“Everything is broken, everything is beautiful - everything, including love.” My favorite thing to do during my lunch break is listen to podcasts. And my favorite podcast is TED Radio Hour, where they discuss different topics and ideas with guests and use snippets from various TED talks. I always scroll and just arbitrarily pick one, and the same guest kept coming up: Susan Cain. Sitting there on a park bench in SOHO, eating my Sweetgreen salad, I’d be completely engaged in everything she had to say. The host and Susan were always quoting or talking about this book of hers so I did what I had to do and I bought it. And…wow. I feel like I finally understand something about myself: something fundamental. I feel…seen. This book is written in a really interesting way, with certain core questions being asked at the beginning of each chapter/part, and then different themes and stories that pertain to the question are discussed afterwards. I cried so many times during this book. All of the people she mentioned and spoke to were just so fascinating and some of their stories so heartbreaking. I picked up two books referenced during my favorite part that I can’t wait to read: Gone by Min Kym and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I highlighted countless quotes and moments. I just had this feeling the whole time I was reading the book that it was going to be important to me (and I was right). It does a great job of reminding you that there is beauty in the bittersweet, and hope in the hard days. That there’s magic and light in all the sad moments we have, and that maybe my ‘softness’ isn’t something I need to hide or alter. I’m the textbook definition of an extrovert, so I’m unsure if I’ll ever feel compelled to read Susan’s other work called Quiet. But I do know she’ll be on my radar for all the years to come, and I look forward to seeing what else she publishes in the future (:

Had a few key insights about longing and desires, and how to channel our pain to creative outlets. I especially liked the chapter on Sufi poets and mystics as well as her exploration of how the ephemeral nature of our mortality can contribute to meaning. Other parts felt a little bit disjointed and I didn’t feel as drawn to.

It's so soothing to listen to this audiobook.

One of the most influential authors in my life has to be Susan Cain. Her book on introverts, “Quiet”, hit me at the very core. It quickly became a book that I kept recommending to my MBA students in relation to my classes on personality. So, when I came across the information about the release of her new book “Bittersweet” I was on the edge of my seat. I pre-ordered the same on Amazon immediately. While I had other books on my plate to read and review (thanks to Netgalley.com), I could not hold myself back from starting this book when it reached my hands. And what a journey it was to complete the book. I finished the book in a couple of days, spending my time at home reading large portions of it. My eyes were moist many a time during this journey, much to the concern of my family. And this book is actually, about such sad/sorrowful moments. TLDR: This book is as much a powerful force as Quiet was. I recommend this very highly to everyone - whether or not you have an inclination towards sorrow/sadness. Just like Quiet it will help everyone understand people who tend towards higher levels of bittersweetness. Detailed thoughts on the book: Have you become teary-eyed at certain times without seemingly rhyme or reason, like when listening to some music, being in midst of nature, hearing something revealed by someone? This has happened countless times with me. Be it a group meeting where someone declared that he was gay, a soulful song, martyrdom awards on the Indian Republic day, just being with my ageing parents and so on. I have burst out in tears with spasmodic shaking on many of these occasions without being able to pin point why and what is the root cause. This book explains in a beautiful way the reason why. There seems to be a yearning for a perfect world, a union with the divine. There is also possibly a pain being passed from our ancestors of yore through the generations. These give me and will give countless others like me some reasons why we are the way we are. People have labelled us as sensitive, crybabies and so on - now we can clearly see why. Susan, through her review of research, shows how such profiles are beneficial in many ways - if channelled well - through creative outputs (like many works of art, poems, music and so on!). Makes me wonder where I am channeling mine to.. do not see much potential in academic research :). She also nicely provides a scale to see where you are on the bittersweet continuum. I could mentally score myself on the higher side. This is useful to introspect and understand oneself better. A lot of what Susan writes, actually has been expounded in Hinduism for long, such as souls uniting with the divine and rebirth cycle, karma to some extent. She mentions these linkages, though very briefly, while mostly building her argument from Sufi work or Buddhism. I would have liked her to explore Hinduism more. Nevertheless, some interactions like the one she has explored with Sri Sri Ravishankar solidify these works. Just like Quiet did, Susan brings to fore the obsession of the world with positivity. Just run through your facebook or instagram feed: Every face there beams positivity and fun and happiness. Most posts are about great times that people are having. As if sorrow has never touched their lives. I have been sharing many of my sad tales in the past on linkedin - be it about health, stress and so on. Maybe this books explains why I have been doing that. She concludes the book with the section about mortality - and brilliantly covers the challenges if humans were to live forever. Would we really appreciate life, if there was no death? Mostly not. The final bit about how the pains that our ancestors faced might be carried forward in our genetic makeup was an eyeopener for me. She reveals studies that show how either experiments on animals or current generation Jews related to the holocaust showed changes which can be explained through genetic transfer of pain. All in all I think this book is a(nother) masterpiece that is set to revolutionise the world. It will surely bring enlightenment to those high on bittersweetness - they will learn to appreciate what make them the way they are, and also to channel their sadness or yearning to creativity. It will enlighten the others who are low on bittersweetness to appreciate those around them who break into tears for no reason, who are lost in sadness, to appreciate where their creativity comes from and to be more supportive of them. Please do not miss this book!!!!

Starts great and ends great, but the middle was really poor and hard to get through

I had high hopes for this book. Kinda disappointed

I was so excited to read this book as Quiet was transformative for me. Maybe it was a case of unrealistic expectations, but this book not only didn’t resonate much with me (even though I’d certainly describe myself as drawn to bittersweetness; my Spotify Wrapped inevitably skews to “yearning” and “nostalgia”), I didn’t find it particularly well-written or intellectually exciting. There were moments I loved, mostly when Cain is reflecting on her own personal experiences, and I thought the final chapter on inherited trauma was well-researched and fascinating. So much of it, though, felt like she was giving credence to scam artists, or at the very least giving way too much benefit of the doubt. In particular, I feel like the sections on “anti-deathers” would have been greatly improved with some healthy skepticism. I’m sad to give this the rating I did, but anything higher would be a stretch.