Join us for a discussion of Susan Cain's new book. Book copies are available across from the first-floor circulation desk for a month-long checkout. The book is also available through OverDrive as an ebook (click here to access) or as an audiobook (click here to access).  

Library programs are open and beneficial to all. We invite people with physical and/or cognitive disabilities to attend any of our activities and will strive to support individual needs. If you need accommodations to participate, please contact one of our Inclusion Coordinators, Matt Krueger and/or Amy Holland, one week prior to the program.

This program will be held online using a communication app/website called Zoom. Registration required with an email address. Participants will receive an email with the log-in information for Zoom.

Book description: Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. 
 
If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . . 
If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . . 
If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . .
 
Then you probably identify with the bitter­sweet state of mind.
 
With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence.
 
Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another.