copy of Bittersweet to a reader here.  To enter, leave a comment below (the comment can be about whatever you want, but you've got to include your email address so I know how to contact you if you win!). I know there are a ton of international readers out there, and you can play, too - they'll ship it anywhere. I'll announce the winner this Friday, December 17th.

So come one, come all. Read it, drink it up, give it as a Christmas gift, buy one yourself and one for a friend. I honestly think you'll love it.

*Just so we're all clear, I'm not receiving any compensation for this contest or anything like that - they sent me a copy of the book, (which was really nice), but other than that I just really think you'll like it*