'I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen,' Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything. From the publisher: "Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest--when we are, as she puts it, 'doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated'--the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. 'All truth is paradox,' Lamott writes, 'and this turns out to be a reason for hope.' We must pledge not to give up but 'to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.''"
