Failosophy

A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong

By: Elizabeth Day

Narrated by: Elizabeth Day

Length: 2 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the Sunday Times best-selling author of How to Fail.

Most failures can teach us something meaningful about ourselves if we choose to listen.  

In Failosophy Elizabeth Day brings together all the lessons she has learned, from conversations with the guests on her award-winning How to Fail podcast, from stories shared with her by readers and listeners, and from her own life, and distils them into seven principles of failure. 

Practical, reassuring and inspirational, these principles offer a guide through life’s rough patches. From failed exams to romantic break-ups, from career setbacks to confidence crises, from navigating anxiety to surviving loss, Failosophy recognises, and celebrates, the fact that failure connects us all. It is what makes us human. 

With insights from Malcolm Gladwell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lemn Sissay, Frankie Bridge, Nigel Slater, Emeli Sande, Alain de Botton, Mabel, Fearne Cotton, Meera Syal, Dame Kelly Holmes, Andrew Scott and many, many more, Failosophy is the essential handbook for turning failure into success.

©2020 Elizabeth Day (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic Reviews

"A beautiful timely and humane book. If there's one philosophy the world needs more of right now, it's Failosophy." (Alain de Botton)

"Elizabeth Day has revolutionised the way we see failure." (Stylist) 

Predictable, boring and lacking scientific backing

It's such a shame that people keep writing books based on their own personal experience and profess to be an expert on big psychological topics. The broad idea of the book is ok and the idea that failing isn't always a bad thing is something that we can all agree on. But this book is so predictable and boring. It only really scratches the surface. And although she mentions amazing people like Brene Brown, it really is just a couple of hours of chat. There is so much psychological research underpinning the ideas in this which could be brought out by someone much better versed in it. I would save your money for Brene Brown's books personally.

It's probably also mentioning a trigger warnings around miscarriage and suicide as these are discussed in detail and could be difficult for others.

Anyone who fears failure needs to read

As someone who is self critical and constantly worries this is a light hearted but meaningful book talking about the topic we brits hate.

I took away a lot of messages and just listening to the audio book helped me reassure my perfectionism.

Highly recommend

short and good points

worth a listen. lots of anedotes and its short and easy to listen to. I enjoyed it.

Lovely book if haven’t listened to all E Days podcast episodes

It’s I nice little short book but as I big fan of podcast I didn’t enjoy listening to the book. Maybe the format or something wasn’t clicking with me.

Enlightening read…..

And all so true. The rhetoric that we must all succeed at everything, all the time, is exhausting! If we don’t start to move the needle to, accept and acknowledge that failure is the most important thing then how will you ever learn and the next generation will have an impossible mountain to climb. Elizabeth Day has produced an amazing book that should be on every schools curriculum..

Stating the obvious…

I found this book dull on the whole - full of trite observations and banalities. ‘Our imperfections are what make us human’ and so on. Very disappointing - lacked substance and insight. And far too much whining!
The part I liked very much was the addendum, it contains the responses of podcast contributors when asked to describe their experience of failure. More about those contributions would have been interesting.