Download or read book The Meaning of Life and Other Useless Crap written by Ben Lemon and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
Download or read book Making Peace with the Things in Your Life written by Cindy Glovinsky and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-05-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you spend much of your time struggling against the growing ranks of papers, books, clothes, housewares, mementos, and other possessions that seem to multiply when you're not looking? Do these inanimate objects, the hallmarks of busy modern life, conspire to fill up every inch of your space, no matter how hard you try to get rid of some of them and organize the rest? Do you feel frustrated, thwarted, and powerless in the face of this ever-renewing mountain of stuff? Help is on the way. Cindy Glovinsky, practicing psychotherapist and personal organizer, is uniquely qualified to explain this nagging, even debilitating problem -- and to provide solutions that really work. Writing in a supportive, nonjudmental tone, Glovinsky uses humorous examples, questionnaires, and exercises to shed light on the real reasons why we feel so overwhelmed by papers and possessions and offers individualized suggestions tailored to specific organizing problems. Whether you're drowning in clutter or just looking for a new way to deal with the perennial challenge of organizing and managing material things, this fresh and reassuring approach is sure to help. Making Peace with the Things in Your Life will help you cut down on your clutter and cut down on your stress!
Download or read book What Is the Meaning of Life written by Don Hermann and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 82 years old, former advertising executive Don Hermann has had ample time to ponder life’s not-so-little mysteries. Collected in this pint-sized gift book are Don’s queries about everything from the meaning of life to the meaning of a handshake. Whether you’re 22 or 82, reading alone or among friends, these questions – which range from the philosophical to the silly – will inspire hours of thoughtful fun.
Download or read book Useful Work Versus Useless Toil written by William Morris and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fewer Better Things written by Glenn Adamson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.
Download or read book I Wrote This Book Because I Love You written by Tim Kreider and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A People Top 10 Book of 2018* The New York Times essayist and author of We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider trains his singular power of observation on his (often befuddling) relationships with women. Psychologists have told him he’s a psychologist. Philosophers have told him he’s a philosopher. Religious groups have invited him to speak. He had a cult following as a cartoonist. But, above all else, Tim Kreider is an essayist—one whose deft prose, uncanny observations, dark humor, and emotional vulnerability have earned him deserved comparisons to David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and the late David Foster Wallace (who was himself a fan of Kreider’s humor). “Beautifully written, with just enough humor to balance his spikiness” (Booklist), I Wrote This Book Because I Love You focuses Tim’s unique perception and wit on his relationships with women—romantic, platonic, and the murky in-between. He talks about his difficulty finding lasting love and seeks to understand his commitment issues by tracking down the John Hopkins psychologist who tested him for a groundbreaking study on attachment when he was a toddler. He talks about his valued female friendships, one of which landed him on a circus train bound for Mexico. He talks about his time teaching young women at an upstate New York college, and the profound lessons they wound up teaching him. And in a hugely popular essay that originally appeared in The New York Times, he talks about his nineteen-year-old cat, wondering if it’s the most enduring relationship he’ll ever have. “In a style reminiscent of Orwell, E.B. White and David Sedaris” (The New York Times Book Review), each of these pieces is “heartbreaking, brutal, and hilarious” (Judd Apatow), and collectively they cement Kreider’s place among the best essayists working today.
Download or read book Bullshit Jobs written by David Graeber and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).
Download or read book When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
Download or read book Let Your Life Speak written by Parker J. Palmer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-06-22 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PLEASE NOTE: Some recent copies of Let Your Life Speak included printing errors. These issues have been corrected, but if you purchased a defective copy between September and December 2019, please send proof of purchase to [email protected] to receive a replacement copy. Dear Friends: I'm sorry that after 20 years of happy traveling, Let Your Life Speak hit a big pothole involving printing errors that resulted in an unreadable book. But I'm very grateful to my publisher for moving quickly to see that people who received a defective copy have a way to receive a good copy without going through the return process. We're all doing everything we can to make things right, and I'm grateful for your patience. Thank you, Parker J. Palmer With wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.
Download or read book Hyperbole and a Half written by Allie Brosh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller “Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations. FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to. FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
Download or read book In Praise of the Useless Life written by Paul Quenon and published by Ave Maria Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of two 2019 Catholic Press Association Awards: Memoir (First Place) and Cover Design (Second Place). Monastic life and its counter-cultural wisdom come alive in the stories and lessons of Br. Paul Quenon, O.C.S.O., during his more than five decades as a Trappist at the Abbey of Gethsemani. He served as a novice under Thomas Merton and he also welcomed some of the monastery's more well-known visitors, including Sr. Helen Prejean and Seamus Heaney, to Merton's hermitage. In Praise of the Useless Life includes Quenon's quiet reflections on what it means to live each day with careful attentiveness. The humble peace and simplicity of the monastery and of Quenon's daily life are beautifully portrayed in this memoir. Whether it be through the daily routine of the monastery, his love of the outdoors no matter the season, or his lively and interesting conversations with visitors (reciting Emily Dickinson with Pico Iyer, discussing Merton and poetry with Czeslaw Milosz), Quenon's gentle musings display his love for the beauty in his vocation and the people he’s encountered along the way. Inspired by his novice master Merton, the poet and photographer’s stories remind us that the beauty of life can best be seen in the "uselessness" of daily life—having a quiet chat with a friend, spending time in contemplation—in our vocations, and in the memories we make along the way.
Download or read book Love People Use Things written by Joshua Fields Millburn and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "The Minimalists show you how to disconnect from our conditioned material state and reconnect to our true essence: love people and use things. This is not a book about how to live with less, but about how to live more deeply and more fully." —Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk AS SEEN ON THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARIES MINIMALISM & LESS IS NOW How might your life be better with less? Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent—a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment—a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you’re imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you’ll have to let go of some clutter that’s in the way. In Love People, Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences—and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey—to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life. Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.
Download or read book Why Education Is Useless written by Daniel Cottom and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is useless because it destroys our common sense, because it isolates us from the rest of humanity, because it hardens our hearts and swells our heads. Bookish persons have long been subjects of suspicion and contempt and nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the United States during the past twenty years. Critics of education point to the Nazism of Martin Heidegger, for example, to assert the inhumanity of highly learned people; they contend that an oppressive form of identity politics has taken over the academy and complain that the art world has been overrun by culturally privileged elitists. There are always, it seems, far more reasons to disparage the ivory tower than to honor it. The uselessness of education, particularly in the humanities, is a pervasive theme in Western cultural history. With wit and precision, Why Education Is Useless engages those who attack learning by focusing on topics such as the nature of humanity, love, beauty, and identity as well as academic scandals, identity politics, multiculturalism, and the corporatization of academe. Asserting that hostility toward education cannot be dismissed as the reaction of barbarians, fools, and nihilists, Daniel Cottom brings a fresh perspective to all these topics while still making the debates about them comprehensible to those who are not academic insiders. A brilliant and provocative work of cultural argument and analysis, Why Education Is Useless brings in materials from literature, philosophy, art, film, and other fields and proceeds from the assumption that hostility to education is an extremely complex phenomenon, both historically and in contemporary American life. According to Cottom, we must understand the perdurable appeal of this antagonism if we are to have any chance of recognizing its manifestations—and countering them. Ranging in reference from Montaigne to George Bush, from Sappho to Timothy McVeigh, Why Education Is Useless is a lively investigation of a notion that has persisted from antiquity through the Renaissance and into the modern era, when the debate over the relative advantages of a liberal and a useful education first arose. Facing head on the conception of utility articulated in the nineteenth century by John Stuart Mill, and directly opposing the hostile conceptions of inutility that have been popularized in recent decades by such ideologues as Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, and John Ellis, Cottom contends that education must indeed be "useless" if it is to be worthy of its name.
Download or read book Paper Towns written by John Green and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.
Download or read book The Secret written by Rhonda Byrne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth-anniversary edition of the book that changed lives in profound ways, now with a new foreword and afterword. In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it. In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life. The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.
Download or read book Books for Living written by Will Schwalbe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the beloved New York Times best-selling The End of Your Life Book Club, an inspiring and magical exploration of the power of books to shape our lives in an era of constant connectivity. "[A] gift, and one that keeps giving.” —USA Today For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, and to find the answers to life’s questions big and small. In each chapter, he discusses a particular book and how it relates to concerns we all share. These books span centuries and genres—from Stuart Little to The Girl on the Train, from David Copperfield to Wonder, from Giovanni's Room to Rebecca, and from 1984 to Gifts from the Sea. Throughout, Schwalbe tells stories from his life and focuses on the way certain books can help us honor those we've loved and lost, and also figure out how to live each day more fully.
