Download or read book And Then We Grew Up written by Rachel Friedman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2019 A journey through the many ways to live an artistic life—from the flashy and famous to the quiet and steady—full of unexpected insights about creativity and contentment, from the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost. Rachel Friedman was a serious violist as a kid. She quit music in college but never stopped fantasizing about what her life might be like if she had never put down her bow. Years later, a freelance writer in New York, she again finds herself struggling with her fantasy of an artist’s life versus its much more complicated reality. In search of answers, she decides to track down her childhood friends from Interlochen, a prestigious arts camp she attended, full of aspiring actors, artists, dancers, and musicians, to find out how their early creative ambitions have translated into adult careers, relationships, and identities. Rachel’s conversations with these men and women spark nuanced revelations about creativity and being an artist: that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, that success isn’t always linear, that sometimes it’s okay to quit. And Then We Grew Up is for anyone who has given up a childhood dream and wondered “what-if?”, for those who have aspired to do what they love and had doubts along the way, and for all whose careers fall somewhere between emerging and established. Warm, whip-smart, and insightful, it offers inspiration for finding creative fulfillment wherever we end up in life.
Download or read book Then We Grew Up written by Andrew Marc Berman and published by Savio Republic. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-college life can be amazing, but it is also hard. So much will happen to us during this phase in our lives, but nothing speaks to the whole of it. And the whole of it can be unexpectedly frustrating, demanding, and disappointing—as well as exciting, dynamic, and filled with opportunity. Then We Grew Up is a moment of introspection. Four years after college, I sometimes still feel just as lost and hopeful as that young man who walked alongside thousands of graduating peers into a period defined by overwhelming ambiguity. I hope that my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned from them can spark a conversation—a dialogue around what I and countless others have slammed up against: the shock of adulthood, the loss of clear direction, the expectation of instant gratification, and the fear that everybody but you has their entire life figured out. The stories in this book are my truths—experiences that have come to define this in-between period. May they become a gateway for the exploration of your own journey into adulthood, no matter how far along that path you might be.
Download or read book The House We Grew Up In written by Lisa Jewell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of None of This Is True and Then She Was Gone comes an unforgettable saga that follows the Bird family and how one tragedy ripples throughout their lives for years. Meet the picture-perfect Bird family: pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and towheaded twins Rory and Rhys, one an adventurous troublemaker, the other his slighter, more sensitive counterpart. Their father is a sweet, gangly man, but it’s their beautiful, free-spirited mother Lorelei who spins at the center. In those early years, Lorelei tries to freeze time by filling their simple brick house with precious mementos. Easter egg foils are her favorite. Craft supplies, too. She hangs all of the children’s art, to her husband’s chagrin. Then one Easter weekend, a tragedy so devastating occurs that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass and the children have become adults, while Lorelei has become the county’s worst hoarder. She has alienated her husband and children and has been living as a recluse. But then something happens that beckons the Bird family back to the house they grew up in—to finally understand the events of that long-ago Easter weekend and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.
Download or read book The Good Girl s Guide to Getting Lost written by Rachel Friedman and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rachel Friedman has always been the consummate good girl who does well in school and plays it safe, so the college grad surprises no one more than herself when, on a whim (and in an effort to escape impending life decisions), she buys a ticket to Ireland, a place she has never visited. There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure. As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she’s never done before: simply live for the moment.
Download or read book Before I Grew Up written by John Miller and published by Enchanted Lion Books. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story of childhood dreams and adventures, and of the parental love that in seeing you, nourishes you to become yourself.
Download or read book The Good Stuff from Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family written by Karen Casey and published by Mango Media. This book was released on 2024-08-13 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspirational stories of survivors leaving their abusive households—and drawing on the wis-dom gained from adversity to transform their lives. So many people have experienced bleak childhoods in which degradation, pain, and neglect were common. But as survivors of toxic families, their triumphs are not only powerful but inspirational. This book follows twenty-four stories about finding happiness after surviving a dysfunctional family. With enlightening honesty, humor, and apt quotes, you’ll experience the transformative effects that hope and resilience can have. Thriving means more than just letting go of the past and its hardships; it means becoming your own silver lining. Karen Casey and our narrators explore how your worst experiences can help you create meaningful skills for building a new, fulfilling life. With each narrator sharing the moment they decided to thrive instead of giving up, this self-compassion book will show you that no matter how dysfunctional life can be, you can emerge stronger than ever from it. Promises and positive affirmations to live The importance of nourishing your emotional strength Beginning your healing journey by putting your heart first Forgiving your family’s pain to avoid repeating it, and more “Explores the benefits that result from surviving in a dysfunctional family, including resiliency, perseverance, a sense of humor, forgiveness, kindness, and the ability to discern real love. Simple but authentic points are enumerated at the conclusion of each chapter. With unrelenting optimism and a solid faith in God, Casey helps readers learn to let go of judgment and embrace acceptance. New readers as well as followers of the author’s earlier works will be uplift-ed.” —Publishers Weekly “You just can’t go wrong with Karen Casey.” —Earnie Larsen, author of From Anger to Forgiveness
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
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 Circling the Sun written by Paula McLain and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, BOOKPAGE, AND SHELF AWARENESS • “Paula McLain is considered the new star of historical fiction, and for good reason. Fans of The Paris Wife will be captivated by Circling the Sun, which . . . is both beautifully written and utterly engrossing.”—Ann Patchett, Country Living This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild. But after everything she knows and trusts dissolves, headstrong young Beryl is flung into a string of disastrous relationships, then becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl will risk everything to have Denys’s love, but it’s ultimately her own heart she must conquer to embrace her true calling and her destiny: to fly. Praise for Circling the Sun “In McLain’s confident hands, Beryl Markham crackles to life, and we readers truly understand what made a woman so far ahead of her time believe she had the power to soar.”—Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time “Enchanting . . . a worthy heir to [Isak] Dinesen . . . Like Africa as it’s so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go.”—The Boston Globe “Famed aviator Beryl Markham is a novelist’s dream. . . . [A] wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived—defiantly—on her own terms.”—People (Book of the Week) “Circling the Sun soars.”—Newsday “Captivating . . . [an] irresistible novel.”—The Seattle Times “Like its high-flying subject, Circling the Sun is audacious and glamorous and hard not to be drawn in by. Beryl Markham may have married more than once, but she was nobody’s wife.”—Entertainment Weekly “[An] eloquent evocation of Beryl’s daring life.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
Download or read book All This Could Be Different written by Sarah Thankam Mathews and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES' TOP 5 FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF TIME AND SLATE'S TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR Named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Harper's Bazaar, and more “One of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” —Vogue “Dazzling and wholly original...[written] with such mordant wit, insight, and specificity, it feels like watching a new literary star being born in real time.” —Entertainment Weekly From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all. A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.
Download or read book Is Nothing Sacred written by Salman Rushdie and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1990 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Play written by Elle Kennedy and published by Elle Kennedy Inc.. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brand-new standalone novel in the New York Times bestselling Briar U series! What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things. But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie—my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her. Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound. And she’s making a play for me. Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts. Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body—and my heart.
Download or read book Back When We Were Grownups written by Anne Tyler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s? On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms. Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.
Download or read book My Side of the Mountain written by Jean Craighead George and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-05-21 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book
Download or read book Wait Till Helen Comes written by Mary Downing Hahn and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother, Michael, have never liked their seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since their parents got married, she's made Molly and Michael's life miserable. Now their parents have moved them all to the country to live in a house that used to be a church, with a cemetery in the backyard. If that's not bad enough, Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen and warning Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is in some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather twists things around to get her into trouble. It seems as if things can't get any worse. But they do—when Helen comes.
Download or read book Slow Down written by Nichole Nordeman and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The days are long, but the years are short. No matter if it’s your child’s first step, first day of school, or first night tucked away in a new dorm room away from home, there comes a moment when you realize just how quickly the years are flying by. Christian music artist Nichole Nordeman’s profound lyrics in her viral hit “Slow Down” struck a chord with moms everywhere, and now this beautiful four-color book will inspire you to celebrate the everyday moments of motherhood. Filled with thought-provoking writings from Nichole, as well as guest writings from friends including Shauna Niequist and Jen Hatmaker, practical tips, and journaling space for reflection, Slow Down will be a poignant gift for any mom, as well as a treasured keepsake. Take a few moments to reflect and celebrate the privilege of being a parent and getting to watch your little ones grow—and Slow Down. Nichole Nordeman has sold more than 1 million albums as a Christian music artist and has won 9 GMA Dove Awards, including two awards for Female Vocalist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. Nichole released a lyric video for her song “Slow Down,” and it struck a chord with parents everywhere, amassing 14 million views in its first five days. She lives in Oklahoma with her two children.
Download or read book Feeding the Dragon written by Sharon Washington and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a library...' Deep in the bowels of a New York Public Library lies a dragon: the monstrous coal furnace that Sharon's father, the live-in custodian, must feed every night. A moving examination of family secrets, forgiveness, and the power of language, Feeding the Dragon explores Sharon's life growing up in the library and the fire she never allowed to fade.
