What Readers Are Saying

''An anthem! A permission slip!'' Melissa Hemsley

''A powerful, freeing, thought-provoking read'' Anna Mathur

About the Book

For most of my life, I''ve lived as though there''s a Platonic ideal of me, and if I just try hard enough, I can be it. That, my friends, is nuts.

Most of us spend our lives trying to be a better version of ourselves - happier, healthier, fitter, calmer, selfless . . . But what if all the things that we''re supposed to be striving for aren''t all they''re cracked up to be? What if we leaned into our ''lesser'' traits instead?

Be Bad, Better calls into question our constructed ideas of ''good'' and ''bad'' and relentless pursuit of self-improvement. From anger to messiness, laziness to aging, it deconstructs our supposed flaws and instead offers a radical framework for self-acceptance.