Download or read book Becoming Strangers written by Louise Dean and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-01-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After more than half a century of marriage, Dorothy and George are embarking on their first journey abroad together. Three decades younger, Jan and Annemieke are taking their last, as illness and incompatibility bring their unhappy union to an end. At first the luxury of a Caribbean resort is no match for the well-worn patterns of domestic life. Then the couples' paths cross, and a series of surprises ensues--a disappearance and an assault, most dramatically, but also a teapot tempest of passions, slights, misunderstandings, and small awakenings that punctuate a week in which each pair struggles to come to terms with what's been keeping them apart. A hit with readers and critics alike when it was published in England last year, Becoming Strangers is a different kind of love story, in which there's seldom a happy ending but sometimes a chance to redeem a life half-lived.

Download or read book Becoming Strangers written by Louise Dean and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-01-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After more than half a century of marriage, Dorothy and George are embarking on their first journey abroad together. Three decades younger, Jan and Annemieke are taking their last, as illness and incompatibility bring their unhappy union to an end. At first the luxury of a Caribbean resort is no match for the well-worn patterns of domestic life. Then the couples' paths cross, and a series of surprises ensues--a disappearance and an assault, most dramatically, but also a teapot tempest of passions, slights, misunderstandings, and small awakenings that punctuate a week in which each pair struggles to come to terms with what's been keeping them apart. A hit with readers and critics alike when it was published in England last year, Becoming Strangers is a different kind of love story, in which there's seldom a happy ending but sometimes a chance to redeem a life half-lived.

Download or read book When We Become Strangers written by Maggie Hamilton and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We're more connected, yet lonelier than ever - practical ways to combat the alarming rise of loneliness by bestselling author and social researcher, Maggie Hamilton. Practical solutions to combat social isolation in our families and communities. 'A timely warning shot over our collective bows...reminds us that awareness without action is worthless. A thought-provoking and challenging look into our future.' - Michael Carr-Gregg, psychologist and bestselling author 'Restores hope and gives simple, practical steps we can all take to feel safe and connected; as we build a new way of living and turn around the estrangement we all feel.' - Katrina Cavanough, CEO, The Kindness On Purpose Movement After decades of affluence, we're now busy renovating our homes, buffing and botoxing our bodies, and losing ourselves in passive entertainment and shopping, as depression and anxiety soars. And with the arrival of Netflix and Uber Eats, there's less and less incentive to leave home. Could our constant need for connection be messing with our brains? Is this why we're losing our ability to strike up a conversation with anyone we don't know? And given that so many of our kids lack one-on-one attention and regular touch, are we raising this new generation to be profoundly lonely? Right now, many of our relationships at home and at work, as well as in our communities are struggling. What, then, are the best ways back to belonging, and what might a more engaged community look like? Maggie Hamilton, author of What's Happening to Our Boys? and What's Happening to Our Girls? explores our growing loneliness and proposes practical solutions and an uplifting vision to combat the increasing social isolation in our families and communities.

Download or read book Before We Were Strangers written by Renée Carlino and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Download or read book The Power of Strangers written by Joe Keohane and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “meticulously researched and buoyantly written” (Esquire) look at what happens when we talk to strangers, and why it affects everything from our own health and well-being to the rise and fall of nations in the tradition of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens “This lively, searching work makes the case that welcoming ‘others’ isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it’s the surest path to the best of what life has to offer.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies In our cities, we stand in silence at the pharmacy and in check-out lines at the grocery store, distracted by our phones, barely acknowledging one another, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we retreat into ideological silos reinforced by algorithms designed to serve us only familiar ideas and like-minded users. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we’ve never met. But what if strangers—so often blamed for our most pressing political, social, and personal problems—are actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely. Digging into a growing body of cutting-edge research on the surprising social and psychological benefits that come from talking to strangers, Keohane finds that even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness, and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. And all the while, Keohane gathers practical tips from experts on how to talk to strangers, and tries them out himself in the wild, to awkward, entertaining, and frequently poignant effect. Warm, witty, erudite, and profound, equal parts sweeping history and self-help journey, this deeply researched book will inspire readers to see everything—from major geopolitical shifts to trips to the corner store—in an entirely new light, showing them that talking to strangers isn’t just a way to live; it’s a way to survive.

Download or read book Make Your Home Among Strangers written by Jennine Capó Crucet and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young, Cuban-American woman is accepted into an elite college right as her home life unravels.

Download or read book The Strangers We Became written by Cynthia Kaplan Shamash and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This riveting and utterly unique memoir chronicles the coming of age of Cynthia Shamash, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad in 1963. When she was eight, her family tried to escape Iraq over the Iranian border, but they were captured and jailed for five weeks. Upon release, they were returned to their home in Baghdad, where most of their belongings had been confiscated and the door of their home sealed with wax. They moved in with friends and applied for passports to spend a ten-day vacation in Istanbul, although they never intended to return. From Turkey, the family fled to Tel Aviv and then to Amsterdam, where Cynthia's father soon died of a heart attack. At the age of twelve, Sanuti (as her mother called her) was sent to London for schooling, where she lived in an Orthodox Jewish enclave with the chief rabbi and his family. At the end of the school year, she returned to Holland to navigate her teen years in a culture that was much more sexually liberal than the one she had been born into, or indeed the one she was experiencing among Orthodox Jews in London. Shortly after finishing her schooling as a dentist, Cynthia moved to the United States in an attempt to start over. This vivid, beautiful, and very funny memoir will appeal to readers intrigued by spirituality, tolerance, the personal ramifications of statelessness and exile, the clashes of cultures, and the future of Iraq and its Jews.

Download or read book All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers A Novel written by Larry McMurtry and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naïve troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

Download or read book Distant Strangers written by James Vernon and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern? In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers. Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.

Download or read book Strangers in Their Own Land written by Arlie Russell Hochschild and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump "A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, "Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild's 'strangers in their own land' and a new elite." Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called "humble and important" by David Brooks and "masterly" by Atul Gawande, Hochschild's book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition features a new afterword by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and also includes a readers' group guide at the back of the book.

Download or read book Strangers written by Dean Koontz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The plot twists ingeniously...an engaging, often chilling book.”—The New York Times Book Review A writer in California. A doctor in Boston. A motel owner and his employee in Nevada. A priest in Chicago. A robber in New York. A little girl in Las Vegas. They’re a handful of people from across the country, living through eerie variations of the same nightmare. A dark memory is calling out to them. And soon they will be drawn together, deep in the heart of a sprawling desert, where the terrifying truth awaits...

Download or read book Where Strangers Become Neighbours written by Leonie Sandercock and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the present age of migration, the influx of immigrants from distant lands leads inevitably to the spatial and social restructuring of cities and regions. It is often accompanied by fears of and hostility towards the newcomers. Nevertheless, in Europe, North America and Japan this influx of immigrants is essential to economic growth. How can immigrants become accepted members of the society of their adopted country? How can strangers become neighbours? What alchemies of political and social imagination are required to achieve peaceful coexistence in the mongrel cities of the 21st century? What philosophies and policies have made integration successful in Canada and how can it be translated into European context? The book tackles an important contemporary issue – the social integration of immigrants in a large metropolis – by way of the detailed case study of one Canadian city. The book provides a large political and legal context which makes this case study comprehensible and inspiring to readers outside Canada.

Download or read book Strange Encounters written by Sara Ahmed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the relationship between strangers, embodiment and community, Strange Encounters challenges the assumptions that the stranger is simply anybody we do not recognize and instead proposes that he or she is socially constructued as somebody we already know. Using feminist and postcolonial theory this book examines the impact of multiculturalism and globalization on embodiment and community whilst considering the ethical and political implication of its critique for post-colonial feminism. A diverse range of texts are analyzed which produce the figure of 'the stranger', showing that it has alternatively been expelled as the origin of danger - such as in neighbourhood watch, or celebrated as the origin of difference - as in multiculturalism. The author argues that both of these standpoints are problematic as they involve 'stranger fetishism'; they assume that the stranger 'has a life of its own'.

Download or read book Strangers I Know written by Claudia Durastanti and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold, contemporary and urgent novel from a renowned Italian writer that examines silence in different forms, immigration, family and social class.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book Goodbye Stranger written by Rebecca Stead and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-05 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in grade five, Bridge, Tabitha and Emily made a pact. Never to fight, ever. Now, two years later, they’re still best friends, but other things are changing. Bridge meets Sherm, and is soon excited and confused by her new, strange feelings. And when Emily starts texting pictures of herself to Patrick, Bridge and Tab find themselves complicit in a naïve plan that quickly spirals out of control. And while the three friends navigate the challenges of their changing friendship, another story—of betrayal and remorse—keeps you guessing until the very end. Goodbye Stranger is a tender and intricate story about friendships, and love, and the pain of sometimes making the wrong choices. Rebecca Stead is the author of four novels: First Light, When You Reach Me (a New York Times bestseller and Newbery Medal winner), Liar & Spy (Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize winner and New York Times bestseller) and, most recently, Goodbye Stranger. She lives in New York City with her family. ‘This memorable story about female friendships, silly bets, different kinds of love, and bad decisions is authentic in detail and emotion—another Stead hallmark.’ STARRED Review, Publishers Weekly ‘[Stead] captures the stomach-churning moments of a misstep or an unplanned betrayal and reworks these events with grace, humour, and polish into possibilities for kindness and redemption. Superb.’ STARRED Review, Kirkus ‘Stead shows how strongly love of all kinds can smooth the juddering path toward adulthood. Winsome, bighearted, and altogether rewarding.’ STARRED Review, Booklist ‘[Stead’s writing is] filled with humor, delightful coincidences, and the sorts of things...that escalate in ways that can seem life-shattering to a 13-year-old. The author keeps all her balls in the air until she catches them safely with ineffable grace.’ STARRED Review, School Library Journal ‘Rebecca Stead’s story is multi-layered and sumptuous, beautifully plotted and a real page-turner.’ Alpha Reader ‘An unforgettable book about young girls coming of age written with wit and compassion.’ ReadPlus ‘Goodbye Stranger was such a pleasure to read...[Stead’s] teenage characters are so real, and charming and likeable, even when they’re not making the best decisions...I will continue to sing the praises of this new book well into the rest of the year (and probably much longer).’ Middle Chapter ‘[Stead has] a profound appreciation for the young people she writes for...She creates the kind of situations that would shatter a vulnerable thirteen-year-old girl but somehow manages to do so with a deft, light touch full of empathy and humour.’ Readings ‘Goodbye Stranger is the kind of book you might call a revelation. It is surprising, generous, thoughtful, honest and it paints a picture of the time after childhood and before youth more honestly than I have ever seen depicted.’ Where the Writer Comes to Write ‘The language is often dazzling and the minor characters have great appeal. A very satisfying read.’ Stuff NZ ‘The emotional complexity is deftly done by Stead in a way that is satisfying and accessible for young adults and adults alike, without being patronising, and acknowledging that we all make mistakes along the way.’ New Zealand Book Council ‘Goodbye Stranger falls in the zone of upper middle fiction/young YA, and is a great book to discuss with a tween as it gently preempts teen issues...Stead opens up a discussion of phone use and photos that never veers into shaming or hysteria.’ Leanne Hall, Readings

Download or read book The Mountain Is You written by Brianna Wiest and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT SELF-SABOTAGE. Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it-for good. Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors. This is why we resist efforts to change, often until they feel completely futile. But by extracting crucial insight from our most damaging habits, building emotional intelligence by better understanding our brains and bodies, releasing past experiences at a cellular level, and learning to act as our highest potential future selves, we can step out of our own way and into our potential. For centuries, the mountain has been used as a metaphor for the big challenges we face, especially ones that seem impossible to overcome. To scale our mountains, we actually have to do the deep internal work of excavating trauma, building resilience, and adjusting how we show up for the climb. In the end, it is not the mountain we master, but ourselves.