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How to Fail: Everything I'Ve Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong (Hardback)
Elizabeth Day (author)Published: 04/04/2019

Novelist and journalist Elizabeth Day’s podcast, How To Fail With Elizabeth Day, is a salvation to an age, as Day puts it, of curated perfection. Celebrating and embracing the moments where life didn’t quite go to plan, Day’s guests (including names such as Dolly Alderton, Lily Allen and Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge) have proven that through failure, we truly begin to understand the truth about ourselves. How to Fail is Elizabeth Day’s essential distillation of that knowledge, born through her own acute experiences and the stories of others. Frank, wise and witty, Day walks us through the impossibility of a flawless world to find a place where failure is our strength.
Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail is Elizabeth Day's brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong.
This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it's a book for everyone.
If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.
Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid.
Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth's own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals.
Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008327323
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 460 g
Dimensions: 222 x 141 x 33 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A book full of wisdom, humour, humility, tenderness and heart. Elizabeth Day's beautiful, reassuring stories and observations are a guide to self-compassion, a celebration of all things imperfect and will galvanise you to try, try again' - Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love
'How To Fail has rapidly become my essential companion in this over-competitive, demanding world. By turns profound, witty, and extremely reassuring, Elizabeth Day's sublime deconstruction of the myth of 'success' - and the journey to find our own markers of contentment - is a life-changing gift to us all.' - Jessie Burton, author of The Muse
'Brilliant Elizabeth Day, who you could probably trust to talk eloquently about anything' - Evening Standard
'Brilliant ... Covering everything from job rejections to failed IVF attempts, this podcast will make you feel better about life when things aren't going to plan' - Harper's Bazaar
'Funny and insightful' - Grazia
'It's really quite special' - Red
'Whip-smart celebrations of things going, well, wrong' - Emerald Street
'Listening to this show is cathartic; failure is a constant experience shared by so many, and being open is not a bad thing' - BuzzFeed
'Tender and insightful, as well as acerbically funny' - Reader's Digest
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“Book about learning from our mistakes...”
What a wonderful book, I have throughly enjoyed Elizabeth Day’s book, partly based on her own failings and partly on her podcast series.
It is extremely honest, funny, insightful, inspirational account of failing at...
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“Interesting perspective”
An interesting read, I'm definitely going to have to listen to the podcast. I really like the concept of looking at successful people and what they consider to be failures. I think the important message is try... More
“Interesting Topic”
Written off the back off her hugely successful podcast, How To Fail delves into Elizabeth Day's own personal 'failures' rather than those of her guests. I'd never listened to her podcast before... More
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