I've Tried Being Nice

The Hickory Stick Bookshop will hold a book signing with author Ann Leary Saturday at 3PM for her new book, I’ve Tried Being Nice, which has received warm reviews from the public and reviewers alike.

Kirkus Reviews praises it as a “humorous and honest tale of a woman and her struggle as a people-pleaser.”

Leary, the New York Times bestselling author of The Foundling and Outtakes from a Marriage, gazes backward at a life spent being—or trying to be—nice. She begins with an anecdote about her experience with a neighbor who let her dog roam on the author’s property. The neighbor ignored Leary’s concerns regarding her volatile dog until she had enough and stopped being nice.

“At that moment I was Walter White from Breaking Bad; I was Sir from To Sir, with Love; I was young Jane Eyre. Why do we love those characters so much? Because they tried being nice. Then they stopped,” she writes.

In each chapter she offers peeks into her world, finding humor and relating hard lessons she has learned over the years. “I’d still like to think of myself as somebody who is essentially kind,” she writes. “Or at least tries to be kind. Kindness is selfless, it doesn’t come from a fear of rejection or a desire to be admired, it comes, in its purest form, from wanting, simply, to be good to others.”

In addition to writing multiple books, Leary has written for Ploughshares, NPR, Real Simple and the New York Times. Her novel, The Good House, was adapted as a motion picture starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline.

I’ve Tried Being Nice (Simon Element/MarysueRucci) was published June 4th.

The Hickory Stick Bookshop is located 2 Green Hill Road in Washington Depot CT.