Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers [Hardcover]

Anne Lamott (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 13, 2012

New York Times-bestselling author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life.

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.

It is these three prayers – asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us – that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.

Insightful and honest as only Anne Lamott can be, Help, Thanks, Wow is the everyday faith book that new Lamott readers will love and longtime Lamott fans will treasure.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Charmingly irreverent.”
—MORE magazine

“Filled with Lamott's unique brand of humor, wisdom and profound spiritual insight… She has a gift for putting into words what it means to accept and ultimately embrace the beauty, mystery, and pain that is life.”
—San Antonio Express-News

“Practical and poetic advice on prayer.”
—The Oregonian 

“An imaginative do-it-yourself approach to spirituality…With a stand-up comic’s snap and pop, candid and righteous Lamott tells hilarious and wrenching tales about various predicaments that have sparked her prayers and inspired her to encourage others to pray anytime, anywhere, and any way.”
—Booklist

“[A] prayer manual for people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading prayer manuals… anybody who gets it as a holiday gift will likely just say, ‘Thanks. Wow.’”
—Publishers Weekly

“A refreshingly simple approach to spiritual practice in a pint-sized reflection on prayer…Lamott manages to deftly convey the idea that in trying to control things, we’ve largely lost our ability to see the good and the miraculous in everyday life…there’s more here than meets the eye.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[With Lamott’s] usual fluency and charm…A worthy successor to her prior works…[Help, Thanks, Wow] will delight Lamott’s regular readers, and likely draw new readers to her writing.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
 

About the Author

Anne Lamott is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Some Assembly Required, Grace (Eventually), Plan B, Traveling Mercies, and Operating Instructions, as well as several novels, including Imperfect Birds, Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (November 13, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781594631290
• ISBN-13: 978-1594631290
• ASIN: 1594631298
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (410 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Christian Living
  • #64 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality

More About the Author

Anne Lamott is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Grace (Eventually), Plan B, Traveling Mercies, and Operating Instructions, as well as seven novels, including Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. She is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

225 of 228 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you, Anne Lamott November 14, 2012

By Deanokat VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Over the last several years I've gone through some very difficult times in my life. But about two year ago I "found" Anne Lamott and her writings through my wife, who has been a fan for forever. I have to say, reading Anne is like therapy for me. Her writing is so honest and thought-provoking. And that Anne Lamott sense of humor is priceless! There's no doubt that Anne Lamott and her books have helped me turn a corner in my life. "Help, Thanks, Wow" is no exception. It's prayer and spirituality simplified, and it works for anyone; even those who aren't truly religious. You don't have to pray to *God*. You can pray to "the force that is beyond our comprehension."

I also love the fact that Anne stresses the importance of gratitude. In fact, this may be my favorite passage from the book:

"Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back."

Thank you, Anne Lamott. My life is better because of you.

140 of 146 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Just Want to Read It Again! November 15, 2012

By O. Brown HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

*****
What a brilliant book! When I first received "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers" I too was so disappointed that it was such a small book--tiny, short, maybe an hour's read. Ah, but what an hour! Precious. And to be completely truthful, this book actually took me several hours to read, because I had to put it down, think, cry, laugh, and even--yes--pray. This book is worth your time and attention. I am so glad that I have it in hardback because I will keep it forever and reread it regularly; I am finished reading it and I just want to read it all over again.

It is a book about getting through life. It is rich, raw, funny (hilarious, like all Annie Lamott) and written in language so stunning I would have to stop and just read and reread sentences. I feel as though my life has been broken open with a whole new attitude towards prayer, and even more, towards being alive. This is not a religious book at all, but a book for anyone who is spiritually-oriented and maybe especially for those who aren't, because the author writes about prayer in a way that every single person can relate to. This is a book about being real and true and simple and clear and about living a worthwhile life.

Don't miss this book.

Highly recommended.
*****

148 of 157 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another all-nighter. Lamott never disappoints. November 13, 2012

By reader

Format:Hardcover

Stayed up all night reading this on my Kindle, as has become customary for all new Lamott books. Why? She makes me laugh. She gives me hope. And like Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, Cheryl Strayed and other supreme female authors of America in our time, she always, always, rides the edge of truth to beauty. "Help, Thanks, Wow" is another classic Lamott, but this time she directly addresses the need for faith in these specifically bizarre and often disheartening times. Far from a sanctimonious tome, "Help, Thanks, Wow is indeed the Cliff notes for spirituality, as one rave review said, but it is skillful and spare prose that expands and fills the space in our hearts. Funny, elegant, shocking, poignant, she owns the distinct voice and sublime storytelling knack that is hers alone. There is only one Lamott. Thankfully, she is a disciplined worker bee and she publishes often enough so that by the time I've reread her last book twice, there is another one on the horizon. Thank you, Annie! xo SFL

51 of 59 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Bit Thin, Both Literally and Figuratively December 23, 2012

By Ken C. TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

When you read thin books, you always assume that they are sharp and succinct, that they were once big books that have been cut to the bone, trimmed to the essence, and winnowed to their winning ways before submission for publication. You certainly entertain no thoughts of repetitiveness -- not in a thin book. That's forgivable with Dickens, Thackeray, and Fielding. They write huge tomes that earn the room for error. But the 100-page book? No.

That's my main beef with Anne Lamott's long essay on prayer. I read a NY Times essay of hers that I enjoyed mightily. It told of how her family was anything-but religious, how they worshiped at the altar of great writers and lived a Bohemian lifestyle. Lamott cut against the family grain. She got religion -- of a sort. But, in writing about it in this book, she travels six ways to Sunday yet keeps arriving at the same four-way intersection. That is, as I read it, I found the same repetition one gets in rote recitals of real-life prayers, and I thought to myself, "This would never see the publishing light of day if not for the name of its author."

I should have been the perfect audience for this book, which is why I bought it. I am irreligious, yet spiritual; agnostic, yet defensive about God; skeptical, yet trusting in the great unknown. Lamott is similar. She has no patience for Christians who claim to know "the way" because, of course, they don't. Hers is a most laid-back and understanding God. He (sometimes Lamott goes with "She") doesn't mind if you say, God, I'm P-O'd with you this time, as if these are the risks deities take when they get in the business of creating humans. Frankenstein's monsters, and all that....

But the three sections -- prayers for HELP, prayers of THANKS, and prayers of WOW -- were a bit circular and the writing a bit meandering. I wanted a more poetic precision from this. The smaller the genre and the smaller the manuscript length, the greater the demands. Plus Lamott has earned a reputation as a writers' writer. Did she not write BIRD BY BIRD, chapter and verse, the Gospel of Wannabe Writers everywhere?

OK. Yes, there are some neat moments, like this paragraph on the WOW of autumn:

"And autumn ain't so shabby for Wow, either. The colors are broccoli and flame and fox fur. The tang is apples, death, and wood smoke. The rot smells faintly of grapes, of fermentation, of one element being changed alchemically into another, and the air is moist and you sleep under two down comforters in a cold room. The trails are not dusty anymore, and you get to wear your favorite sweaters."

But overall, I got a "Meh" kind of feeling, like the book needed HELP, like I owed it little THANKS, and like I'd been gypped out of $17.95 (WOW!) for 102 measly pages.

Welcome to the hazards of reading new books, Pilgrim. If you love Anne Lamott's stuff unconditionally, "proceed." If not, "with caution...."

Amen. Read more ›