Interview with Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of Your Turn: How to Be an Adult recommends some brilliant books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Julie's book:
Review from Book Depository:
New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims is back with a groundbreakingly frank guide to being a grown-up What does it mean to be an adult? In the twentieth century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they're all valid, but any one person's choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.
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Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
A former Stanford dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising and author of the perennial bestseller How to Raise an Adult and of the lauded memoir Real American, Julie Lythcott-Haims has encountered hundreds of twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings, too), who, faced with those markers, feel they're just playing the part of "adult," while struggling with anxiety, stress, and general unease. In Your Turn, Julie offers compassion, personal experience, and practical strategies for living a more authentic adulthood, as well as inspiration through interviews with dozens of voices from the rich diversity of the human population who have successfully launched their adult lives. Being an adult, it turns out, is not about any particular checklist; it is, instead, a process, one you can get progressively better at over time--becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going. Once you begin to practice it, being an adult becomes the most complicated yet also the most abundantly rewarding and natural thing. And Julie Lythcott-Haims is here to help readers take their turn.
Buy On:
Book Depository €24.29
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I found Debby Irving’s Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race to offer bite-sized unflinching evidence that whiteness tends to confer privilege upon a person regardless of whether they are aware of it or even want the privilege in the first place. Irving herself is the subject, and the book is full of small discrete stories that depict her dawning curiosity and then growing awareness of the concept. The book well serves us in a moment when so many white people are interested in what white privilege means.
Review From Book Depository:
For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing.
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Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
Then, in 2009, one "aha!" moment launched an adventure of discovery and insight that drastically shifted her worldview and upended her life plan. In Waking Up White, Irving tells her often cringe-worthy story with such openness that readers will turn every page rooting for her-and ultimately for all of us.
Buy On:
Book Depository €13.90
Waterstones £15.50
Wordery $21.58
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
My current favorite is Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans, by Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD. It’s the perfect blend of investigative journalism, anthropology, sociology, and memoir with a healthy dose of reverence for cultures which paradoxically are considered less advanced than others yet appear to raise children to be more competent, confident, connected, and content than American children tend to be these days. It’s a humbling, informative, and encouraging read.
Review from Book Depository:
In this ground-breaking book, Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff looks back to our ancestors for solutions to our failing modern-day parenting theories.
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Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
When Dr Michaeleen Doucleff became a mother, she examined the studies behind modern parenting guidance and found that the evidence was frustratingly limited, and the conclusions often ineffective. She began to wonder if an opposite approach was needed - one founded on traditional wisdom, like the knowledge and experience passed down over hundreds, even thousands, of years within ancient cultures.
Buy On:
Book Depository €13.90
Waterstones £14.99
Wordery $16.68
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
The Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series – about children with various behavioral and temperamental issues being set straight by a grandmotherly lady with magic potions – rocked my world.
Review From Waterstones:
Mary Poppins meets Nanny McPhee in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic, a hilarious and charming picture book about a magical problem solver that has been delighting readers for generations.
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Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic
Parents love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle because she can cure children of any bad habit. Children love her because she's tons of fun! When Mrs. Burbank is in despair because her children become Thought-You-Saiders, or Mrs. Rogers' sanity and crockery are threatened as Sharon turns into a Heedless Breaker, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle produces a magical potion that takes care of the problem.
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Book Depository €6.20
Wordery $6.99
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Paper. I like to talk back to the author and to myself in the margins, so the books on my shelves are heavily written in. I think this method of interacting with the text helps me commit the concepts to memory and stimulates a much deeper analytical engagement.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
My favorite is Kepler’s Books and Magazines in Menlo Park, California, which is just up the road from me here in Silicon Valley. It’s a large meandering store located adjacent to a bustling café. When my children were quite young (they are now 19 and 21), we’d take them there once or twice a month and I’d announce “no limit on the number of books you can get.” (The limit ended up being what they could carry.) My kids became avid readers and that’s partly who they are and partly what we modeled as parents. But I think it’s also due to those carefree weekend trips to Kepler’s followed by a long lovely breakfast at the café next door. In those years, I didn’t know that I would become an author. When I did, Kepler’s became a true partner to me. To go from buying books there to seeing my book on the shelves and my name on the marquee for author events there kind of blows my mind still.
Many thanks to Julie for recommending some brilliant books! Please don't forget to check out Julie's book Your Turn: How to Be an Adult.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Henry Holt & Company (Your Turn), Elephant Room Press (Waking Up White), HarperCollins Publishers Inc (Hunt, Gather, Parent, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic).
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