Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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Any sized item can be left in our cloakroom, including fold-away bicycles. We don’t accept non-folding bicycles. Items must be collected on the same day they are stored. From time to time, the cloakroom may not be available. You won’t be able to bring any bags over 40 x 25 x 25cm into the auditorium of the Royal Festival Hall or the Queen Elizabeth Hall, or into the Hayward Gallery, so please leave large bags at home. Elizabeth Day is a former journalist, now author and podcaster. She is also a self-confessed Friendaholic. In this book, she examines her friendship and her addiction. It is a reflection of her connection to her friends, a compilation of studies of relationships throughout history. (The studies mentioned include Nietzche and Aristotle). Intertwined within the book are the "Friendship Tapes," various interviews with other people about their feelings in friendships. Don’t miss the opportunity to bring your own best friends or newest acquaintances along to this unforgettable evening of intimate, enlightening and important conversation. In other words, we can't choose our family but we can choose our friends. One of Day's close friends grew up in very difficult family circumstances and stated that friendships were vital for her because they provided a way to '...understand that you can be loved in a different way outside of your family.' Perceptive, compassionate and filled with relatable insights into all that is beautiful about friendship, with its most valuable point being that it should be about quality, rather than quantity.’THE DAILY MAIL -

Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day | Waterstones

I also found the structure of the book slightly frustrating. I thought it was clever to have a different friend for each chapter and the inserted friend diaries from other people she'd interviewed were good too (though they should only have been inserted at the end of chapters not in the middle of one). Unfortunately, the friends don't stay to their chapters and some are far more interesting and more important for Day and hence pop up more regularly and say things of more interest. Because friends from later in the book pop up before their chapter I found the need for a cast list at the start of the book, like a Shakespearean play. I needed a reference to turn to every time Ellen but not Ellie or Lizzie, or Lisa, or Lou popped into the narrative. Was there a Becca and a Becs? Though Day is adept at therapy-speak, she is far from the sole perpetrator. Its spores have travelled such vast distances, in fact, that they have successfully infiltrated most of our institutions, publishing houses, entertainment platforms, and have even made it past supposed gatekeepers of our language, such as the Merriam-Webster dictionary, whose word of the year for 2022 was “gaslighting”. For those like Prince Harry, who like to talk a lot but think little, the ready-made quality of therapy-speak is of particular appeal. It provides off-the-shelf phrases for the tired of mind. Day describes herself as 'addicted' to friendship, and determined to be a 'good friend' because '...having lots of friends meant you were loved, popular and safe.' But the result of this was that she was exhausted (because she said 'yes' to everyone), and her personal boundaries were constantly tested. This lead her to consider the difference between quality and quantity. She goes on to explain how she rebalanced her friendships, alongside an exploration of the evolution of friendships, and the types of friendships we might have (the fun-night-out friend, the frenemy, and so on). Having lots of friends meant you were loved, popular and safe. She was determined to become a Good Friend. And, in many ways, she did. For any reader yet to encounter Katherine Heiny, this sparky new story collection provides a joyous introduction. Its title encompasses her protagonists’ antics in pursuit of – or flight from – love. They’re a somewhat jaded bunch with awkward pasts they never seem able to break free of. Nor can they stop yearning. And so a driving examiner only partially succeeds in remaining realistic about her workplace crush; a receptionist wears a taffeta bridesmaid dress to the office; a New York journalist, stranded by snow in her loathed Michigan hometown, finds sozzled closure in an airport bar. The deadpan delivery, the bittersweet wisdom, the sublime farce – it’s all here.Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of thousands of people forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them. Bestselling author, broadcaster and host of the hit podcast How to Fail, Elizabeth Day grew up wanting to make everyone like her. Here she confesses to be a friendship addict - something I am ruthlessly not - but it was interesting to see how others go about their needs and desires in a friend relationship. As always, she is candid and concise in an exploration of language around friendships, what that platonic relationship brings to our lives and the end of friendship - whether it is our choice or not.

Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day: Weaning herself off a need for

I'm careful not to criticise books for not being what I wanted them to be. It states very clearly on the cover that it is the Confessions Of A Friendship Addict and this is very much a confessional. As such, everything is couched in the author's own experience and most topics are presented as the author trying to sort out a problem in her life. We often can't find the right words to express the unique depth and complicated beauty of what friendship really is because we've spent so much time heroising romantic love. This book is an attempt to fill that gap.’ Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of thousands of people forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them – with the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not the ones she had been spending most time with. Why was this? Could she rebalance it? Was there such thing as…too many friends? And was she the friend she thought she was? As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren't they just as – if not more – important? Chapters confiding incidents of ghosting, friendship breakdowns, the impact of fertility issues on friendship and so on are interspersed with chapters devoted to Day’s five closest friends, as well as short testimonies from an array of individuals. Day’s particular predicaments won’t resonate with everyone but her fluid, conversational style makes for lightly entertaining reading (with darker moments). Those who consider the book in good faith might even find themselves Marie Kondo-ing their friendship circle – holding on to the ones that bring joy and clearing out the rest. Niamh DonnellyThe public moralist, the philanthropist, the technocrat and the activist: this is how historian Matthew Kelly characterises the women at the centre of his intriguing group biography. The philanthropist is Beatrix Potter but the others – Octavia Hill, Pauline Dower and Sylvia Sayer – are far less well known. Over a 150-year period, they independently fought to establish the regulatory tools still used to preserve England’s green spaces. Kelly proves a fastidious chronicler of their campaigning and if his prose is sometimes overly academic, it draws vitality from his subjects’ conviction that in alienating ourselves from nature, we curb our own happiness. Friendship is unique in not having anything - no birthdays, no anniversaries, no ceremonies to mark it. This means it's also uniquely difficult to manage the development of a friendship in a careful and caring fashion. scientists have routinely overlooked the study of friendship because it has no reproductive value... But if friendship has no survival value, it certainly adds value to survival. We choose friendship - and this, in Aristotle's view, makes it a higher-level love because of the freedom of intention that lies behind it. Alternative parking is available nearby at the APCOA Cornwall Road Car Park (490 metres), subject to charges. Blue Badge parking at APCOA Cornwall Road

Friendaholic | Elizabeth Day | 9780008374914 | NetGalley Friendaholic | Elizabeth Day | 9780008374914 | NetGalley

Having seen the light about her past self-sabotage, Day is determined to be ruthless in the future. She suggests, not quite jokingly, that it might be a good idea to send potential friends the equivalent of a pre-nup before agreeing to a first coffee date. On this document (you could have it laminated) you would list what you can and can’t offer a new person in your life. Mine, for instance, would explain that I don’t do phone calls but I will answer texts immediately. That I prefer cinema dates to ones in bars and that I don’t do hugs (it’s nothing personal, I just don’t). I am bad at birthday cards but good at emergency call-outs. My preference is for once-a-month meet-ups with an option to consider a mini-break in Prague if things go well. A drop-off point at the Royal Festival Hall (30 metres) has been created for visitors who are unable to walk from alternative car parks. Our Access SchemeThe essential difference between male and female same-sex friendships, is that female friendships are "face to face" whereas male friendships are "side by side". These phrases capture the frequently replicated finding that female friends like to "just talk" and view this activity as central to their friendship. Females compared to males also describe their talk as more intimate and more self-disclosing. Male friends, on the other hand, prefer to do things together other than "just talking." They share activities, such as sports, where their attention is focused on the same goals but not on one another. A generous, companionable guide to a part of life every bit as crucial - and as fraught - as romance or family.’THE OBSERVER - I loved the structure of the book, with chapters about societal change e.g. "double tap to like" and "ghosting" interspersed with interviews with friends about friendship e.g. "Clemmie: Can friendships withstand big life shifts".