Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes

 Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive by James Parker, 240 pages.

This book collects the "odes" which James Parker wrote for the Atlantic as their unofficial "gratitude correspondent." These odes are mostly for small and specific things, such as taking naps and running in movies, with the purpose of trying to appreciate the small things in life and (as the title suggests) get through the next five minutes. 

I feel like the first thing I need to address is that these don't seem much like odes to me in either the traditional or colloquial sense. Almost every ode is a prose essay, which eliminates the traditional "lyric poem" definition. I would also say that most of these odes don't seem to particularly like the experiences they describe. Parker observes the subjects in close detail, but often with as much or more complaining than praise. I went into this expecting something in the same spirit as Ross Gay's Book of Delights, and found myself disappointed by how much Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes seemed to fail to live up to it's own premise. I'm afraid I can't recommend this one, and if the premise sounds interesting I would recommend checking out Gay's book instead.