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Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress [Hardcover]

Lee Woodruff (Author), Bob Woodruff (Introduction)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 21, 2009
You can tell a woman’s whole life story from the possessions in her jewelry box. Like reading a palm, you can trace the points where her life has intersected with memorable events, people, places, and loves. You can speculate on the essence of her personality, all from what she has accumulated in that box.”—from Perfectly Imperfect

In her acclaimed first book, In an Instant, Lee Woodruff, along with her husband, ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, wrote eloquently and honestly about the struggles they faced together as Bob recovered from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq. Now, with the same candor and clarity, Lee Woodruff chronicles her life as wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.

Woodruff’s deeply personal and, at times, uproariously funny stories highlight such universal topics as family, marriage, friends, and how life never seems to go as planned. On raising teenagers: “Now with a boy and girl on the precipice of serious adolescence, the bathroom door is sealed tighter than a government nuclear testing ground.” On her changing body: “Over the last ten years my own knees had begun to form those dreaded smiley faces, sagging underneath.” How she copes with tragedy: “Swimming surrounds me in the velvet wet of a bluish green world where I can dive deep down and sob with no trace.” Even her sense of style: “I’ve always been more Leave It to Beaver than Sex in the City.”

In a voice that is fresh, irreverently funny, and irresistible, Lee Woodruff traces the quiet moments and memorable events that have shaped her life in progress. Perfectly Imperfect is the testimonial of a woman who embraces the chaos of her surroundings, discovers the splendor of life’s flaws, and accepts that perfection is as impossible to achieve as a spotless kitchen floor.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following her memoir of healing, coauthored with her husband, Bob Woodruff, an ABC journalist gravely wounded in a bomb attack in Iraq (In an Instant), Lee delivers a collection of 17 brief, plainspoken essays about being a busy mother to four kids and a loving wife, daughter and friend who doesn't always know the right answers. Navigating the adolescence of her two oldest kids, Mark and Cathryn, focuses much of her parenting effort, and where the whole clan was once comfortable with nonchalant nudity, once her son turned into Mr. Hyde and her daughter into an eye-rolling critic, the bathroom door is sealed tighter than a government nuclear testing ground in New Mexico. In the essay A Different Ability, Woodruff writes movingly of first learning about her younger daughter's deafness (Nora and her twin sister were born by surrogate) and how a personal tragedy has been transformed in time to a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Similarly, Lee writes of the sustaining friendship with Melanie, whose own journalist husband died in Iraq, through the initial hours of grief when she learned of Bob's injuries. Lee moves fluently from deep to lighter subjects, such as worrying about her sagging knees or bemoaning her otherwise ideal husband's woeful gift-selecting ability. Self-deprecating and modest, Woodruff is certainly likable, and this collection will broaden her appeal. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Woodruff, a family life contributor for ABC’s Good Morning America and wife of anchor Bob Woodruff, shares reflections on marriage and life in this engaging solo follow-up to In an Instant (2008), the book she wrote with her husband. She chronicles the everyday life of a woman balancing family and career: wanting to be the most fun mom but exhausted at an “über-intense” theme park with her four children; comparing her children’s adolescence with recollections of her own; examining the contents of a jewelry box that evokes memories; extolling a friendship that sustained through the death of her friend’s husband and the severe injury of her own husband while covering the Iraq War; recalling an impromptu Botox injection while visiting a Dallas television station. Woodruff considers childbirth, a hysterectomy, aging, pets, and awkward gifts in this winning and intimate look at the imperfections of family life. --Vanessa Bush

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (April 21, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400067316
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400067312
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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 (4)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A MEMOIR RELATED WITH GRACE AND GOOD HUMOR, May 10, 2009

Few can forget Lee Woodruff's first memoir, In An Instant, with its candor, courage and humor. It is the story of the enormous struggle facing Lee and her husband, Bob, after he was severely wounded by a bomb in Iraq. Of this tragedy now she is quoted as saying "With the injuries he had, he shouldn't be alive......He shouldn't be able to walk, talk, much less work. So it's a miracle that we see every day."

She celebrates that miracle and more in her second memoir, Perfectly Imperfect, and narrates it as only she could. Her voice is unforgettable to many listeners but with added touches of determination, joy, and hope for this reading. This listener felt that perhaps the determination came in when she discussed the challenges of having "a boy and a girl on the precipice of serious adolescence" in the family.

This likable, remarkable woman has much to share, and all of it is more than worth hearing as she touches on family, marriage, and friends, all with great good grace and often humor.

Enjoy!

- Gail Cooke
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars straight from the hip, straight from the heart, April 26, 2009
This review is from: Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress (Hardcover)
Perfectly Imperfect is pretty perfect. Lee is utterly honest about herself, which I find incredibly endearing. I laughed myself silly reading the chapter about gift-giving "nothing with a plug, please" as well as while reading "take me out of the ball game!" and "money can't buy me style." And I shed at least a few tears towards the end of the book, in "my dad," "chutes and ladders," and "what I know now." Lee displays a broad range of understanding and empathy for just about every aspect of life, from the mundane to the mysterious, while her love for her family and friends shines through loud and clear.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful empathetic, sweet book, I felt like I made a new friend!, August 22, 2009
By 
Susan Goewey (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress (Hardcover)
I loved In an Instant. I picked up this only because I'd enjoyed her other book and was curious how their journey was going. But I almost didn't, because I didn't like the title and the cover photo made it look like it was going to be too Nora Ephronish (I like Nora Ephron but I was looking for more from someone who wrote so touchingly and openly about coping with her husband's severe head injury.)
BTW, i also think the smiley knees chapter was the weakest! despite the fact that the celebrity blurbs on the backcover and the jacket inside flap touted her observation on aging as hilarious... I found them sorta superficial, a little sad, but still, the sort of things I do laugh about with my college girlfriends over wine at our periodic dinners --amusing though and, as the blurbs promised, Erma Bombeckish...and I share her feelings about Amusement Parks and how exhausting it is to watch 4 kids have "the time of their lives."

But I was pleasantly surprised at her ability to remember and write touchingly not only about the ordeal with Bob's injury, but also about life's more common challenges-- the discovery of her father's aging and daughter's disability (deafness) (while Bob was away) and how she coped and helped her daughter by talking clearly, loudly, distinctly, repeating herself, repeating herself. It made me love her. Lee has such insight to coping with Life's curves. It really is an advice book as we find in last chapter that is SPOT ON for people dealing with any sort of grief.

I also found comfort in her descriptions of her daughter's mortification when she was dancing so enthusiastically to 70's music at a party... if _Lee Woodruff's_ daughter feels this way and Lee can respect her feelings (by leaving the party) but also continue asserting her right to feel and dance with joy upon exiting--eventually getting her daughter to finally concede that her dancing was hilarious and finally join in--I can do with my own daughter who alternately loves and "hates" me, pushes me away and needs me.

What wonderful vingettes she shares. She, Bob and their 4 kids are so fortunate to have each other and we're so fortunate she decided to share. I love also the chapter on gift-giving. Clearly gifts are not her "love language" ... and it is so sweet how hard (and sometimes cluelessly) Bob tries. I love her description of the worst (clunky stainless steal giaganic Dynesty style oriental "gem" stone vs. the best gift he ever gave her: Arranging for babysitting for her small children and sending her off to a writer's workshop...a loving thoughtful gift that--unlike clunky jewlry or a vaccume cleaner or Victoria's Secret to replace her granny nightgowns-- was selflessly, all about her.
And isn't it nice how what goes around comes around? She gets a writer's workshop and we get the best book of essays on marriage and motherhood since my beloved Erma Bombeck passed --along the lines of Anna Quinlan.
(Lee, tell your publicist)--I'd love to see a syndicated weekly column in the style section of my newspaper and get a regular uplift from your touching, humorous and comforting observations on life. It would be a public service and might help save the newspapers :)
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