Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much

by Faith Salie Narrated by Faith Salie

Overview

From comedian and journalist Faith Salie, of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and CBS News Sunday Morning, a collection of daring, funny essays chronicling the author's adventures during her lifelong quest for approval
*
Faith Salie has done it all in the name of validation. Whether she's trying to impress her parents with a perfect GPA, undergoing an exorcism*to save her toxic marriage, or baking a 3D excavator cake for her son's birthday, Salie is the ultimate approval seeker-an “approval*junkie,” if you will.*

In this collection of daring, honest essays, Salie shares stories from her lifelong quest for gold stars, recounting her strategy for winning (very Southern) high school beauty pageant; her struggle to pick the perfect outfit to wear to her divorce; and her difficulty falling in love again, and then conceiving, in the years following her mother's death.
*
With thoughtful irreverence, Salie reflects on why she tries so hard to please others, and herself, highlighting a phenomenon that many people-especially women-experience at home and in the workplace. Equal parts laugh-out loud funny and poignant,*Approval Junkie*is one woman's journey to realizing that seeking approval from others is more than just getting them to like you-it's challenging yourself to achieve, and survive, more than you ever thought you could.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2016 - AudioFile

Media personality Faith Salie gives an expressive, nimble performance of her memoir, which bounces back and forth in time as it covers her childhood, career, two marriages, and path to motherhood. Salie employs the full range of her voice, from loud and expansive to quiet confessional asides, engaging listeners more fully with her stories of overachieving and building her life and career. While humor drives the book, Salie embraces emotional complexity in her exploration of sensitive subjects such as grief, miscarriage, and divorce. She balances seriousness with a comedian’s recognition of the absurdity embedded in so many of life’s challenges. This chatty, relatable listen will win Salie new fans. A.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

"Readers went wild for this Type A comic's ability to write about everything—from struggling with anorexia to the travails of eyelash extensions to her mother's death—with a magic mix of vulnerability and jest."
—Elle (Readers’ Prize)
 
 “Those wise enough to pick up this collection of essays are about to find their newest best friend in Salie…. Plan on reading this once for entertainment, or better, twice for the life lessons available.” 
–Booklist

“Funny, touching essays on being a multifaceted woman with unique dreams, desires, and needs.” 
–Kirkus Reviews

“When Salie...writes from the heart, the memoir is as pleasing as they come.”
 –Publishers Weekly

"I absolutely loved this book. And I'm not just saying that because I want Faith Salie to like me."
–Elizabeth Gilbert
 
“I dare you not to fall in love with Faith Salie. Her book is charmingly self-deprecating and snort-soda-through-your-nose laugh inducing! She reveals such vulnerability and insight into our flawed human condition, you'll be both dazzled and deeply moved.”
–Annabelle Gurwitch, New York Times Bestselling author of I See You Made an Effort
 
“I’m going to be an enabler and give Faith Salie some pure, high-grade, unadulterated approval. Because she deserves it. This book is a hilarious and emotional look at love, career, and Faith’s mom’s pelvic floor (among other things). You will approve of it as well. “
–AJ Jacobs
 
"If it is a comfort to you, as it is to me, to find that somebody as smart, sophisticated, funny, accomplished, graceful, witty, and (not incidentally) drop dead gorgeous as Faith Salie is, inside, a weird, sopping mess of crippling insecurities, just like you are—then keep this book close at hand. You will turn to it in times of trouble, stress, and self-doubt. Remember, if a genuine Rhodes Scholar in a size 2 dress can be this messed up, then you’re going to be just fine.”
–Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!"
 
“Approval Junkie by Faith Salie is a hilarious cry for help that will leave you thinking, “Oh sh*t, I think I'm an approval junkie too!” (Or maybe that was just me?) Do yourself a favor and read this book and then give it a 5-star review, because anything below 4 might send Faith over the edge.”
–Jen Mann, New York Times Bestselling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots, and Other Suburban Scourges
 
“Faith Salie is exquisitely, sometimes painfully, honest and real — and very, very funny. Whether you see where she's coming from or think she's bonkers, you'll be wildly entertained by this book.”
–Emily Gould, author of Friendship
 
“I’m not the laugh-out-loud type; I’m the stone-faced-while-everyone-else-is-howling type. Well, I laughed out loud while compulsively reading this hilarious, sometimes, heartbreaking book. Let the Tina Fey comparisons begin!”
–Jancee Dunn, author of But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among The Absurdly Famous
 
"Over the top, all too true, and laugh-out-loud funny, all in one easy to approve of package."
–Seth Godin, author of Your Turn

MAY 2016 - AudioFile

Media personality Faith Salie gives an expressive, nimble performance of her memoir, which bounces back and forth in time as it covers her childhood, career, two marriages, and path to motherhood. Salie employs the full range of her voice, from loud and expansive to quiet confessional asides, engaging listeners more fully with her stories of overachieving and building her life and career. While humor drives the book, Salie embraces emotional complexity in her exploration of sensitive subjects such as grief, miscarriage, and divorce. She balances seriousness with a comedian’s recognition of the absurdity embedded in so many of life’s challenges. This chatty, relatable listen will win Salie new fans. A.F. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-02-10
A TV and radio host acknowledges her need to be liked and tells how she's worked hard to overcome this. Comedian and journalist Salie wittily lays bare the highs and lows of her life (so far) and explains how much of what she's done has been because she's "an approval junkie." When she told people the title of this book, some immediately understood what she was trying to do, while others looked at her askance. "At which point," she writes, "I put down the cake I was frosting for them while simultaneously breastfeeding my daughter and doing squats and explained that I'm not ashamed about wanting approval. It kept my high school GPA very high. It's kept my BMI somewhat low. It's kept me on my toes when I wasn't already wearing heels to elongate my legs." Salie tells readers about falling in and out of love with her "wasband," the struggles she's had over the years with her weight, losing her virginity and telling her mother about it the next day, receiving hand job instructions from her gay brother, and a host of other intimate details about her personal life. The author talks about her mother's illness and death, her difficulty in conceiving children as an older woman and the fertility treatments she endured, her various jobs on TV and radio, and falling in love with her new husband. Salie uses humor throughout her short essays, particularly in the beginning. As the book progresses, the moments she discusses are more tender than humorous, allowing readers a closer perspective on the author's life. Salie's children also make appearances in short narratives about miscarriages, the desire for a girl, and breast-feeding and breast pumps. She concludes with a sweet letter to her daughter, in which she urges her to "care a lot about winning your own approval—enough to stretch, appreciate, and occasionally embarrass yourself." Funny, touching essays on being a multifaceted woman with unique dreams, desires, and needs.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171817237
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I totally saw the proposal coming, because, well, it was simply time. We’d talked about getting married, explicitly and erosively, for so long that it wasn’t worth talking about anymore. We’d been dating for five years, which is also known as a “lustrum.” But even that rococo word doesn’t romanticize that half a decade is a long time to wait, and everyone in our lives was sick of it. There was an unspoken feeling of Let’s get this over with, so we can see if it will make things better. Please buckle up, because here comes some caps lock: YES I TOTALLY KNOW THAT GETTING MARRIED IS NEVER THE WAY TO FIX A CRAPPY RELATIONSHIP BUT I ALSO KNOW I SHOULD FLOSS MY TEETH EVERY DAY BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH THANKS.
I really didn’t think it would happen this one particular afternoon. This explains why I had no makeup on and had decked myself out in an Old Navy shirt, comfy jeans, and boots that supplied no flattering heel height. The wasband had gone into the Lighthouse Museum, because his great-grandfather or someone had had something to do with the building of the village lighthouse. I was exhausted (from an­ticipation) so I stayed in the rental car, reclined my seat, and napped. He woke me up with a knock on the window and an enthusiastic grin. “You’ve got to see this view!”
If you’ve watched Braveheart, you know that Scotland doesn’t really give a shite that it’s late May or that you’re about to get proposed to, so it was wildly windy and chilly. My hair was flying everywhere. Poised on the precipice, we admired the vibrant indigo of the North Sea and the was­band’s cultural provenance.
When he told me to sit on the lone bench surrounded by wildflowers, I knew. His fist was clenched, and he began to kneel. My heart started beating faster.
I shook my head. “Oh my God . . . no. Stop.” That is what I said. Something deep inside me, beyond ego and beyond heart, knew this thing for which I’d been yearning wasn’t what was best for us.
He paused midkneel, his blue-gray eyes full of hurt. Un­characteristically, transparently, vulnerably surprised and hurt. I’d never seen that look on his face before, and I would never see it again. It lasted maybe “one Mississippi, two Mississippi,” and I couldn’t bear it.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m sorry, go ahead.”
He knelt down and asked me to marry him. He kept it simple. Perhaps that was a bold choice suggestive of a re­birth of our relationship, or maybe it was head-in-sandy not to acknowledge how rough our journey to this moment had been. Or, quite likely, I wasn’t much of a muse after ordering him to stop proposing.
When he asked, “Will you marry me?,” I looked at him through my shades, coolly. His question, like his first “I love you,” created such a panoply of emotions that the best course seemed to be to try to keep my face neutral. I didn’t smile or cry or gasp. I waited a few moments, my heart beat­ing out of my chest, while I tried to relish the return of that ephemeral taste of power.
The man I deeply loved and resented, in whom I’d deeply invested, was on one knee, asking me the question I’d longed to hear since our first date. It was, in theory, the ul­timate gesture of approval, but it didn’t feel that way. It was too hard-earned, and that made me feel hollow. The Scot­tish winds carried any “power” I had out to sea. I said only, “Yes,” quietly, because I wanted to. I wanted to marry him.
You don’t have to believe in karma to understand this: he and I were meant to be, well, not meant to be. We had to live through the first part to realize the last part.
I couldn’t wear his grandmother’s ring, because it was too small. Way to feel fat at your betrothal.

Videos