How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life Hardcover – July 12, 2016

Being a person these days is pretty tough. I think that we live in a world where we are under a lot of pressure to Work Very Hard, All The Time, so that we can Be Amazing in a way that seems Almost Effortless. This pressure builds, over time, similar to how our closets and the spaces under our beds, and bottom desk drawers just get full. We don't want to be judged, and we are always worried we are being judged. And we feel alone in this, we feel like we are the only person who could possibly be secretly broken. Everyone else has these wonderful instagram photographs of themselves, see, where they're standing outside of an ice cream shop smiling, perfectly filtered and perfectly happy.And here is where Heather Havrilesky comes in. For years she has been someone you could write to to ask about why you are increasingly falling apart in different ways, and she would take these letters and pick some that seemed somehow more universal, and then she would write columns giving out advice that tends to boil down to: "hey, it's ok, it's ok to be you, the real you." And she's written this book here, which is full of important things that people should know. And it's one of those books where you will read a chapter, or even a few paragraphs, and then you'll have to stop and put the book down on your chest (this book is very good for reading while lying down, late at night) and stare up at the ceiling and you will think "oh gosh, gosh gosh, that is an important thing for me to have read, that is a good way of putting that complicated emotion that I have inside me." And you might be one of those people who has a pencil on their nightstand and you will underline a sentence or two. And slowly, slowly, while reading a book like this, you will come to understand yourself, or your loved ones, or even your acquaintances a little better. Which is what we need in this increasingly terrifying world. We just need to understand that we're all swimming in the same dark, open ocean.Buy this book! It's got good things inside of it. And you have good things inside of you, too! And this book will help you perhaps realize that.

I have been following Heather Havrilesky's advice column since January 2015, and I can say without a doubt, she has changed my life. It was one of her columns that snapped me out of a deep, long funk, and got me to purchase a ticket in the middle of the night to South America, where I ended up for six beautiful, life-changing months. I always feel like her columns worm their way into my consciousness at exactly the right moment, when I need to hear exactly what she has to say on a certain topic. I realize I sound like a Polly-fanatic, but I am only because I think she caters to a very specific kind of person or woman - what she terms "aggressive, sensitive wierdos" -- and if you, like me, are an aggressive, sensitive wierdo, you will quickly feel like all her columns are directly talking to YOU, and describing, YOU. I ploughed through this book, underlining furiously, and reading and re-reading so many of the essays, gaining new understanding each time. I have recommended this book to so many people, and I do provide the caveat that, not everyone will get it, get her. I think she caters to a specific kind of temperament, and personality, and although everything she talks about is extremely universal and applicable to anyone, I do feel extra special and a certain kinship with her every time I read her words. Or maybe she just makes all of us feel this way. I have no idea. I love her. I wish she was my therapist. Or my best friend. She's definitely fast replacing the voice in my head.

I love reading advice columns, so this book is right up my alley. She mostly tries to get her letter writers to be consciously aware of their own viewpoints, and for the most part stays away from prescribing cures to their problems.One piece I did take issue with involves a LW who is grieving their father and whose mother thinks they should be over it by now. HH wants to believe the best about the mother but without knowing the family more, her advice might just be even more hurt. There are toxic people, there are narcissists, and I have personal experience with both.That said, the end piece is a lovely little thing. It made me smile.

Man, oh man do I wish I'd read this book when I was floundering through my twenties! If YOU are floundering through your twenties or early thirties, or know someone who is, you absolutely need to read this book. It will, in fact, change your life. And it might help you change other's lives, too. If you have somehow survived those years, this book will retroactively cast perspective across your decades and focus you anew on what matters. In short, if you are a person in the world, you should read this book!It's far, far more than a collection of advice columns in any old-school sense. Havrilesky is a richly gifted writer - equal parts irreverent, hilarious, vulnerable and profoundly insightful - and what she's delivered here is a collection of meditations and ruminations on what it means to carve out a sense of identity in our overwhelming world. It's lovely work.

I'm generally not an "advice column" person; I usually find the advice doled out either super basic or super self-involved -- where the advice giver is clearly working out their own issues with the advice asker as a simple foil. I've been a fan of Ms. Havrilesky since the Suck.com days, and in her new book she brings her trademark wit, sense of humor and BS-free prose to a set of advice columns that will hit you right where you live. What I love about this book is how deeply Havrilesky is reading the letters from her readers...and how she pulls out the slightest of tells to drive an advice point home. Combine that with a moral compass that points to *true* north, and letter after letter you'll be nodding your head in agreement...or reading uncomfortably as you recognize your own patterns of behavior.