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Undisputed: A Champion's Life
Par Donovan Bailey. 2023
A memoir of Olympic glory, the value of mentorship and the courage to champion your own excellence, from the long-reigning…
world's fastest man, Canadian sprinting legend Donovan Bailey.From the lush fields of his boyhood in Jamaica, to the basketball courts of Oakville, where he came of age in one of Canada’s most thriving cultural mosaics, to his sprint toward double Olympic gold for Canada in Atlanta in 1996, Donovan Bailey got a long way on natural talent. But he also learned that in the bureaucratic world of Canadian sports, an athlete who didn't come up in the system needed to take charge of his fate if he was going to become the world’s best. As he ascended from outsider to dominant athlete, others didn’t always understand the rigour at work behind Bailey’s confident demeanour. He’d learned from watching Muhammad Ali that a champion needed to act like a champion. But media grew fixated on the sprinter’s immodesty, the likes of which they never saw from Canadian athletes, especially track athletes in the wake of the Ben Johnson doping scandal at Seoul in 1988. Bailey was having none of it, and when he called out Canada's subtle racism and contradicted the prevailing idea most Canadians had of their country, he left in his wake a media uproar and cracked wide open the nation’s moral complacency. In addition to his unforgettable 100-metre and 4x100 relay gold-medal sprints in Atlanta, Bailey's track career was a litany of records and rare accomplishments, including his audacious 1997 race in Toronto's SkyDome against American 200-metre Olympic champion Michael Johnson to determine who was really the world’s fastest man. There was no disputing the result. Bailey had been coached in success before he was seriously coached in athletics. Following the lead of his father, a machinist-turned-real estate investor, Bailey became a millionaire by the age of 21, an experience he continues to draw on as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Frank about his dominance on the track and unapologetic for expecting as much of those around him as he expects of himself, Undisputed is an athlete's story that refuses to settle for second best.The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays
Par Andrew Forbes. 2016
Spitball literary essays on the off-kilter joys, sorrows and wonder of North America’s national pastime. A collection of essays for…
ardent seamheads and casual baseball fans alike, The Utility of Boredom is a book about finding respite and comfort in the order, traditions, and rituals of baseball. It’s a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication—whether we’re eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a rain delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast. From learning about America through ball-diamond visits to the most famous triple play that never happened on Canadian soil, Forbes invites us to witness the adult conversing with the O-Pee-Chee baseball cards of his youth. Tender, insightful, and with the slow heartbreak familiar to anyone who’s cheered on a losing team, The Utility of Boredom tells us a thing or two about the sport, and how a seemingly trivial game might help us make sense of our messy lives.The Road Years: A Memoir, Continued . . .
Par Rick Mercer. 2023
THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLERRick Mercer is back—again!—with the eagerly awaited sequel to his bestselling memoirAt the end of his memoir…
Talking to Canadians, Rick Mercer was poised to make the biggest leap yet in his extraordinary career. Having overcome a serious lack of promise as a schoolboy and risen through the showbiz ranks—as an aspiring actor, star of a surprisingly successful one-man show about the Meech Lake Accord, co-founder of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, creator and star of the dark-comedy sitcom Made in Canada—he was about to tackle his biggest opportunity yet. The Road Years picks up the story at that exciting point, with the greenlighting of what would become Rick Mercer Report. Plans for the show, of course, included political satire and Rick’s patented rants. But Rick and his partner, Gerald Lunz, were also determined to do something that comedy tends to avoid as too challenging: they would emphasize the positive. Rick would travel from coast to coast to coast in search of everything that’s best about Canada, especially its people. He found a lot to celebrate, naturally, and was rewarded with a huge audience and a run of 15 seasons. The Road Years tells the inside story of that stupendous success. A time when Rick was heading to another town—or military base, sports centre, national park—to try dogsledding, chainsaw carving, and bear tagging; hang from a harness (a lot); ride the “Train of Death;” plus countless other joyous and/or reckless assignments. Added to the mix were encounters with the country’s great. Every living prime minister. Rock and roll royalty from Rush to Randy Bachman. Olympians and Paralympians. A skinny-dipping Bob Rae. And Jann Arden, of course, who gets a chapter to herself. Along the way he even found the time to visit several countries in Africa and co-found and champion the charity Spread the Net, which has gone on to protect the lives of millions. Join the celebration, and revive a wealth of happy memories, with what is Rick Mercer’s funniest, most fascinating book yet.Burl: Journalism Giant and Medical Trailblazer
Par Jane Wolfe. 2022
Burl is the story of one man&’s unlikely rise from the coal mines of Appalachia to the pinnacle of journalism.…
After being diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease as a child, Burl Osborne pioneered home dialysis treatment and became the 130th person to undergo a live kidney transplant in 1966—then an unproven, high-risk operation.While managing his challenging illness, Burl distinguished himself early as a writer and reporter with The Associated Press, eventually rising to the top of the wire service&’s executive ranks. Then, against the advice of his colleagues and the newspaper&’s own doctors, he sought an even greater challenge: joining The Dallas Morning News to lead the fight in one of America&’s last great newspaper wars. Throughout his life and career, he garnered respect from business and political leaders, reporters, editors, and publishers around the country. Burl thrusts readers into the improbable and remarkable life of a man at the forefront of both medicine and the golden age of journalism.Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back
Par Claire Fontaine, Mia Fontaine. 2006
“Come Back is a testament to the power of the love between a mother and a daughter.” — New York…
Times Book Review“Best mother-daughter memoir.” — Glamour“We strongly recommend this powerful mother-daughter memoir...Intense, shocking, and ultimately triumphant...” — Barnes & Noble“A nightmarish saga of a teenage runaway in L.A. ends triumphantly. . . . Heart-wrenching, honest dialogue.” — Publishers Weekly“A powerful and moving story of two brave women who struggled through darkness into the light.” — Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents“A rare, visceral reading experience....Offering lessons in living, loving, and accepting responsibility that could benefit every reader.” — Edwin John Wintle, author of Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle’s Memoir“One of those rare books I could hardly put down until I finished. . . . Brilliant—and often funny, too!” — Leah Komaiko, author of Am I Old Yet?On Hitler's Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
Par Irmgard A. Hunt. 2005
A German woman recounts her youth during World War II under Hitler’s regime in this “richly texture memoir” (Publishers Weekly).Growing…
up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden—just steps from Adolf Hitler’s alpine retreat—Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war—and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime—aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.In May 1945, an eleven-year-old Hunt watched American troops occupy Hitler’s mountain retreat, signaling the end of the Nazi dictatorship and World War II. As the Nazi crimes began to be accounted for, many Germans tried to deny the truth of what had occurred; Hunt, in contrast, was determined to know and face the facts of her country’s criminal past.On Hitler’s Mountain is more than a memoir—it is a portrait of a nation that lost its moral compass. It is a provocative story of a family and a community in a period and location in history that, though it is fast becoming remote to us, has important resonance for our own time.How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays
Par Mandy Len Catron. 2017
&“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir&” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the…
author of the popular New York Times essay, &“To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,&” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy.What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, &“Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation&” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists&’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she&’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. &“Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us&” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. &“Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship&” (The Toronto Star).The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found
Par Frank Bruni. 2022
From New York Times columnist and bestselling author Frank Bruni comes &“a book about vision loss that becomes testimony to…
human courage, a moving memoir that offers perspective, comfort, and hope&” (Booklist, starred review).One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye—forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye, too. He could lose his sight altogether. In this &“moving and inspiring&” (The Washington Post) memoir, Bruni beautifully recounts his adjustment to this daunting reality, a medical and spiritual odyssey that involved not only reappraising his own priorities but also reaching out to, and gathering wisdom from, longtime friends and new acquaintances who had navigated their own traumas and afflictions. The result is a poignant, probing, and ultimately &“a positive message, a powerful reminder that with great vulnerability also comes great reward&” (Oprah Winfrey). Bruni&’s world blurred in one sense, as he experienced his first real inklings that the day isn&’t forever and that light inexorably fades, but sharpened in another. Confronting unexpected hardship, he felt more blessed than ever before. The Beauty of Dusk is &“a wonderful book. Honest. Poetic. Uplifting.&” (Lesley Stahl).Tales from the Back Row: An Outsider's View from Inside the Fashion Industry
Par Amy Odell. 2016
A keenly observed collection of personal essays about what it’s like to be a young woman working in the fashion…
industry, Amy Odell’s Tales from the Back Row offers “a backstage pass to the intimidating, backbiting industry” (US Weekly).In the “funny, insightful” (Harper’s Bazaar) Tales from the Back Row, Cosmopolitan.com editor Amy Odell takes readers behind the stage of New York’s hottest fashion shows to meet the world’s most influential models, designers, celebrities, editors, and photographers. But first, she has to push her way through the crowds outside and weave her way through the packed venue, from the very back row to the front. And as Amy climbs the ladder (with tips about how you can, too), she introduces an industry powered by larger-than-life characters: she meets the intimidating Anna Wintour and the surprisingly gracious Rachel Zoe, not to mention the hilarious Chelsea Handler, and more. As she describes the allure of Alexander Wang’s ripped tights and Marchesa’s Oscar-worthy dresses, Amy layers in something else: how the fashion industry is an exaggerated mirror of human fallibility—reflecting our desperate desire to belong, to make a mark. In her “light-hearted, cocktail-hour confession from someone who is…sober enough to recognize insanity for what it is” (The Washington Post), Amy is the first to admit that as much as she is embarrassed by the thrill she gets when she receives an invitation to an exclusive after-party, she can’t help but RSVP “yes.” Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of high fashion: “Whether you’re interested in pursuing a career in publishing, public relations, or design, or you’re just fascinated with what really goes on behind-the-scenes without the usual sugarcoating, we’d say this is required reading” (Fashionista.com).One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
Par Nathaniel Fick. 2005
The New York Times bestseller that &“provides a close-up and often harrowing look at Fick&’s service both in Iraq and…
Afghanistan&” (U.S. News & World Report). If the Marines are &“the few, the proud,&” Recon Marines are the fewest and the proudest. Nathaniel Fick&’s career begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth. He leads a platoon in Afghanistan just after 9/11 and advances to the pinnacle—Recon— two years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadliest conflict since Vietnam. He vows to bring all his men home safely, and to do so he&’ll need more than his top-flight education. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between military ideals and military practice, which can mock those ideals. In this deeply thoughtful account of what it&’s like to fight on today&’s front lines, Fick reveals the crushing pressure on young leaders in combat. Split-second decisions might have national consequences or horrible immediate repercussions, but hesitation isn&’t an option. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but ultimately it is an inspiring account of mastering the art of war. &“Fick&’s writing style sets this book apart from other accounts of recent conflicts and guarantees One Bullet Away a place in the war memorial hall of fame.&”—USA Today &“What One Bullet Away accomplishes, in a way all the blather on cable TV never will, is to give readers real insights into the modern war and its warriors.&”—Rocky Mountain NewsThe Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping
Par Samantha Harvey. 2020
&“Sleeplessness gets the Susan Sontag illness-as-metaphor treatment in this pensive, compact, lyrical inquiry into the author&’s nighttime demons.&” —Kirkus Reviews…
In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help.The Shapeless Unease is Harvey&’s darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from &“this generation&’s Virginia Woolf&” (Telegraph).&“Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish.&” —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author&“Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about &‘shapeless unease&’ is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life.&” —Daily Mail&“What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I&’ve read about what it&’s like to be alive now, in this country.&” —Max Porter, award-winning author of LannyFire: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1937
Par Anaïs Nin. 1995
The renowned diarist continues the story begun in Henry and June and Incest. Drawing from the author&’s original, uncensored…
journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin&’s journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo Moré, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair is with writing itself.Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable
Par Jamie Kern Lima. 2021
#1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • USA TODAY BESTSELLER ARE YOU READY TO BELIEVE IN…
YOU? &“Game-changing. Authentic. A must-read for every woman! Jamie is the real deal—and that&’s rare.&” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed &“Raw. Real. Powerful. Filled with vulnerability and grit. This book will inspire you to believe in your own power. It&’s a book every woman needs!&” —Sara Blakely, Founder SpanxImagine overcoming the things holding you back, breaking through the barrier of self-doubt and fully becoming the person YOU were BORN TO BE! In Believe IT, Jamie Kern Lima, founder of IT Cosmetics, shares the wild but true story of how a once struggling waitress turned her against-the-grain idea into an international bestselling sensation, eventually selling the company for over a billion dollars and becoming the first female CEO of a brand in L&’Oréal&’s 100+ year history. Faced with self-doubt, body-doubt, God-doubt, down to her last few dollars and told &“No one is going to buy makeup from someone who has your body,&” Jamie reveals for the first time what really went down, how she almost didn&’t make it, how she learned to trust herself, and the powerful lessons you, too, can use to go from underestimated to unstoppable. With radical vulnerability and honesty, Jamie takes you on a journey through deeply personal stories of heartbreak and resilience—including accidentally finding out she was adopted when she was in her twenties and the reverberations this has had on all aspects of her life. Jamie also pulls back the curtain on her fight to change the beauty industry&’s use of unrealistic images, on behalf of all the little girls who are about to start doubting themselves, and all of the grown women who still do. Spellbinding, riveting, with raw vulnerability and down-to-earth warmth, Believe IT shakes your soul and shows you that you, too, have what it takes to believe in yourself, trust yourself, and go from doubting you&’re enough to knowing you&’re enough! Do you have big goals, hopes, and dreams but let rejection get in the way? Do you struggle with feeling like you&’re not enough and like success is something that happens to other people, but have a hard time believing it&’s possible for you? Do you let past mistakes and failures hold you back? Do you know deep down inside that you were created for more, but somehow still doubt yourself? In Believe IT you&’ll discover how to... -Overcome self-doubt -Gain the courage to take risks, an empower yourself and others -Tune into and trust your own intuition -Let go of your mistakes and insecurities -Turn down the volume on your inner critic -Handle the rejection, the haters, and the mean girls -Boost your confidence -Start your dream (and keep going!) -And much more… If you&’ve ever doubted yourself or felt truly underestimated, this book will inspire a new kind of belief and confidence in you and your dreams!I Did a New Thing: 30 Days to Living Free (A Feeding the Soul Book)
Par Tabitha Brown. 2024
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Feeding the Soul (Because It’s My Business) presents an inspirational guide for…
encouraging positive changes in your life—one day and one challenge at a time.I did a new thing today!Years ago, Tabitha Brown started a 30-day personal challenge that she called “I Did a New Thing!” The challenge was simple. Every day she would do something she’d never done before. Sometimes it was something small like trying a new food. Other times, she’d step it up a bit and speak to someone she’d never spoken to before. Still other times, she’d do the hard thing—facing a fear that she had, like having that tough conversation with a friend. No matter what it was, the point was that she was going to take a leap of faith and watch God open up a new lane for her.One of the “new things” she tried was a vegan challenge. She’d been struggling with illness for nearly a year and was desperately searching for healing. She challenged herself to eat vegan every day for thirty days, and six years later, her life has never been the same—all because she decided to do a new thing.In I Did a New Thing, Tab shares her own stories and those of others, alongside gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Whether that means having the hard conversation or trying for a promotion or simply wearing something different or doing something kind for someone else, Tab has a plan for you: Try one new thing, every single day, for thirty days. You don’t have to wait until Monday or the beginning of a new month or year to get started. There’s no set time and place or any extra preparation required. All you have to do is show up for yourself. And that can start right now.A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing
Par Amanda Held Opelt. 2022
In a raw and inspiring reflection on grief--selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year--a…
mourning sister processes her personal story of loss by exploring the history of bereavement customs. When Amanda Held Opelt suffered a season of loss—including three miscarriages and the unexpected death of her sister, New York Times bestselling writer Rachel Held Evans—she was confronted with sorrow she didn't know to how face. Opelt struggled to process her grief and accept the reality of the pain in the world. She also wrestled with some unexpectedly difficult questions: What does it mean to truly grieve and to grieve well? Why is it so hard to move on? Why didn&’t my faith prepare me for this kind of pain? And what am I supposed to do now? Her search for answers led her to discover that generations past embraced rituals that served as vessels for pain and aided in the process of grieving and healing. Today, many of these traditions have been lost as religious practice declines, cultures amalgamate, death is sanitized, and pain is averted. In this raw and authentic memoir of bereavement, Opelt explores the history of human grief practices and how previous generations have journeyed through periods of suffering. She explores grief rituals and customs from various cultures, including: the Irish tradition of keening, or wailing in grief, which teaches her that healing can only begin when we dive headfirst into our grief the Victorian tradition of post-mortem photographs and how we struggle to recall a loved one as they were the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, which reminds her to rest in the strength of her community even when God feels absent the tradition of mourning clothing, which set the bereaved apart in society for a time, allowing them space to honor their grief As Opelt explores each bereavement practice, it gives her a framework for processing her own pain. She shares how, in spite of her doubt and anger, God met her in the midst of sorrow and grieved along with her, and shows that when we carefully and honestly attend to our losses, we are able to expand our capacity for love, faith, and healing.James Patterson by James Patterson: The Stories of My Life
Par James Patterson. 2022
How did a kid whose dad lived in the poorhouse become the most successful storyteller in the world? This "fizzing,…
funny, often deeply moving" (Daily Mail) #1 New York Times bestselling memoir is &“damn near addictive. I loved it . . . that Patterson guy can write!&” (Ron Howard) On the morning he was born, he nearly died. His dad grew up in the Pogey– the Newburgh, New York, poorhouse. He worked at a mental hospital in Massachusetts, where he met the singer James Taylor and the poet Robert Lowell. While he toiled in advertising hell, James wrote the ad jingle line &“I&’m a Toys &‘R&’ Us Kid.&” He once watched James Baldwin and Norman Mailer square off to trade punches at a party. He&’s only been in love twice. Both times are amazing. Dolly Parton once sang &“Happy Birthday&” to James over the phone. She calls him J.J., for Jimmy James. How did a boy from small-town New York become the world&’s most successful writer? How does he do it? He has always wanted to write the kind of novel that would be read and reread so many times that the binding breaks and the book literally falls apart. As he says, &“I&’m still working on that one.&”Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir
Par Delia Ephron. 2021
The bestselling, beloved writer of romantic comedies like You've Got Mail tells her own late-in-life love story in her "resplendent…
memoir," complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone). Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She&’d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry&’s death, she decided to make one small change in her life—she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell. She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love. But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia. In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.A "Most Anticipated Book of 2022" by TIME, Bustle, Parade, Publishers Weekly, Boston.comA "Best Memoir of 2022" by Marie ClaireA "Best Memoir of April" by Vanity FairInciting Joy: Essays
Par Ross Gay. 2022
From Ross Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, comes an intimate and electrifying collection…
of essays about the joy that comes from connection. &“BRILLIANT.&” —Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life&’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. In &“We Kin,&” Gay thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come in) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in &“Share Your Bucket,&” he explores skateboarding&’s reclamation of public spaces; he considers the costs of masculinity in &“Grief Suite&”; and in &“Through My Tears I Saw,&” he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. &“A gift that&’s meant to be shared . . . [This book] inspires us to look beyond the miseries of our era to envision a more welcoming future.&”―The Washington PostHealing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient
Par Theresa Brown. 2022
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Shift comes a frank look at navigating the world of healthcare…
as a cancer nurse becomes a patient and experiences the system from the other side. Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she&’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being a &“difficult&” patient could mean she gets worse care. Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry &“cures&” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. As she did so brilliantly in her New York Times bestseller, The Shift, Brown relays the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the bureaucratic frustrations—but this time from her new perch as a patient, looking back at some of her own cases and considering what she didn&’t know then about the warping effects of fear and the healing virtues of compassion. &“People failed me when I was a patient and I failed patients when working as a nurse. I see that now,&” she writes.Healing is must-read for all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system.Molly
Par Blake Butler. 2023
A gripping, unforgettable memoir from one of the best, most original writers of the 21st century. Blake Butler has changed…
the world of language with his mind-melting literary thrillers, and now he brings his abilities to bear on the emotional world."Terrifyingly intense and eerily spiritual ...The best book I&’ve read this year." —LOS ANGELES TIMES "A powerfully sad book ... Writers are often praised as 'fearless,' but Butler is not. In Molly, he makes fear his companion. That is the only way to write, and to live." —THE NEW YORKER "Shattering ... The result is a brutal yet beautiful look at the ravages of mental illness and the complexities of grief." —PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY &“I&’m not sure I&’ve ever been so totally consumed by any book—the way I was by Molly.&” —INTERVIEW "The most immediate feeling of life I've ever had reading a book—a life lived at the desk and out in the world, a life of openness and secrets. "Make art for me," Molly wrote to Blake. "I will read it all." I breathed along with every word." —PATRICIA LOCKWOOD "How to praise a book of such wounded beauty as Blake Butler's phenomenal Molly? The same way one would a life lost early: with love and sincerity and anger and wonder and lithely elegant and observant insights that remind us and inspire us, as Butler precisely does, to live and to love ourselves." —JOHN D'AGATA "Molly is a brilliant and brutal book. Blake Butler fearlessly takes on love and grief and the mysteries of this world and the next." —EMMA CLINE "A dark miracle—actual evidence that what we can never know, what we could never imagine about the one we love, is what binds us to them, beyond death." —MICHAEL W. CLUNE "I was gripped from the start by this memoir's urgent honesty. Blake Butler turned a story that was almost unspeakable into a narrative at once brutal and loving, broken and solid." —CATHERINE LACEY Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly&’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was. A masterpiece of autobiography, Molly is a riveting journey into the darkest and most unthinkable parts of the human heart, emerging with a hard-won, unsurpassedly beautiful understanding that expands the possibilities of language to comprehend and express true love. Unrelentingly clear, honest and concise, Molly approaches the impossible directly, with a total empathy that has no parallel or precedent. A supremely important work that will be taught, loved, relied on and passed around for years to come, Blake Butler affirms now beyond question his position at the very top rank of writers.