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Title details for The Joy Document by Jennifer McGaha - Available

The Joy Document

Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight

by Jennifer McGaha
Dina Pearlman
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
When Jennifer McGaha's grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. "Fifty-five," her grandmother answered, as though there were something magical about this stage of life. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her.
These observations became Jennifer's Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention. When you are determined to find joy, almost anything can become revelatory—an Earth Day Whole Foods errand, Claire Saffitz's fruitcake recipe, a harrowing ride in Twinkly Taxi, an evening picnic at Dvorák's Symphony No. 8, or cartwheels in the driveway. While many of us at midlife have found all the things we've strived for (the career, the better life, the organization tools), those things only go so far. And the search for something greater, something truer, begins. Life after fifty becomes not the end or even the middle of life, but a new beginning, another grand adventure with endless opportunities to find joy. The Joy Document includes fifty rollicking and often humorous essays exploring the art of joy and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 19, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9798855555196
      • File size: 181310 KB
      • Duration: 06:17:43

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 9, 2024
      McGaha (Flat Broke with Two Goats), a lecturer in English at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, proffers affecting if occasionally trite tributes to finding beauty in the mundane. Inspired by a grandmother who said 55 had been her favorite year, when McGaha turned the same age she sought a “deeper way of being that was knowable only from this vantage point.” She found it in life’s smallest details, from doing a cartwheel that momentarily transported her back to childhood to watching a young girl toss a coin into a fountain. Some of the entries consider the contours of friendship (“We offered one another no solutions... the rhythm was familiar, the cadence of this side-by-side walking that good friends do”) and chance encounters with strangers, including a fumbling interaction with a Vietnam vet that highlights the poignancy of sometimes insufficient human efforts to connect. After the year was out, the author concluded that “joy must go hand in hand with gratitude, that being thankful for the many gifts of this life... is a vital, radical mindset.” McGaha’s lyrical prose lends depth to life’s seemingly forgettable moments (making tacos, eavesdropping), though a tendency to tie up the entries with bromides can feel artificial and repetitive. Still, there’s plenty here that readers will find uplifting.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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