Lots of Candles, plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen, narrated by Anna Quindlen, Produced by Random Audio Books, downloaded from audible.com.

The publisher’s note does a particularly good job here of including quotations which helps the reader know what this memoir is about, and no one can say it better than Quindlen herself.
In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times best-selling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead
- and celebrating it all - as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more. As she did in her
beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves. Using her
past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages, Quindlen talks about: Marriage: "A safety net of small white lies can
be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation." Girlfriends: "Ask any woman how she makes it
through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she
will mention her girlfriends. Sometimes I will see a photo of an actress in an unflattering dress or a blouse too young for her or with a heavy-handed
makeup job, and I mutter, 'She must not have any girlfriends.'" Stuff: "Here's what it comes down to, really: there is now so much stuff in my head, so
many years, so many memories, that it's taken the place of primacy away from the things in the bedrooms, on the porch. My doctor says that, contrary to
conventional wisdom, she doesn't believe our memories flag because of a drop in estrogen but because of how crowded it is in the drawers of our minds.
Between the stuff at work and the stuff at home, the appointments and the news and the gossip and the rest, the past and the present and the plans for
the future, the filing cabinets in our heads are not only full, they're overflowing." Our bodies: "I've finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery
system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, ...