For Spring 2025, Webster Wellness and the Webster University Library are partnering to offer a book club to faculty and staff. This is a low-stakes endeavor asking only that you read a few chapters a month and join the discussion when you can.
The book for Spring 2025 is Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make us Whole by Susan Cain.
Book Club Meetings will be held on Tuesdays from noon - 1 p.m. (CT). The first session will be held in the Library Conference Room (rm. 120) or via Zoom. Feel free to bring your lunch!
Special Offer for Main Campus Faculty and Staff: The first 12 people to email us about the book club will receive a free copy of the book! Please email Julie Laramie: julielaramie@webster.edu
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 to discuss Chapters 8 and 9
12 p.m. (Central Time)
Meeting ID: 959 9725 0550
Bittersweet: How sorrow and longing make us whole by For a physical copy or audiobook, visit the St. Louis County Public Library.
The author of Quiet turns her attention to sorrow and longing and how these emotions can be transformed into creativity and love.
Cain uses the term bittersweet to refer to a state of melancholy and specifically addresses individuals who have “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.” With great compassion, she explores causes for these emotions by candidly chronicling her personal experiences and those of others throughout history who have suffered loss, including Plato, Charles Darwin, C.S. Lewis, Leonard Cohen, and Maya Angelou. “As Angelou’s story suggests,” she writes, “many people respond to loss by healing in others the wounds that they themselves have suffered.” Cain argues persuasively that these emotions can be channeled into artistic pursuits such as music, writing, dancing, or cooking, and by tapping into them, we can transform “the way we parent, the way we lead, the way we love, and the way we die.” If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings of the past, she writes, we may inflict them on present relationships through abuse, domination, or neglect. Throughout, the author examines the concept of loss from various religious viewpoints, and she looks at the ways loss can affect individuals and how we can integrate it into our lives to our benefit. Cain contends that the romantic view of melancholy has “waxed and waned” over the years. Currently, a “tyranny of positivity” can often be found in the workplace, and the “social code” of keeping negative feelings hidden abounds. However, she points out the benefits that can come from opening up versus keeping everything inside. As a first step, she encourages us to examine our lives and ask ourselves what we are longing for, in a deep and meaningful way, and if we can turn that ache into a creative offering.
A beautifully written tribute to underappreciated emotions.
(Krikus Reviews, 2022)
