Download or read book Quirky Essays for Quirky People written by Barbara Venkataraman and published by Next Chapter. This book was released on 2022-12-07 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, all in one place, the award-winning books, "A Trip to the Hardware Store & Other Calamities," and "I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course," PLUS seven bonus essays. If this doesn't make you smile, then you're not even trying! In A Trip to the Hardware Store, you'll explore such quirky topics as disastrous home repairs, an unfortunate dinner party, the truth about lazy people and the weird life of a debt collector. In I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course, you'll find humorous insights into important topics such as annoying pet people, analyzing your inner child, and just how much damage can be caused by a sneeze. In A Smidge Of Crazy, you'll find stories about annoying ads, about figuring out what door that extra key opens, what it means to have stamina, and why it is just so hard to focus when you have the attention span of a gnat.
Download or read book A Smidge Of Crazy written by Barbara Venkataraman and published by Next Chapter. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of humorous insights into important topics ranging from being targeted by annoying ads ("Nowhere to Hide"), to resorting to symbols when you've forgotten your words ("At a Loss for Words"), to figuring out what door that extra key opens ("My Extra Key"). Other essays examine how sitting is the new smoking (whatever that means), what it means to have stamina, and why it is just so hard to focus when you have the attention span of a gnat.
Download or read book I m Not Talking About You Of Course written by Barbara Venkataraman and published by Next Chapter. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the "Indie Book of the Day" award, this short collection of humorous essays explores such quirky topics as annoying pet people ("I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course"), analyzing your inner child ("Irrational Fears") and how to live like the Amish in the aftermath of a hurricane ("A Jolt of Electricity"). Included are also stories of just how much damage can be caused by a sneeze ("It All Started with a Loud Sneeze"), why it is so complicated to buy a tube of toothpaste ("Ask Me No Questions"), how not to prepare dinner ("Martha, I Let You Down"), making new friends ("Friends in Low Places"), how a parent's obsessive hobbies can become an inescapable vortex ("Crazy Hobbies"), and why spending the night in a sleep clinic is like being abducted by probing aliens ("Nightmare at the Sleep Clinic"). If you don't see yourself in one of these entertaining essays, then I'm not talking about you, of course...
Download or read book Teatime With Mrs Grammar Person written by Barbara Venkataraman and published by Next Chapter. This book was released on 2022-12-07 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fear not, Gentle Writer, Mrs. Grammar Person is here and she has the answers to all of the questions you never thought to ask. As a dedicated and serious grammarian, she will do what it takes to be entertaining and enlightening, but never vulgar or coarse. Heavens, no! Where are her smelling salts? Warm and witty, Mrs. G.P. makes grammar interesting with rhyming, wishful thinking, story-telling and a champagne toast. You are cordially invited to join her for a spot of tea!
Download or read book A Trip to the Hardware Store Other Calamities written by Barbara Venkataraman and published by Next Chapter. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of humorous essays explores such quirky topics as disastrous home repairs, ("A Trip to the Hardware Store"), an unfortunate dinner party ("Dinner is Served"), the truth about lazy people ("Lazy Bones"), the weird life of a debt collector ("Your Account is Past Due") and obsessions with gadgets ("Gadget Girl"). You'll also learn how surreal the aging process is ("Where Did the Time Go?"), why you shouldn't judge a person by their job ("Beyond Belief"), and how to complicate simple transactions ("High Finance"). Like the author's first book of essays, I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course..., these essays will give your spirit a lift and leave you smiling.
Download or read book We ll Laugh About This Someday written by Anna Lind Thomas and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious argument in favor of taking life a smidge less seriously Popular humor writer Anna Lind Thomas had an epiphany after her essay about a humiliating fart went mega-viral: Everything’s funny . . .eventually. You’ll cry-laugh your way through the many grave offenses she’s endured, like not getting credit for Lady Gaga’s career, an epic financial crisis, and exercising while her children dole out biting critiques about her dimpled thighs. Anna’s wit, charm, and painful relatability will encourage you to remember that your most humiliating moment may be the best thing to ever happen to you—or at the very least, it’ll make for a really good story. “A hilarious, heartwarming trip.” —Bunmi Laditan, bestselling author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure and humorist behind The Honest Toddler “I couldn’t put this down.” —Tiffany Jenkins, bestselling author of High Achiever and humorist behind Juggling the Jenkins “Deep, bowel-loosening laughs, along with a side dish of humanity and understanding.” —Johanna Stein, author of How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane and award-winning television writer and producer “Full of humor and heart.” —Cindy Chupack, New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-winning writer/producer of Sex and the City, Modern Family, Otherhood, and more
Download or read book Rewrite Your Life written by Jessica Lourey and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "According to common wisdom, we all have a book inside of us. But how do you select and then write your most significant story--the one that helps you to evolve and invites pure creativity into your life, the one that people line up to read? In [this book], creative writing professor, sociologist, and popular fiction author Jessica Lourey guides you through the redemptive process of writing a healing novel that recycles and transforms your most precious resources--your own emotions and experiences"--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Gods Behaving Badly written by Marie Phillips and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly entertaining novel set in North London, where the Greek gods have been living in obscurity since the seventeenth century. Being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Life’s hard for a Greek god in the twenty-first century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn’t respect you, and you’re stuck in a dilapidated hovel in North London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there’s no way out... until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives and turn the world upside down. Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original novel that satisfies the head and the heart.
Download or read book Who Put This Song On written by Morgan Parker and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unflinchingly irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartbreakingly honest." —Elizabeth Acevedo, National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X In the vein of powerful reads like The Hate U Give and The Poet X, comes poet Morgan Parker's pitch-perfect novel about a black teenage girl searching for her identity when the world around her views her depression as a lack of faith and blackness as something to be politely ignored. Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, seventeen-year-old Morgan knows why she's in therapy. She can't count the number of times she's been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her "weird" outfits, and been told she's not "really" black. Also, she's spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there's that, too. Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat--and it's telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself? Loosely based on her own teenage life and diaries, this incredible debut by award-winning poet Morgan Parker will make readers stand up and cheer for a girl brave enough to live life on her own terms--and for themselves. "Morgan Parker put THIS song on--and I hope it never turns off." —Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out “A triumphant first impression in the YA space.” —Entertainment Weekly “An incredibly heartfelt, deep story about a girl's coming of age.” —Refinery29
Download or read book Brown Girls written by Daphne Palasi Andreades and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A “boisterous and infectious debut novel” (The Guardian) about a group of friends and their immigrant families from Queens, New York—a tenderly observed, fiercely poetic love letter to a modern generation of brown girls. “An acute study of those tender moments of becoming, this is an ode to girlhood, inheritance, and the good trouble the body yields.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster FINALIST: The New American Voices Award, The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, The New American Voices Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Kirkus Reviews If you really want to know, we are the color of 7-Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach when it blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil . . . Welcome to Queens, New York, where streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple over sidewalks, and the funky scent of the Atlantic Ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Within one of New York City’s most vibrant and eclectic boroughs, young women of color like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and countless others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture in which they come of age. Here, they become friends for life—or so they vow. Exuberant and wild, together they roam The City That Never Sleeps, sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs, yearn for crushes who pay them no mind—and break the hearts of those who do—all while trying to heed their mothers’ commands to be obedient daughters. But as they age, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots. A blazingly original debut novel told by a chorus of unforgettable voices, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, adulthood, and beyond, and is a striking exploration of female friendship, a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world today. For even as the conflicting desires of ambition and loyalty, freedom and commitment, adventure and stability risk dividing them, it is to one another—and to Queens—that the girls ultimately return.
Download or read book Catching Air written by Sarah Pekkanen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant, compulsively readable novel about two married couples who pursue a dream to open a bed-and-breakfast in small-town Vermont, from the internationally bestselling author of Perfect Neighbors and The Wife Between Us. In her previous works including The Best of Us, “rising star” (Library Journal) Sarah Pekkanen captivated readers by penning “refreshingly introspective, sharply realistic, and tenderly humorous” novels (Booklist) that had readers “flying through the pages” (Hoda Kotb, Today show). Now, in Catching Air, Pekkanen turns an unflinching eye on the tangled relationships of two pairs of thirty-somethings. A chance to run a B&B in snowy, remote Vermont—it’s an offer Kira Danner can’t resist after six soul-crushing years of working as a lawyer in Florida. As Kira and her husband, Peter, step into a brand new life, she quells her fears about living with the B&B’s co-owners: Peter’s sexy, irresponsible brother Rand, and Rand’s wife, Alyssa…who is essentially a stranger. For her part, Alyssa sees taking over the B&B as the latest in a string of adventures. Plus, a quiet place might help her recover from the news that she can’t bear children. But the idyllic town proves to be anything but serene: Within weeks, the sisters-in-law are scrambling to prepare for their first big booking—a winter wedding—and soon a shy, mysterious woman comes to work for them. Dawn Zukoski is hiding something; that much is clear. But what the sisters-in-law don't realize is that Dawn is also hiding from someone… Relatable and dynamic, Catching Air delves deeply into the vital relationships that give shape to women’s lives.
Download or read book Shut Up You re Welcome written by Annie Choi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Happy Birthday or Whatever, an outright hilarious and heartfelt collection of personal essays about everything from underwear to musical theater. ANNIE CHOI HATES MUSICAL THEATER. SHE THINKS SANDWICHES ARE BORING. She likes camping, except for the outdoors part. At fifteen, her father made her read the entire car manual before allowing her to sit in the driver’s seat. Her neighbor, who has no curtains, is always naked. And she once chased down a man who stole her handbag. All this is to say that Choi is one part badass and one part curmudgeon, with a soft spot for savage bears. Mostly she wants to ask the world: WTF?! Written in Choi’s strikingly original and indignant voice, Shut Up, You’re Welcome paints a revealing portrait of Annie in all her quirky, compelling, riotous glory. Each of Choi’s personal essays begins with an open letter to someone (babies) or something (the San Fernando Valley) she has a beef with. From the time her family ditched her on Christmas to her father’s attachment to the World's Ugliest Table, Choi weaves together deeply personal experiences with laugh-out-loud observations, all of which will delight and entertain you.
Download or read book The Stone Collector written by A. Kendra Greene and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. A lyric essay from Iceland's east fjords, THE STONE COLLECTOR examines, over decades and by degrees, how one woman's daily walk sparked a private collection and public attraction. Most every day of her life, Petra took a walk; and most every walk, Petra found a stone. Petra's jaw-dropping collection of jasper and onyx and agate and amethyst and scolecite and calcite and chalcedony and spar spilled filled the house and spilled out into the garden. Her neighbors fretted over the strangely feminist act of spending so much time in the mountains. Her children grew up with strangers in the garden, strangers who saw the collection from the road and drew close. Tour guides brought busses and Geologists wrote letters and Petra served coffee in her kitchen, as the public pressed her collection into becoming a museum. This is the second installment in A. Kendra Greene's series on Icelandic museums.
Download or read book Eleutheria written by Allegra Hyde and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Allegra Hyde’s seductive first novel tackles the big stuff of climate change and the more intimate matter of heartbreak with grace. Indeed, Eleutheria bravely braids these together, the story of a lost soul moving through the world we’re rapidly losing.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she’s found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever. And then she finds a book in Sylvia's library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group’s leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound’s public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope's mission—but at what cost? A VINTAGE ORIGINAL
Download or read book Fattily Ever After written by Stephanie Yeboah and published by Hardie Grant Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘I love Stephanie… She’s one of my favourite truth tellers online, she pulls no punches and empowers so many women with her own commitment to equality... This book is going to mean a lot, to a lot of people.’ – Jameela Jamil Stephanie Yeboah has experienced racism and fat-phobia throughout her life. From being bullied at school to being objectified and humiliated in her dating life, Stephanie’s response to discrimination has always been to change the narrative around body-image and what we see as beautiful. In her debut book, Fattily Ever After, Stephanie speaks openly and courageously about her own experience on navigating life as a black, plus-sized woman – telling it how it really is – and how she has managed to find self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife. Featuring stories of every day misogynoir and being fetishized, to navigating the cesspit of online dating and experiencing loneliness, Stephanie shares her thoughts on the treatment of black women throughout history, the marginalisation of black, plus-sized women in the media (even within the body-positivity movement) whilst drawing on wisdom from other black fat liberation champions along the way. Peppered with insightful tips and honest advice and boldly illustrated throughout, this inspiring and powerful book is essential reading for a generation of black, plus-sized women, helping them to live their life openly, unapologetically and with confidence.
Download or read book Vagrants Uncommon Visitors written by A. Kendra Greene and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Museum Studies. VAGRANTS AND UNCOMMON VISITORS traces the origins, impact, and significance of a bird collection turned museum on the shores of Iceland's Lake M�vatn. The lake supports a eutrophic ecology that, among other things, gives life to an all-but-complete collection of Icelandic birds. The birds, or maybe their collection, give purpose to Sigurgeir, a native son who has been sighting birds and gathering eggs on the lakeside family farm since childhood. When Sigurgeir is killed in an accident on the lake, his family begins a decade-long struggle to make a museum. In this gorgeously illustrated, long-form lyric essay, VAGRANTS AND UNCOMMON VISITORS concerns itself with family, gender, and memorials as it examines the grief, natural history, and accomplishment of Sigurgeir's Bird Museum.
Download or read book Day Four written by Sarah Lotz and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step aboard "the cruise ship from hell" (Stephen King) in this "satirical scream of a novel" (New York Times Book Review). Hundreds of pleasure-seekers stream aboard The Beautiful Dreamer cruise ship for five days of cut-price fun in the Caribbean sun. On the fourth day, disaster strikes: smoke roils out of the engine room, and the ship is stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon supplies run low, a virus plagues the ship, and there are whispered rumors that the cabins on the lower decks are haunted by shadowy figures. Irritation escalates to panic, the crew loses control, factions form, and violent chaos erupts among the survivors. When, at last, the ship is spotted drifting off the coast of Key West, the world's press reports it empty. But the gloomy headlines may be covering up an even more disturbing reality. Day Four is a heart-racing tale from "a ferociously imaginative storyteller" (Lauren Beukes).
