What Now? audiobook

An audio 53 minute gem —

A very quick and inspiring read. Originally a commencement speech at her alma mater, Sarah Lawrence, Patchett describes how life continuously presents new "What Nows." F. Scott Fitzgerald had a similar way of dealing with life in "This Side of Paradise" by having his character "Do the next thing." Both sentiments are applicable to the new graduate and anyone on the planet... because when faced with obstacles or doldroms we all wonder "What Now?"Favorite excerpts:"Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we're going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.""...people need to talk, and often a willingness to sit and listen is the greatest kindness one person can offer to another.""If you're lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you're alive.""Being successful, and certainly being happy, comes from honing your skills in working with other people.""Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.""The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way.""There's a time in our lives when we all crave the answers. It seems terrifying not to know what's coming next. But there is another time, a better time, when we see our lives as a series of choices... "

** spoiler alert ** Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you've created, because more often than not the ducks don't show up. The hunters in the next blind begin to argue, and you realize they're in love. You see a snake swimming in your direction. Your dog begins to shiver and whine, and you start to think about this gun that belonged to your father. By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.-Ann PatchettAnn Patchett. I like you!More advice from Ann—an essay in response to a commencement address she gave at Sarah Lawrence College:If you’re trying to find out what’s coming next, turn off everything you own that has an off switch. Make up some plans and change them. Identify your hearts truest desire and don’t change that for anything. Be proud of yourself for the work you’ve done. Be grateful to all the people who helped you do it.-Ann Patchett

????????I found Ann Patchett's short essay "What Now?" in the library and wanted to give it a read. Patchett is the author of the successful novel "Bel Canto" and several other books. "What Now?" is an expanded version of the commencement address Patchett gave in 2006 at her alma mater, Sarah Lawrence University. Far from graduating and setting out to work, I have just retired from a lengthy career of over 30 years. Thus, although not part of the specific audience for Patchett's essay, I am again at something of a crossroads of the type Patchett describes. I face the question "What Now?" many times as people ask me what I plan to do in retirement. And I respond, as Patchett did when she heard the question herself with something of frustration. The question marks in the title of this review are meant to be appropriate. They show better than anything else, with the possible exception of the many photos accompanying the text, the nature of the book and the open-ended character of the question. Patchett uses the question marks repeatedly in separating out the various sections of her essay.Drawing well on her own experiences, Patchett shows how people face the question, "What Now?" at various apparent turning points of their lives: where will you go to college? what will you do after graduation? when should I change my job? and of course "what will I do when I retire"? The essay gives a good sense of how this question can be frightening, invasive, and befuddling. She also shows how the question can be parried or redirected. Sometimes a person needs to wait and reflect and take life in the moment. An individual changes, life moves on, and direction is taken unobtrusively, not only in seemingly critical moments of choice.Learning is continuous and comes in unexpected places. Patchett describes an encounter with an adherent of Hare Krishna years ago at a Chicago airport. While Patchett was leery of the man and his sect, his goal was not to convert or to seduce. Rather, the Hare Krishna adherent wanted only to talk and to help Patchett with the mundane task of moving her heavy baggage from one section of the large airport to another, distant part of the terminal. Patchett learned from the young man's eagerness to talk and from his devotion to God, as he understood God, in the life he had chosen at least for that moment. The Hare Krishna adherent had answered the question "What Now" by his life. In other episodes, Patchett shows how she unexpectedly spent time after her graduation from Sarah Lawrence in simply wandering, and in working as a waitress at a chain fast-food restaurant. She seemed far from her goal of becoming a writer but learned things in unexpected ways from people she would not have thought had anything to teach her. She came to her dream in a circuitous way. Other people develop their dream as they go along.I do not feel especially stressed at retirement or at thinking about what to do. But I did feel stressed much of the time as a younger man as I faced the "What Now?" choices Patchett describes -- college, Law School, career, advancement, and the possibility of uncertainty and disappointment. There undoubtedly was much to learn as I faced these "What Nows?". Patchett's essay is simple and wise. There is something to be said for both change and patience. And people find what they need in unexpected places.Robin Friedman

Sometimes, when asked why I live on the west Gulf coast of Florida, I say it is because Kennedy was elected president. Say what? My Dad helped run his presidential campaign and we moved from NH to DC. We picked up the son of one of his associates at the airport and the son arrived carrying a fine Nikon camera. When I asked about it he explained the numbers and I was hooked. He later constructed a darkroom and along with Dad's staff photographer's help I began my love of photography leading to many courses and seminars over the years. I was living in Orlando and picked up an enlargement and the store owner complimented me on the shot and suggested I enter it in Selby. "What's a Selby?", asks I and he explains it is a botanical garden on the west coast that hosts an annual competition and gave me an entry form. I won the landscape division and went over for the ceremony and discovered a patch of Florida I never knew existed and we relocated there within the year.I mention this as a tie-in to Patchett's book as it begins with her arriving at college and wanting to make her advisor some cookies. Whips them up only to find that the dorm oven doesn't work so off she goes in search of a working oven. The first place she comes to is a home where the new college president answers the door amidst moving in boxes. She takes pity on the the Freshman and leads Ann to the kitchen and gives her free reign. Ann left a nice thank you note on a paper towel when she left. She later went back as baby sitter, server at dinner parties and sometime cook. Naturally, meaningful connections and ideas resulted.Maybe it is my fondness for Ann as a writer that I enjoyed her life advice and descriptions in this slender tome. Probably the most telling quote - “Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.” So true! Probably led to my enjoying the slogan -"We can't control the wind, but we can adjust the sails!"Anyway, I found the slender tome enjoyable and worthy. For those critical of the brevity of the book and the padding with pix illustrating the "What now?" theme, bear in mind that it is a recap of a commencement speech she gave at Sarah Lawrence college, so lighten up. A quick, worthy distraction and probably an ideal gift for your relatives graduating shortly!

My father gave me this book as a gift when I graduated high school, eager to start undergrad at none other than Sarah Lawrence. I have reread this book more times than I can count. I carried it in my purse until it started to fall apart. I have come back to this book over and over for guidance and comfort in all those times in life when I have found myself asking that title question once again.

I ended my 2016 year of reading with Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." Wanting something short and inspirational to end 2017 I remembered this tiny book I picked up at a book sale. Patchett's wisdom is potent and I will carry it with me in the new year.

Ninety-seven pages, Ann Patchett's Sarah Lawrence commencement address takes about a half hour to read. Actually, I have no idea how long it took me to read, but when I looked up after finishing it, the sun had risen outside my window, and I felt clarity as to the answer to the question: What Now?Thank you, Ann.

A great way to start 2012. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Ann Patchett's writing in Bel Canto, and I am excited to rediscover her and plan to read several of her novels this year. "What Now?" is a short Commencement Address that she gave at her alma mater - Sarah Lawrence. It is full of good advice for anyone. My favorite passages:"And sometimes, we don't realize what we've learned until we've already known it for a very long time.""I never stop having to learn: to pay attention to the things I'll probably never need to know, to listen carefully to the people who look as if they have nothing to teach me, to see school as something that goes on everywhere, all the time, not just in libraries but in parking lots, in airports, in trees.""I should have known all along: people need to talk, and often a willingness to sit and listen is the greatest kindness one person can offer to another." "For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put your life together. If you're lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you're alive.""There are too many forces, as deep and invisible as tides, that keep us bouncing into places where we never thought we'd wind up. Sometimes the best we can hope for is to be graceful and brave in the face of all of the changes that will surely come.""It also helps to have a sense of humor about your own fate, to not think that you alone are blessed when good fortune comes your way, or cursed when it passes you by. It helps if you can realize that this part of life when you don't know what's coming next is often the part that people look back on with the greatest affection.""What now is always going to be a work in progress. What now was never what you think it's going to be, and that's what every writer has to learn."

Not particularly Rocket Science but nice to read something assuring by an author that I've liked for years. Typically I don't take much interest in Commencement Speeches (though I did really enjoy watching Barbara Kinsolver's speech at Duke) but there's something rather refreshingly positive about telling students to seize the day, enjoy the undecidedeness of decision making and to savor youth and its (almost)career innocence. It probably wasn't something I'd have run out to buy but a friend gave me a (signed) copy (!) for Christmas and decided to attack it last night. I could have done without the graphics breaking the sequence but, I guess, without these cute little catchy photos the book would have been between 10 and 12 pages thick :-)Nothing philisophical in there but a few memorable thoughts.......I'm sure you can upload it somewhere on line so worthwhile reading if you get a chance/take an interest.

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |3.5 starsA short and inspiration essay (or talk). I guess I just enjoy the way in which Patchett narrates: whether it is fact or fiction, there is just something in her style that I find immensely readable.This piece also 'found me' at a right time since I am about to graduate and I find myself frequently thinking 'What now?'

Would that all graduation speeches were this engaging. :)