making more of the everyday life.

I love when novelists come out with a collection of personal essays, they should do so more often. When I love the way an author writes, I want them to be my friend. Friends have to know things about each other, so a personal essay is a nice treat. Elinor Lipman's I Can't Complain is a collection of (all too) personal essays that her avid readers will eat right up. Some of these essays will look familiar to you as they have been published in newspapers and magazines over the years, but they were all brand new to me.

I Can't Complain was split into four sections, Meet the Family, On Writing, Coupling Columns, and Since Then. The sections are filled with stories from her childhood, anecdotes about her family members, her quirks as a writer, and her column originally written for the Boston Globe. It's not like Lipman's life has been terribly more extraordinary than the rest of ours, she simply finds more meaning in the little things, and that's what makes her a great writer.