The Clearing by Katherine May Podcast

True Stories Book Club with Oliver Burkeman

On mortality, acceptance and imperfectionism

September - when we’re almost as likely to be trying to reform ourselves as in January - is the perfect moment for Oliver Burkeman’s new book, Meditations for Mortals. When I sat down to talk to him earlier this week for my Book Club, there was one question I was burning to ask: do you confuse lots of readers too?

Oliver, you see, has mastered the art of subverting the self-help genre. It’s not that he doesn’t want to offer succour to people who are struggling, nor that he denies we can change. It’s just that he wants us to understand how unrealistic we’ve learned to be about our capacity to do things. He urges us to accept our imperfections, our limitations, our fundamental humanness.

I love to think that, after having their expectations confounded, Oliver converts his readers to being just a bit kinder to themselves, and to keeping in contact with the important things in life, which are not generally found on their to-do lists.

I absolutely loved this conversation, and I hope you enjoy it too.