Download or read book The Writing Life written by Annie Dillard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." — Chicago Tribune From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a collection that illuminates the dedication and daring that characterizes a writer's life. In these short essays, Annie Dillard—the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood—illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that characterize the existence of a writer. A moving account of Dillard’s own experiences while writing her works, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

Download or read book Eight Dates written by John Gottman and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you’re newly together and eager to make it work or a longtime couple looking to strengthen and deepen your bond, Eight Dates offers a program of how, why, and when to have eight basic conversations with your partner that can result in a lifetime of love. “Happily ever after” is not by chance, it’s by choice– the choice each person in a relationship makes to remain open, remain curious, and, most of all, to keep talking to one another. From award-winning marriage researcher and bestselling author Dr. John Gottman and fellow researcher Julie Gottman, Eight Dates offers an ingenious and simple-to-implement approach to effective relationship communication. Here are the subjects that every serious couple should discuss: Trust. Family. Sex and intimacy. Dealing with conflict. Work and money. Dreams, and more. And here is how to talk about them—how to broach subjects that are difficult or embarrassing, how to be brave enough to say what you really feel. There are also suggestions for where and when to go on each date—book your favorite romantic restaurant for the Sex & Intimacy conversation (and maybe go to a yoga or dance class beforehand). There are questionnaires, innovative exercises, real-life case studies, and skills to master, including the Four Skills of Intimate Conversation and the Art of Listening. Because making love last is not about having a certain feeling—it’s about both of you being active and involved.

Download or read book My Body written by Emily Ratajkowski and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "My Body offers a lucid examination of the mirrors in which its author has seen herself, and her indoctrination into the cult of beauty as defined by powerful men. In its more transcendent passages . . . the author steps beyond the reach of any 'Pygmalion' and becomes a more dangerous kind of beautiful. She becomes a kind of god in her own right: an artist." —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review A "MOST ANTICIPATED" AND "BEST OF FALL 2021" BOOK FOR * VOGUE * TIME * ESQUIRE * PEOPLE * USA TODAY * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * LOS ANGELES TIMES * SHONDALAND * ALMA * THRILLEST * NYLON * FORTUNE A deeply honest investigation of what it means to be a woman and a commodity from Emily Ratajkowski, the archetypal, multi-hyphenate celebrity of our time Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book. My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.

Download or read book How To Write An Autobiographical Novel written by Alexander Chee and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art. As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing ​— ​Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley ​— ​the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack. Named a Best Book by: Time, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Boston Globe, Paris Review, Mother Jones,The A.V. Club, Out Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bitch, Library Journal, Flavorwire, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, Shelf Awareness, Tor.com, Entertainment Cheat Sheet, Roads and Kingdoms, Chicago Public Library, Hyphen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Coil, iBooks, and Washington Independent Review of Books Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction * Recipient of the Lambda Literary Trustees' Award * Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography

Download or read book Linda Goodman s Love Signs written by Linda Goodman and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 1103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller that helps you explore whether romance is in the stars. Linda Goodman’s Love Signs addresses the question asked by everyone familiar with astrology: How do I relate to someone of another sign? Each sign is “related” to the twelve signs of the zodiac in a different and unique way. Each section addresses the differences for a male and a female with the same sign matches. This is an updated edition of Linda Goodman’s lively bestseller, which has introduced millions to the concept of astrological compatibility. “What seems to set Goodman’s books apart from other stargazing guides is their knowledgeable approach and comprehensive reach.” —Newsweek

Download or read book Not That Kind of Girl written by Lena Dunham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes two new essays! NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL For readers of Nora Ephron, Tina Fey, and David Sedaris, this hilarious, wise, and fiercely candid collection of personal essays establishes Lena Dunham—the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO’s Girls—as one of the most original young talents writing today. In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one’s way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told. “Take My Virginity (No Really, Take It)” is the account of Dunham’s first time, and how her expectations of sex didn’t quite live up to the actual event (“No floodgate had been opened, no vault of true womanhood unlocked”); “Girls & Jerks” explores her former attraction to less-than-nice guys—guys who had perfected the “dynamic of disrespect” she found so intriguing; “Is This Even Real?” is a meditation on her lifelong obsession with death and dying—what she calls her “genetically predestined morbidity.” And in “I Didn’t F*** Them, but They Yelled at Me,” she imagines the tell-all she will write when she is eighty and past caring, able to reflect honestly on the sexism and condescension she has encountered in Hollywood, where women are “treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms—necessary but infinitely disposable.” Exuberant, moving, and keenly observed, Not That Kind of Girl is a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the struggle that is growing up. “I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you,” Dunham writes. “But if I can take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine will have been worthwhile.” Praise for Not That Kind of Girl “The gifted Ms. Dunham not only writes with observant precision, but also brings a measure of perspective, nostalgia and an older person’s sort of wisdom to her portrait of her (not all that much) younger self and her world. . . . As acute and heartfelt as it is funny.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “It’s not Lena Dunham’s candor that makes me gasp. Rather, it’s her writing—which is full of surprises where you least expect them. A fine, subversive book.”—David Sedaris “This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they understand the experience of being a young woman in our culture. I thought I knew the author rather well, and I found many (not altogether welcome) surprises.”—Carroll Dunham “Witty, illuminating, maddening, bracingly bleak . . . [Dunham] is a genuine artist, and a disturber of the order.”—The Atlantic

Download or read book Annie on My Mind written by Nancy Garden and published by Paw Prints. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liza begins to doubt her feelings for Annie after someone finds out about their relationship, and realizes, after starting college, that her denial of love for Annie was a mistake. Reprint.

Download or read book Choose Her Every Day Or Leave Her written by Bryan Reeves and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2010, at age 36, while going through yet another agonizing breakup, Bryan had an epiphany: He knew nothing useful about how to do intimate relationship well. In that moment of painful realization he vowed to never suck at intimacy again. Thus began an extraordinary journey into the realms of love, sex, relationship. In summer 2015, with already legions of readers all over the world following his adventures, his essay "Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her)" went viral, exploding to over a million readers daily. This book (which includes that essay) is Bryan's anthology of stories, insights, practical tools, and secrets (that should never be secrets!) to help guide you on your own journey to thriving in love and intimacy.

Download or read book Say You Swear written by Meagan Brandy and published by Bloom Books. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Her brother's best friend broke her heart, but what happens when his new teammate wants to put it back together? Arianna Johnson has been dreaming of what college life might bring, and it's finally coming over the horizon as she and her friends plan one last beachside summer together. So much has changed over the years, but there's always been one constant. The boy her heart returns to no matter where her imagination runs: her brother's best friend, Chase. This is the summer she'll finally tell him how she feels. That it's him. It's always been him. Until suddenly, it isn't. Ari's heart is in splinters when she meets star quarterback Noah Riley. His friendship is exactly what she needs after Chase's rejection, but from the start, Noah wants more. Even when their path is blurry, even when tragedy strikes, even when Ari doesn't know her own heart, Noah will fight for the feelings he knows they both have...no matter what it might cost them. They say first love lasts forever. Ari is about to find out if that's really true.

Download or read book What Shamu Taught Me About Life Love and Marriage written by Amy Sutherland and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While observing exotic animal trainers for her acclaimed book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, journalist Amy Sutherland had an epiphany: What if she used these training techniques with the human animals in her own life–namely her dear husband, Scott? In this lively and perceptive book, Sutherland tells how she took the trainers’ lessons home. The next time her forgetful husband stomped through the house in search of his mislaid car keys, she asked herself, “What would a dolphin trainer do?” The answer was: nothing. Trainers reward the behavior they want and, just as important, ignore the behavior they don’t. Rather than appease her mate’s rising temper by joining in the search, or fuel his temper by nagging him to keep better track of his things in the first place, Sutherland kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the dishes she was washing. In short order, Scott found his keys and regained his cool. “I felt like I should throw him a mackerel,” she writes. In time, as she put more training principles into action, she noticed that she became more optimistic and less judgmental, and their twelve-year marriage was better than ever. What started as a goofy experiment had such good results that Sutherland began using the training techniques with all the people in her life, including her mother, her friends, her students, even the clerk at the post office. In the end, the biggest lesson she learned is that the only animal you can truly change is yourself. Full of fun facts, fascinating insights, hilarious anecdotes, and practical tips, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage describes Sutherland’s Alice-in-Wonderland experience of stumbling into a world where cheetahs walk nicely on leashes and elephants paint with watercolors, and of leaving a new, improved Homo sapiens.

Download or read book If He Had Been with Me written by Laura Nowlin and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

Download or read book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek written by Annie Dillard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about her book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.” — Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence." Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

Download or read book The Silent Patient written by Alex Michaelides and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." —Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

Download or read book Something That May Shock and Discredit You written by Daniel M. Lavery and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of our smartest, most inventive humor writers, Ortberg combines bathos and the devotional into a revelation.” —Jordy Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster, writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column, and cofounder of The Toast comes a hilarious and stirring collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture—from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure. Daniel M. Lavery is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids—from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis of the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, and featuring figures as varied as Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, Nora Ephron, Apollo, and the cast of Mean Girls, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a hilarious and emotionally exhilarating compendium that combines personal history with cultural history to make you see yourself and those around you entirely anew. It further establishes Lavery as one of the most innovative and engaging voices of his generation—and it may just change the way you think about Lord Byron forever.

Download or read book How to Get a Literary Agent written by Michael Larsen and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a top literary agent who gives writers an insider's view of how to find and work with an agent throughout the process of getting published. Includes: -- How to know that you're ready for an agent -- 7 ways to find an agent -- Writing a cover letter that grabs attention -- What to do with an agent once you've got one -- What you can expect and what you'd better not hope for -- Making sure this is the right agent for you -- Congratulations, now you have an agent AND an editor -- How to avoid the 7 worst pitfalls for aspiring writers -- And much, much more. In today's highly competitive publishing industry, literary agents are more important than ever. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, reference or children's books, here is everything you need to know about using an agent to launch and sustain your literary career.a

Download or read book You ve Reached Sam written by Dustin Thao and published by Wednesday Books. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Instant New York Times Bestseller! If I Stay meets Your Name in Dustin Thao's You've Reached Sam, a heartfelt novel about love and loss and what it means to say goodbye. Seventeen-year-old Julie Clarke has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city; spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his belongings, and tries everything to forget him. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces memories to return. Desperate to hear him one more time, Julie calls Sam's cell phone just to listen to his voice mail recording. And Sam picks up the phone. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam's voice makes Julie fall for him all over again and with each call, it becomes harder to let him go. What would you do if you had a second chance at goodbye? A 2021 Kids' Indie Next List Selection A Cosmo.com Best YA Book Of 2021 A Buzzfeed Best Book Of November A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book

Download or read book Holy the Firm written by Annie Dillard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This] is a book of great richness, beauty and power and thus very difficult to do justice to in a brief review. . . . The violence is sometimes unbearable, the language rarely less than superb. Dillard's description of the moth's death makes Virginia Woolf's go dim and Edwardian. . . . Nature seen so clear and hard that the eyes tear. . . . A rare and precious book." — Frederick Buechner, New York Times Book Review A profound book about the natural world—both its beauty and its cruelty—from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard In 1975 Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound, in a wooden room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice, death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm, she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things—rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire. Here is a lyrical gift to any reader who has ever wondered how best to live with grace and wonder in the natural world.