When a potentially career-ending shoulder injury left quarterback Drew Brees without a team -- and facing the daunting task of having to learn to throw a football all over again -- coaches around the NFL wondered, Will he ever come back? After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving more than 80 percent of the city underwater, many wondered, Will the city ever come back? And with their stadium transformed into a makeshift refugee camp, forcing the Saints to play their entire 2005 season on the road, people questioned, Will the Saints ever come back? It takes a special person to turn adversity into success and despair into hope -- yet that is exactly what Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees has done -- and with the weight of an entire city on his shoulders.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781414339436
|
Hardcover
Blood, bones, & butter
By Hamilton, Gabrielle
The chef of New York's East Village Prune restaurant presents an account of her search for meaning and purpose in the central rural New Jersey home of her youth, marked by a first chicken kill, an international backpacking tour, and the opening of a first restaurant.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781400068722
|
Print book
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
By Tyler, Steven
"Steven Tyler is one of the giants of American music, who's been influential for a whole generation of Rock 'n' Roll fans around the world. Long May He Rock!" - Sir Paul McCartneyDoes the Noise in My Head Bother You? is the rock memoir to end all rock memoirs - the straight-up, no-holds-barred life of Grammy Award-winning, Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and all around superstar legend Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith (and celebrity judge on American Idol). This is it - "the unbridled truth, the in-your-face, up-close and prodigious tale of Steven Tyler straight from the horse's lips" - as Tyler tells all, from the early years through the glory days, "All the unexpurgated, brain-jangling tales of debauchery, sex & drugs.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780061767890
|
Hardcover
Bossypants
By Fey, Tina
Stated First Edition! Hardcover with DJ. Feel's like a new unread (or gently read) copy. Clean and unmarked, not price clipped, not a remainder. Satisfaction guaranteed!
Publisher: n/a
|
9780316056861
|
Hardcover
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
By Bryson, Bill
From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950sBill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century - 1951 - in the middle of the United States - Des Moines, Iowa - in the middle of the largest generation in American history - the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) - in his head - as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality - a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson's earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780767919364
|
Hardcover
When We Walked Above the Clouds
By Barnes, H. Lee
There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is the reality of one soldier’s experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of a Green Beret such as H. Lee Barnes, whose story conveys the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam. There, he eventually came to serve as the advisor to a Combat Recon Platoon, which consisted chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though “nothing extraordinary,” as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780803234482
|
Hardcover
Townie
By Iii, Andre Dubus
Won Book of the Year Adult Non-Fiction2012 Indie Choice Awards Amazon Best Book of the Month February 2011 An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy himuntil he was saved by writing. After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. To protect himself and those he loved, Andre started pumping iron and learned to use his fists so well that he became the kind of man who could send others to the hospital with one punch, and did. Irresistibly drawn to stand up for the underdog, he was on a fast track to getting killedor killing someone else. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays.
Publisher: n/a
|
393064662
|
Jacqueline Kennedy
By Kennedy, Jacqueline
In 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy recorded seven historic interviews about her life with John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, they can be heard and read in this deluxe, illustrated book and 8-CD set.Shortly after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with a nation deep in mourning and the world looking on in stunned disbelief, Jacqueline Kennedy found the strength to set aside her own personal grief for the sake of posterity and begin the task of documenting and preserving her husband's legacy. In January of 1964, she and Robert F. Kennedy approved a planned oral-history project that would capture their first-hand accounts of the late President as well as the recollections of those closest to him throughout his extraordinary political career. For the rest of her life, the famously private Jacqueline Kennedy steadfastly refused to discuss her memories of those years, but beginning that March, she fulfilled her obligation to future generations of Americans by sitting down with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781401324254
|
Hardcover
Blue Nights
By Didion, Joan
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old. Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood - in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. "How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?" Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights - the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning" - like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780307267672
|
Hardcover
Life
By Richards, Keith
The long-awaited autobiography of the guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Ladies and gentlemen: Keith Richards.With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life.Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever.With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780316034388
|
Hardcover
The Girl's Guide to Homelessness
By Karp, Brianna
Brianna Karp entered the workforce at age ten, supporting her mother and sister throughout her teen years in Southern California. Although her young life was scarred by violence and abuse, Karp stayed focused on her dream of a steady job and a home of her own. By age twenty-two her dream became reality. Karp loved her job as an executive assistant and signed the lease on a tiny cottage near the beach.And then the Great Recession hit. Karp, like millions of others, lost her job. In the six months between the day she was laid off and the day she was forced out onto the street, Karp scrambled for temp work and filed hundreds of job applications, only to find all doors closed. When she inherited a thirty-foot travel trailer after her father's suicide, Karp parked it in a Walmart parking lot and began to blog about her search for work and a way back.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780373892358
|
Paperback
Then Again
By Keaton, Diane
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times People Vogue ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Financial Times Chicago Sun-Times The Independent Bookreporter The Sunday Business PostMom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box shed collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK. So begins Diane Keatons unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781400068784
|
Hardcover
Love at First Bark
By Klam, Julie
The bestselling memoirist shows how saving a dog can sometimes help you save yourself. Julie Klam writes about dogs with a rollicking wit and a radiating warmth-as no other writer can. In her bestselling memoir You Had Me at Woof, she shared the secrets of happiness she learned as an occasionally frazzled but always devoted owner of Boston terriers. Now, with the same enchanting, pop culture-infused amalgam of humor and poignancy that reached the The New York Times and the Today show and won the hearts of readers across the country, she returns with more humorous insight into life with canine companions.Klam focuses here on dog rescue, and its healing power not only for the dogs who are cared for and able to find good homes, but also for the people who bond with these animals. Klam became involved with rescue after years as an owner of purebred dogs. She was looking for a way to help and participate in a community, but she never imagined just how much she would receive in return. The dogs she has rescued through the years have filled her life with laughter and contentment, sorrow and frustration, and they have made certain that she never has a dull moment. Along the way, she has collected stories from friends who have also found that guiding dogs to nurturing homes made their own lives richer. These experiences, which show us that even in our smallest gestures we can make a big difference, inspired Love at First Bark.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781594488283
|
Hardcover
The Memory Palace
By Bartok, Mira
In the tradition of The Glass Castle two sisters confront schizophrenia in this poignant literary memoir about family and mental illness Through stunning prose and original art The Memory Palace captures the love between mother and daughter the complex meaning of truth and familys capacity for forgivenessPeople have abandoned their loved ones for much less than youve been through Mira Bartk is told at her mothers memorial service It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira her sister and their mentally ill mother Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen beautiful piano protg Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well but as her mental state deteriorated Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped murdered or raped When the girls left for college the harassment escalatedNorma called them obsessively appeared at their apartments or jobs threatened to kill herself if they did not return home After a traumatic encounter Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe But while Mira pursued her career as an artistexploring the ancient romance of Florence the eerie mysticism of northern Norway and the raw desert of Israelthe haunting memories of her mother were never far away Then one day a debilitating car accident changes Miras life forever Struggling to recover from a traumatic brain injury she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her lifeshe had to relearn how to paint read and interact with the outside world In her search for a way back to her lost self Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible At the hospital Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years Filled with family photos childhood toys and ephemera from Normas life the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781439183311
|
Hardcover
If You Ask Me
By White, Betty
It-girl Betty White delivers a hilarious, slyly profound take on love, life, celebrity, and everything in between. Drawing from a lifetime of lessons learned, seven-time Emmy winner Betty White's wit and wisdom take center stage as she tackles topics like friendship, romantic love, aging, television, fans, love for animals, and the brave new world of celebrity. If You Ask Me mixes her thoughtful observations with humorous stories from a seven- decade career in Hollywood. Longtime fans and new fans alike will relish Betty's candid take on everything from her rumored crush on Robert Redford (true) to her beauty regimen ("I have no idea what color my hair is and I never intend to find out") to the Facebook campaign that helped persuade her to host Saturday Night Live despite her having declined the hosting job three times already. Featuring all-new material, with a focus on the past fifteen years of her life, If You Ask Me is funny, sweet, and to the point-just like Betty White.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780399157530
|
Hardcover
American Sniper
By Kyle, Chris
NOW A BLOCKBUSTER MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD - NOMINATED FOR SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST PICTUREIncludes exclusive new material by Taya Kyle about the making of the American Sniper film.From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan ("the devil") and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war - including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates - and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780062376336
|
Movie Tie-in Edition]: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
Paperback
Coming Back Stronger
By Brees, Drew
When a potentially career-ending shoulder injury left quarterback Drew Brees without a team -- and facing the daunting task of having to learn to throw a football all over again -- coaches around the NFL wondered, Will he ever come back? After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving more than 80 percent of the city underwater, many wondered, Will the city ever come back? And with their stadium transformed into a makeshift refugee camp, forcing the Saints to play their entire 2005 season on the road, people questioned, Will the Saints ever come back? It takes a special person to turn adversity into success and despair into hope -- yet that is exactly what Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees has done -- and with the weight of an entire city on his shoulders.
Blood, bones, & butter
By Hamilton, Gabrielle
The chef of New York's East Village Prune restaurant presents an account of her search for meaning and purpose in the central rural New Jersey home of her youth, marked by a first chicken kill, an international backpacking tour, and the opening of a first restaurant.
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
By Tyler, Steven
"Steven Tyler is one of the giants of American music, who's been influential for a whole generation of Rock 'n' Roll fans around the world. Long May He Rock!" - Sir Paul McCartneyDoes the Noise in My Head Bother You? is the rock memoir to end all rock memoirs - the straight-up, no-holds-barred life of Grammy Award-winning, Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and all around superstar legend Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith (and celebrity judge on American Idol). This is it - "the unbridled truth, the in-your-face, up-close and prodigious tale of Steven Tyler straight from the horse's lips" - as Tyler tells all, from the early years through the glory days, "All the unexpurgated, brain-jangling tales of debauchery, sex & drugs.
Bossypants
By Fey, Tina
Stated First Edition! Hardcover with DJ. Feel's like a new unread (or gently read) copy. Clean and unmarked, not price clipped, not a remainder. Satisfaction guaranteed!
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
By Bryson, Bill
From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950sBill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century - 1951 - in the middle of the United States - Des Moines, Iowa - in the middle of the largest generation in American history - the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) - in his head - as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality - a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson's earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.
When We Walked Above the Clouds
By Barnes, H. Lee
There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is the reality of one soldier’s experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of a Green Beret such as H. Lee Barnes, whose story conveys the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam. There, he eventually came to serve as the advisor to a Combat Recon Platoon, which consisted chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though “nothing extraordinary,” as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing.
Townie
By Iii, Andre Dubus
Won Book of the Year Adult Non-Fiction2012 Indie Choice Awards Amazon Best Book of the Month February 2011 An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy himuntil he was saved by writing. After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. To protect himself and those he loved, Andre started pumping iron and learned to use his fists so well that he became the kind of man who could send others to the hospital with one punch, and did. Irresistibly drawn to stand up for the underdog, he was on a fast track to getting killedor killing someone else. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays.
Jacqueline Kennedy
By Kennedy, Jacqueline
In 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy recorded seven historic interviews about her life with John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, they can be heard and read in this deluxe, illustrated book and 8-CD set.Shortly after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with a nation deep in mourning and the world looking on in stunned disbelief, Jacqueline Kennedy found the strength to set aside her own personal grief for the sake of posterity and begin the task of documenting and preserving her husband's legacy. In January of 1964, she and Robert F. Kennedy approved a planned oral-history project that would capture their first-hand accounts of the late President as well as the recollections of those closest to him throughout his extraordinary political career. For the rest of her life, the famously private Jacqueline Kennedy steadfastly refused to discuss her memories of those years, but beginning that March, she fulfilled her obligation to future generations of Americans by sitting down with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Blue Nights
By Didion, Joan
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old. Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood - in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. "How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?" Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights - the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning" - like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.
Life
By Richards, Keith
The long-awaited autobiography of the guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Ladies and gentlemen: Keith Richards.With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life.Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever.With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.
The Girl's Guide to Homelessness
By Karp, Brianna
Brianna Karp entered the workforce at age ten, supporting her mother and sister throughout her teen years in Southern California. Although her young life was scarred by violence and abuse, Karp stayed focused on her dream of a steady job and a home of her own. By age twenty-two her dream became reality. Karp loved her job as an executive assistant and signed the lease on a tiny cottage near the beach.And then the Great Recession hit. Karp, like millions of others, lost her job. In the six months between the day she was laid off and the day she was forced out onto the street, Karp scrambled for temp work and filed hundreds of job applications, only to find all doors closed. When she inherited a thirty-foot travel trailer after her father's suicide, Karp parked it in a Walmart parking lot and began to blog about her search for work and a way back.
Then Again
By Keaton, Diane
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times People Vogue ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Financial Times Chicago Sun-Times The Independent Bookreporter The Sunday Business PostMom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box shed collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK. So begins Diane Keatons unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall.
Love at First Bark
By Klam, Julie
The bestselling memoirist shows how saving a dog can sometimes help you save yourself. Julie Klam writes about dogs with a rollicking wit and a radiating warmth-as no other writer can. In her bestselling memoir You Had Me at Woof, she shared the secrets of happiness she learned as an occasionally frazzled but always devoted owner of Boston terriers. Now, with the same enchanting, pop culture-infused amalgam of humor and poignancy that reached the The New York Times and the Today show and won the hearts of readers across the country, she returns with more humorous insight into life with canine companions.Klam focuses here on dog rescue, and its healing power not only for the dogs who are cared for and able to find good homes, but also for the people who bond with these animals. Klam became involved with rescue after years as an owner of purebred dogs. She was looking for a way to help and participate in a community, but she never imagined just how much she would receive in return. The dogs she has rescued through the years have filled her life with laughter and contentment, sorrow and frustration, and they have made certain that she never has a dull moment. Along the way, she has collected stories from friends who have also found that guiding dogs to nurturing homes made their own lives richer. These experiences, which show us that even in our smallest gestures we can make a big difference, inspired Love at First Bark.
The Memory Palace
By Bartok, Mira
In the tradition of The Glass Castle two sisters confront schizophrenia in this poignant literary memoir about family and mental illness Through stunning prose and original art The Memory Palace captures the love between mother and daughter the complex meaning of truth and familys capacity for forgivenessPeople have abandoned their loved ones for much less than youve been through Mira Bartk is told at her mothers memorial service It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira her sister and their mentally ill mother Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen beautiful piano protg Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well but as her mental state deteriorated Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped murdered or raped When the girls left for college the harassment escalatedNorma called them obsessively appeared at their apartments or jobs threatened to kill herself if they did not return home After a traumatic encounter Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe But while Mira pursued her career as an artistexploring the ancient romance of Florence the eerie mysticism of northern Norway and the raw desert of Israelthe haunting memories of her mother were never far away Then one day a debilitating car accident changes Miras life forever Struggling to recover from a traumatic brain injury she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her lifeshe had to relearn how to paint read and interact with the outside world In her search for a way back to her lost self Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible At the hospital Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years Filled with family photos childhood toys and ephemera from Normas life the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever.
If You Ask Me
By White, Betty
It-girl Betty White delivers a hilarious, slyly profound take on love, life, celebrity, and everything in between. Drawing from a lifetime of lessons learned, seven-time Emmy winner Betty White's wit and wisdom take center stage as she tackles topics like friendship, romantic love, aging, television, fans, love for animals, and the brave new world of celebrity. If You Ask Me mixes her thoughtful observations with humorous stories from a seven- decade career in Hollywood. Longtime fans and new fans alike will relish Betty's candid take on everything from her rumored crush on Robert Redford (true) to her beauty regimen ("I have no idea what color my hair is and I never intend to find out") to the Facebook campaign that helped persuade her to host Saturday Night Live despite her having declined the hosting job three times already. Featuring all-new material, with a focus on the past fifteen years of her life, If You Ask Me is funny, sweet, and to the point-just like Betty White.
American Sniper
By Kyle, Chris
NOW A BLOCKBUSTER MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD - NOMINATED FOR SIX ACADEMY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST PICTUREIncludes exclusive new material by Taya Kyle about the making of the American Sniper film.From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan ("the devil") and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war - including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates - and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris.