'Tiny Beautiful Things' is the advice column at its best

Often, the most meaningful life advice is also the simplest.

That's certainly true for the wisdom Cheryl Strayed delivers in her advice/essay collection, Tiny Beautiful Things, released in 2012.

Tiny Beautiful Things started out as an advice column by Steve Almond in 2009, written on the literary website The Rumpus. Advice came from the anonymous "Sugar" persona, a figure who was both kind and wizened. Later, in 2010, Cheryl Strayed took over the anonymous persona of "Sugar," doling out advice but adding in personal stories to help her readers make sense of their own struggles. It's this mix of advice and memoir that carried Dear Sugar to both internet, and later literary acclaim.

The letters that Sugar answers are varied in nature, but they are always complex and often heartbreaking. How does a woman "get unstuck" after having a miscarriage? How does a man figure out whether he should have a child or not? How do you say "I love you" to someone new?

And yet, despite the intricacies of each letter, Cheryl's advice lands on the simple wisdom that speak to all of us. Core truths like: communicate, be brave enough to break your own heart, tragedy is inevitable.

"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be," writes Strayed in her title essay "Tiny Beautiful Things." "Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small quiet room."

This week on the MashReads Podcast, we read and discuss Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things. Join us as we chat about what makes for good advice, how Cheryl Strayed plays with the format of the advice column and what makes Tiny Beautiful Things resonate with so many readers.

Then, inspired by Tiny Beautiful Things, we talk about the books that have taught us important lessons including The Golden Bough by James George Frazer, The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner by Katrine Marçal and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison.

And as always, we close the show with recommendations:

• Aliza recommends rewatching the pilot of The West Wing. "Sorkin is far from perfect, but I do find the West Wing enjoyable. It's fast-paced, it's quippy. It's a breath of fresh air, in terms of politics."

• Peter recommends The Familiar: Vol. 3. "We're definitely entering in the synthesis of this. Things are coming together where you see how characters fit into each other. It's really coming together slowly, but surely, and it's just marvelous."

• Alex recommends Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. She also recommends Disney's Zootopia. "It's just really delightful. You guys should watch it."

• MJ recommends Wild by Cheryl Strayed. He also recommends Roxane Gay's new short story collection Dangerous Women. "I'm only a few stories but every short story has stuck with me. [Her stories] are creative. They are these soaring indictments of how society treats women."

Next week we are reading "Chairman Spaceman" by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Thomas Pierce. You can read the story in The New Yorker here.

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