If You Should Fail, Joe Moran
If You Should Fail, Joe Moran
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If You Should Fail
A Book of Solace

Author: Joe Moran

Narrator: Ned Porteous

Unabridged: 5 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 09/24/2020


Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

Do you ever feel like a failure?

Enter widely acclaimed observer of daily life Professor Joe Moran, not to tell you that everything will be all right in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human. It's the small print in life's terms and conditions.

Covering everything from examination dreams to fourth-placed Olympians, If You Should Fail is about how modern life, in a world of self-advertised success, makes us feel like failures, frauds and imposters. We need more narratives of failure, and to see that not every failure can be made into a success - and that's OK.

As Moran shows, even the supremely gifted Leonardo da Vinci could be seen as a failure. Most artists, writers, sports stars and business people face failure. We all will, and can learn how to live with it. To echo Virginia Woolf, beauty "is only got by the failure to get it . . . by facing what must be humiliation - the things one can't do."

Combining philosophy, psychology, history and literature, Moran's ultimately upbeat reflections on being human, and his critique of how we live now, offers comfort, hope - and solace.

'Joe Moran is the most perceptive and original observer of British life that we have' Matthew Engel

© Joe Moran 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

About Joe Moran

Joe Moran is a professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. His books include On Roads: A Hidden History, which was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and Queuing for Beginners. He lives in Liverpool, England.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Trevor on September 10, 2024

There are so many ways in which you can fail and so few ways in which you can succeed. And sometimes even success can feel like failure. And ultimately, if we see death as a kind of failure too, we all will fail eventually. At one point in this he talks about people who have created CVs documenting......more

Goodreads review by David Brynjolfson on November 12, 2020

An entertaining and thoughtful read that provides good insights. It deserves more attention, and that's why I gave it five stars. Maybe it deserves four because it is a little all over the place and unpredictable but I dont think that detracts too much because his writing style is engaging. A lot of......more

Goodreads review by mo.problemo on May 22, 2022

I start every chapter thinking this book is disorganised, irregular and impersonal. But then the chapter starts to crescendo towards practicality as the author ties it together beautifully. A delicate balance is struck between "learn from your mistakes" and "accept your fallibility" where Joe encour......more

Goodreads review by Mia on April 05, 2021

"A life can't really succeed or fail at all; it can only be lived." A book about failure, or the feeling of being a failure, or maybe even our modern day view of failure. Moran does not offer any up-beat self-helpy and cute advise, or talk about how failure are the road to success, but rather offers......more

Goodreads review by Zuzana on May 12, 2025

Nice message, interesting collection of stories - could've been said in fewer pages......more


Quotes

This is a deeply tender book, and full of wise insight and honesty. Moran manages to be funny, erudite and kindly: a rare - and compelling - combination. This is the essential antidote to a culture obsessed with success. Read it

Joe Moran is a brilliant historian, and the most perceptive and original observer of British life that we have. He makes the humdrum riveting

There is an honesty and a clarity in Joe Moran's book If You Should Fail that normalises and softens the usual blows of life that enables us to accept and live with them rather than be diminished/wounded by them

A fascinating insight. Moran's honesty is brilliantly raw and uncomfortable at times, but under the apparently bleak message on the surface there is an uplifting truth to be found. For myself, the concept of failure has been redefined

Moran is a wonderful, witty writer Daily Mail

Moran is a past master at producing fine, accessible non-fiction Sunday Times

Joe Moran is a wonderfully sharp writer, calm, precise and quietly comical Mail on Sunday

I really love Joe Moran's work, he writes with such generosity and kindness

These stories are beautifully told, and they are comforting at first... Moran's compassion shines through this gift of a book Literary Review

A ­calming antidote to the world of ­professionally failing... What Moran has created is a slim, lyrical and blessedly cool-headed reflection on failure as a universally shared human trial... What he provides, instead of the mechanical business strategies laid out in some popular failure titles, is a selection of fascinating and often moving lives, characterised in some way by their failure New Statesman