“Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say” by Kelly Corrigan

All of my friends named Beth are very smart. I mean intellectually smart but also true street-smart doyennes of life. For example, one of them will say “Drive over the bridge, buy this special chicken salad, serve it to your guests for lunch, and it will be the best salad they have ever eaten.” For this reason, I love having women named Beth in my life. One of the Beths recently sent me a picture of this book and suggested I read it. At first, to be honest, I was not rushing. There are so many books I’m dying to read, with so little time, and I just added this one to my library audio list and forgot about it. I had read Corrigan’s other books and loved them, but I was not going to fall apart if I did not read it this month. Little did I know how wrong my procrastination was. A few weeks later, when the title popped magically into my Overdrive App, I started to listen to it. And then it blew me away. This is not an ordinary book. This is an extraordinary book. I can only describe it this way: Kelly Corrigan is somehow morphing into Anna Quinlan in the best possible way. She is brave. She is wise. She is courageous. She is thoughtful and charming in that way you want all girlfriends to be. She just gets better with age. She tries to make sense of the fact that while you are busy raising teenagers and dogs, your parents will die and some of your friends will die, too. A breast cancer survivor, Corrigan lost her beloved father and close friend Liz around the same time. As a tribute to these two incredibly special people in her life, she launches into a list of 12 of the hardest phrases she has learned to say which include “I don’t know, “I was wrong,” and simply “No.” There is something so heartbreaking and sane about this book that I couldn’t wait to make it my book selection this week. If you are thinking about your next book, and considering Kelly Corrigan’s latest, please do not walk but run. She is a “Beth” to me. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.