Download or read book Everything Is Alive written by Michele Oka Doner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oka Doner’s life work shines a light on the continuing importance of art and transformative power or our cosmic and enchanting natural world. Michele Oka Doner is one of today’s foremost artists. Her prodigious career spans five decades and numerous artistic media, including sculpture, works on paper, furniture, video, jewelry, and sets and costumes. In addition, she has created over forty iconic public and private permanent art installations. They are the focus of EVERYTHING IS ALIVE. The common thread running through Oka Doner’s oeuvre is her lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world, from which she derives her formal vocabulary. In EVERYTHING IS ALIVE this vocabulary hones in on magic, enchantment, and transformation as we are led through the artistic processes informing Oka Doner’s prominent art installations. From Micco, the monumental concrete sculptural pavilion suffused with native greenery of the nearby Everglades to Oka Doner’s haunting ceramic SoulCatchers and figurative sculptures born of clay at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactury in Munich, to Miami International Airport, where Oka Doner’s Sargassum soars overhead and her A Walk on the Beach lies at the feet of over 25 million travelers who traverse its 9,000 oceanic bronze forms each year. Four distinguished essayists, Judith Thurman, Joseph Giovannini, Cynthia Nadelman, and Gregory Volk, serve as guides through Oka Doner’s evolution as an artist as seen in these installations, which are brought to life on 240 pages of stunning photographs, original process sketches, and sources of inspiration. EVERYTHING IS ALIVE offers a glimpse into the full breadth of Oka Doner’s work. Above all, it shines a light on the continuing importance of art and the worldview that there is beauty to be found in all living things.

Download or read book Maeve in America written by Maeve Higgins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If Tina Fey and David Sedaris had a daughter, she would be Maeve Higgins.” —Glamour A startlingly hilarious essay collection about one woman’s messy path to finding her footing in New York City, from breakout comedy star and podcaster Maeve Higgins Maeve Higgins was a bestselling author and comedian in her native Ireland when, at the grand old age of thirty-one, she left the only home she’d ever known in search of something more and found herself in New York City. Together, the essays in Maeve in America create a smart, funny, and revealing portrait of a woman who aims for the stars but sometimes hits the ceiling and the inimitable city that helped make her who she is. Here are stories of not being able to afford a dress for the ball, of learning to live with yourself while you’re still figuring out how to love yourself, of the true significance of realizing what sort of shelter dog you would be. Self-aware and laugh-out-loud funny, this collection is also a fearless exploration of the awkward questions in life, such as: Is clapping too loudly at a gig a good enough reason to break up with somebody? Is it ever really possible to leave home? “Maeve Higgins is hilarious, poignant, conversational, and my favorite Irish import since U2. You’re in for a treat.” —Phoebe Robinson

Download or read book The Ocean Is Alive written by Glenn Edney and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ocean covers over 70 percent of our planet's surface and accounts for 97-99 percent of the liveable biosphere. She is the cradle of our existence and the heart of our blue home, a vast, living and breathing superorganism. The Ocean Is Alive is first and foremost a celebration of the Ocean in all her living splendour. It takes the reader on a fascinating and informative voyage of discovery into the blue heart our planet, from the Ocean's formation more than four billion years ago and the emergence of life deep below her surface, to the incredible diversity and exuberance we know today. But much more than this, it is a journey of discovery into Ocean consciousness: through the evolution of the senses, the emergence of sentient behaviour, and finally an intriguing exploration of what the author calls 'Ocean Mind'. In telling the Ocean's story Glenn Edney draws on his thirty years experience as an Ocean ecologist, underwater naturalist and professional diver to take us beyond the science and into the depths of what it is like to be an Ocean being. Using a combination of personal experience, stories and insights from others, along with guided visualizations, the author weaves a highly readable and thought provoking tale of an Ocean alive to itself, and alive to anyone willing to 'take the plunge'. But no contemporary story of the Ocean would be complete without investigating the current threats to the Ocean's wellbeing. In addressing these issues the author presents a compelling case for recognition of the Ocean as a living being with intrinsic value far beyond the benefits she provides humanity, and offers a new vision for our relationship with the living Ocean.

Download or read book Sometimes I Lie written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Download or read book Stuff You Should Know written by Josh Clark and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).

Download or read book The Clancys of Queens written by Tara Clancy and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2016 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clancy's memoir "is not merely an authentic coming-of-age tale or a rowdy barstool biography. Chockfull of characters who escape the popular imaginings of this city, it offers a bold portrait of real people, people whose stories are largely absent from our shelves. Most crucially, it captures ... rarely-heard voices of New York's working-class women"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book Nice Try written by Josh Gondelman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you only read one book in your life, it probably shouldn’t be this one. However, if you’re not operating an inexplicable one-book policy, these stories are funny, touching, and more than worth your time.” — John Oliver “Josh Gondelman is one of the most original hilarious voices out there today. This book will hook you and make you laugh and laugh.” — Amy Schumer Emmy-Award winning writer and comedian Josh Gondelman’s collection of personal stories of best intentions and mixed results. Josh Gondelman knows a thing or two about trying—and failing. The Emmy Award-winning stand-up comic—dubbed a “pathological sweetheart” by the New York Observer—is known throughout the industry as one of comedy’s true “nice guys.” Not surprisingly, he’s endured his share of last-place finishes. But he keeps on bouncing back. In this collection of hilarious and poignant essays (including his acclaimed New York Times piece “What if I Bombed at My Own Wedding?”), Josh celebrates a life of good intentions—and mixed results. His true tales of romantic calamities, professional misfortunes, and eventual triumphs reinforce the notion: we get out of the world what we put into it. Whether he’s adopting a dog from a suspicious stranger, mitigating a disastrous road trip, or trying MDMA for the first (and only) time, Josh only wants the best for everyone—even as his attempts to do the right thing occasionally implode. Full of the warm and relatable humor that’s made him a favorite on the comedy club circuit, Nice Try solidifies Josh Gondelman’s reputation as not just a good guy, but a skilled observer of the human condition.

Download or read book I Am Still Alive written by Kate Alice Marshall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This tense wire of a novel thrums with suspense. . . . [this book] just might be the highlight of your summer.”–The New York Times Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets The Revenant in this heart-pounding story of survival and revenge in the unforgiving wilderness. After: Jess is alone. Her cabin has burned to the ground. She knows if she doesn’t act fast, the cold will kill her before she has time to worry about food. But she is still alive—for now. Before: Jess hadn’t seen her survivalist, off-the-grid dad in over a decade. But after a car crash killed her mother and left her injured, she was forced to move to his cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness. Just as Jess was beginning to get to know him, a secret from his past paid them a visit, leaving her father dead and Jess stranded. After: With only her father’s dog for company, Jess must forage and hunt for food, build shelter, and keep herself warm. Some days it feels like the wild is out to destroy her, but she’s stronger than she ever imagined. Jess will survive. She has to. She knows who killed her father…and she wants revenge.

Download or read book If We Were Villains written by M. L. Rio and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Much like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, M. L. Rio’s sparkling debut is a richly layered story of love, friendship, and obsession...will keep you riveted through its final, electrifying moments.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest "Nerdily (and winningly) in love with Shakespeare...Readable, smart.” —New York Times Book Review On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it. A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras. But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent. If We Were Villains was named one of Bustle's Best Thriller Novels of the Year, and Mystery Scene says, "A well-written and gripping ode to the stage...A fascinating, unorthodox take on rivalry, friendship, and truth."

Download or read book The Book of More Delights written by Ross Gay and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, and St. Louis Public Radio** The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy is back with exactly the book we need in these unsettling times. Margaret Roach of The New York Times says, “Yes, please. I'll have another dose of delight.” In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

Download or read book Everything Happens for a Reason written by Kate Bowler and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

Download or read book In Every Moment We Are Still Alive written by Tom Malmquist and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chosen by the New York Times as one of the "Notable Books of 2018" Chosen by El País as one of this past decade's nine best novels about life and death The prize-winning, bestselling tale of love, loss, family and the lives we live moment by moment, from a stunning new voice in European fiction. Tom's heavily pregnant girlfriend Karin is rushed to hospital with severe flu. While the doctors are able to save the baby, they are helpless in the face of what transpires to be acute Leukemia, and in a moment as fleeting as it is cruel Tom gains a daughter but loses his soul-mate. In Every Moment is the story of a year that changes everything, as Tom must reconcile the fury of bereavement with the overwhelming responsibility of raising his daughter, Livia, alone. By turns tragic and redemptive, meditative and breathless, achingly poignant and darkly funny, this heavily autobiographical novel has been described in its native Sweden as 'hypnotic', 'impossible to resist' and 'one of the most powerful books about grief ever written'.

Download or read book Reasons to Stay Alive written by Matt Haig and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library. "Destined to become a modern classic." —Entertainment Weekly WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE? At the age of 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again. A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth. "I wrote this book because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we haven't been able to see it . . . Words, just sometimes, really can set you free."

Download or read book Everything is Wonderful written by Sigrid Rausing and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author reflects on the time she spent living in an Estonian village on the site of a formerly Soviet collective farm and describes the people she met, the economic conditions, and what life was like in the region.

Download or read book When Things Are Alive They Hum written by Hannah Bent and published by Hardie Grant Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australian Women’s Weekly Great Read Shortlisted Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction Woman & Home Books of the Year Shortlisted MUD Literary Prize​ Shortlisted ABIA Award for General Fiction Shortlisted ABIA Matt Richell Award New Writer of the Year ‘Hannah Bent’s outstanding debut is a wise, wondrous celebration of life.’ – The Australian ‘Hannah Bent has created a literary heroine of such pure beauty she takes your breath away.’ – Australian Women’s Weekly ‘Read it if you like: Your sister, anything by Trent Dalton, having a good cry, and My Sister’s Keeper.’ – Mamamia Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive. Now twenty-five, Marlowe is living abroad when she receives the devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing and she is being denied a transplant by the medical establishment. Marlowe rushes to her childhood home in Hong Kong to be by Harper’s side and soon has to answer the question – what lengths would you go to save your sister? When Things are Alive They Hum poses profound questions about the nature of love and existence, the ways grief changes us, and how we confront the hand fate has dealt us. Intensely moving, exquisitely written and literally humming with wonder, it is a novel that celebrates life in all its guises, and what comes after. PRAISE FOR WHEN THINGS ARE ALIVE THEY HUM ‘When literature is alive it hums, and rattles and warms and hurts and heals. Hannah Bent and her wondrous Harper and Marlowe have changed the way I’ve been going about my days. What a gift.’ – Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies ‘A simply beautiful novel.’ – Good Reading ‘...what stayed with me was the achingly beautiful portrayal of the love between the two sisters. If I had a sister, that is how I would like to feel.’ – Nicole Abadee, Sydney Morning Herald ‘heartbreakingly beautiful’ – Family Circle

Download or read book Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody written by Robert Brockway and published by Three Rivers Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just when you thought you’d accepted your own mortality . . . Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody is bringing panic back. Twenty illustrated, hilariously fear-inducing essays reveal the chilling and very real experiments, dangerous emerging technologies, and terrifying natural disasters that soon could—or very nearly already did—bring about the end of humanity. In short, everything in here will kill you and everyone you love. At any moment. And nobody’s told you about it—until now: • Experiments in green energy like the HiPER, which uses massive lasers to create a tiny “contained” sun; it’s an idea that could save the world if it doesn’t consume us all in a fiery fusion reaction first. • Global disasters like the hypercane—a hurricane so large it could cover all of North America and shoot trailer parks into space! • Terrifying new developments in robotics like the EATR, which powers itself on meat—an invention in the running for “Worst Decision Made by Anybody.”

Download or read book Be Still Life written by Ohara Hale and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A song, a riff, and a playful romp--this is a lively contemplation about being present to all of life!