Download or read book I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies written by Laurie Notaro and published by Villard. This book was released on 2004-06-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are more scathingly funny tales from the wild side! Laurie Notaro survived the debauched ride of her twenties and the bumpy road to matrimony. Now she’s ready to take on the thirtysomething years . . . and almost middle age has never been more hilarious. Laurie is married, mortgaged, and now—miraculously—employed in the corporate world, discovering that bosses come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of mental stability. After maxing out her last good credit card at Banana Republic, she’s dressed for success and ready to face the jungle: surviving feral, six-foot-plus Gretchen (“Three Thousand Faces of Eve”) before battling the overbearing, overstuffed (in way-too-small pants) new mom Suzzi, who ruthlessly cancels Laurie’s newspaper column and learns that payback can be a bitch. Laurie also explores the backstabbing world of preschoolers at a Halloween party, the X-rated madness of a family trip to Disneyland, and the pressure from her QVC-addicted mother and the rest of the world to reproduce. But while losing more friends to babies than to booze, she realizes there’s a plus side: at least for a couple of months she gets to be the thinner friend. I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) is Laurie Notaro at her deliciously quirky best. Can a woman prone to what her loved ones might term “meltdowns” (she considers them “Opportunities to Enlighten”) put a smile on her face and love everybody? Take a guess.
Download or read book We Thought You Would Be Prettier written by Laurie Notaro and published by Villard. This book was released on 2005-04-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She thought she’d have more time. Laurie Notaro figured she had at least a few good years left. But no–it’s happened. She has officially lost her marbles. From the kid at the pet-food store checkout line whose coif is so bizarre it makes her seethe “I’m going to kick his hair’s ass!” to the hapless Sears customer-service rep on the receiving end of her Campaign of Terror, no one is safe from Laurie’s wrath. Her cranky side seems to have eaten the rest of her–inner-thigh Chub Rub and all. And the results are breathtaking. Her riffs on e-mail spam (“With all of these irresistible offers served up to me on a plate, I WANT A PENIS NOW!!”), eBay (“There should be an eBay wading pool, where you can only bid on Precious Moments figurines and Avon products, that you have to make it through before jumping into the deep end”), and the perils of St. Patrick’s Day (“When I’m driving, the last thing I need is a herd of inebriates darting in and out of traffic like loaded chickens”) are the stuff of legend. And for Laurie, it’s all true.
Download or read book There s a Slight Chance I Might Be Going to Hell written by Laurie Notaro and published by Villard. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club is a rollicking tale of small-town peculiarity, dark secrets, and one extraordinary beauty pageant. When her husband is offered a post at a small university, Maye is only too happy to pack up and leave the relentless Phoenix heat for the lush green quietude of Spaulding, Washington. While she loves the odd little town, there is one thing she didn’t anticipate: just how heartbreaking it would be leaving her friends behind. And when you’re a childless thirtysomething freelance writer who works at home, making new friends can be quite a challenge. After a series of false starts nearly gets her exiled from town, Maye decides that her last chance to connect with her new neighbors is to enter the annual Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, a kooky but dead-serious local tradition open to contestants of all ages and genders. Aided by a deranged former pageant queen with one eyebrow, Maye doesn’t just make a splash, she uncovers a sinister mystery that has haunted the town for decades. “[Laurie Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system.”—The Miami Herald
Download or read book Autobiography of a Fat Bride written by Laurie Notaro and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2003-07-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the New York Times bestseller The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club tackles her biggest challenge yet: grown-up life. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air-conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony. From her mother's grade-school warning to avoid kids in tie-dyed shirts because their hippie parents spent their food money on drugs and art supplies; to her night-before-the-wedding panic over whether her religion is the one where you step on the glass; to her unfortunate overpreparation for the mandatory drug-screening urine test at work; to her audition as a Playboy centerfold as research for a newspaper story, Autobiography of a Fat Bride has the same zits-and-all candor and outrageous humor that made Idiot Girls an instant cult phenomenon. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie contemplates family, home improvement, and the horrible tyrannies of cosmetic saleswomen. She finds that life doesn't necessarily get any easier as you get older. But it does get funnier.
Download or read book The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club written by Laurie Notaro and published by Villard. This book was released on 2002-07-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “I’ve changed a bit since high school. Back then I said no to using and selling drugs. I washed on a normal basis and still had good credit.” Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits, and creepy boyfriends—and that’s before she even puts on a bra. For the past ten years, Notaro has been entertaining Phoenix newspaper readers with her wildly amusing autobiographical exploits and unique life experiences. She writes about a world of hourly-wage jobs that require absolutely no skills, a mother who hands down judgments more forcefully than anyone seated on the Supreme Court, horrific high school reunions, and hangovers that leave her surprised that she woke up in the first place. The misadventures of Laurie and her fellow Idiot Girls (“too cool to be in the Smart Group”) unfold in a world that everyone will recognize but no one has ever described so hilariously. She delivers the goods: life as we all know it.
Download or read book Broken written by William Cope Moyers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Candid, shocking, and unforgettable, Broken is a haunting and clear-eyed tale that offers hope for all those wrestling with addiction Unlike some popular memoirs that have fictionalized and romanticized the degradations of drug addiction, Broken is a true-life tale of recovery that stuns and inspires with virtually every page. The eldest son of journalist Bill Moyers, William Cope Moyers relates with unforgettable clarity the story of how a young man with every advantage found himself spiraling into a love affair with crack cocaine that led him to the brink of death-and how a deep spirituality allowed him to conquer his shame, transform his life, and dedicate himself to changing America's politics of addiction. "William Cope Moyers's lucid, measured tale of his own plunge into crack-addled hell [is] frightening in its very realism." -USA Today
Download or read book Verity written by Colleen Hoover and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.
Download or read book Dear Chandler Dear Scarlett written by Mike Huckabee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I wrote these letters so that long after I’m gone, you’ll know that I loved you, had great hopes for you, and wanted to give you my best advice on living in this tough world. If I can’t be there with you, I hope my letters will act as a sort of reminder of me—as if I’m standing there beside you, whispering in your ear, and putting my arm around your shoulder.” Mike Huckabee has worn many hats throughout his life: pastor, politician, governor, presidential candidate, talk show host, rock bassist, pundit, husband, and father. But since his first grandchild was born, he’s found that the role of grandfather is more satisfying than just about any of the others. Huckabee wanted to give something to his grandson, Chandler, that would last forever. He began drafting a series of letters to Chandler recounting heartwarming stories from his past and the bittersweet lessons learned along the way. With the birth of his granddaughter, Scarlett, just a year later, Huckabee was further inspired to convey his love and wisdom. Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett touches on the timeless topics of faith, love, family, overcoming adversity, and staying true to your values in the face of failure and temptation. For instance, Huckabee tells how being forced to pick up pecans from the trees in his yard taught him the value of hard work. (“We were told that if we wanted to eat that night and sleep in a bed instead of in the yard, we’d pick up the pecans.”) Years later he learned the real meaning of love after watching a friend care for his dying wife who could no longer recognize him. (“He loved her not because he enjoyed it or found pleasure in it, but because he had promised that he would never leave her until death parted them. And here he was, keeping that promise, faithful to the end.”) Like his bestseller A Simple Christmas, Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett isn’t about politics. It’s a deeply personal, heartfelt, inspirational book that can be enjoyed by anyone. As Huckabee writes: “Although my advice comes from my personal experience and I’m writing with my grandkids in mind, I hope any parent, grandparent, child, or grandchild can take away something valuable from these letters. I’ll try not to be too obnoxious, but don’t worry, if you ever sit next to me on a plane, I’ll still be happy to show you all the photos of Chandler and Scarlett I have on my phone.”
Download or read book Bitter is the New Black written by Jen Lancaster and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-07 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Jen Lancaster takes you from sorority house to penthouse to poorhouse in her hilarious memoir of living the sweet life—until real life kicked her to the curb. She had the perfect man, the perfect job—hell, she had the perfect life—and there was no reason to think it wouldn't last. Or maybe there was, but Jen Lancaster was too busy being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, and generally adored to notice. This is the smart-mouthed, soul-searching story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks and she stops to reconsider some of the less-than-rosy attitudes and values she thought she'd never have to answer for when times were good. Filled with caustic wit and unusual insight, it's a rollicking read as speedy and unpredictable as the trajectory of a burst balloon.
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 Devangelical written by Erika Rae and published by Emergency Press. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devangelical is an irresistibly funny and irreverent memoir about Erika Rae's experience growing up in? and out of? the Evangelical church in the American Bible Belt. As an adolescent who is expected to be hot for God, and not boys, Erika dreads that the Rapture will come before she gets to have sex. All the while she survives exorcisms, radical taboos, satanic back-masking on records, muscle men for Jesus, and cool, mulleted youth group leaders. Eventually Erika emerges as a young, married adult in spiritual limbo. Devangelical is a political and personal exploration of h.
Download or read book The Tao of Martha written by Jen Lancaster and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One would think that with her impressive list of bestselling self-improvement memoirs Jen Lancaster would have it all together by now. One would be wrong. After all, she’s no Martha Stewart. And that’s why Jen is going to Martha up and live her life according to the advice of America’s overachieving older sister—the woman who turns lemons into lavender-infused lemonade. By immersing herself in Martha’s media empire, Jen embarks on a yearlong quest to take herself, her house, her husband (and maybe even her pets) to the next level—from closet organization to party planning. Maybe Jen can avoid food poisoning if she follows Martha’s dictates on proper storage. Maybe she can rid her workout clothes of meatball stains by using Martha’s laundry tips. Maybe she can create a more meaningful anniversary celebration than getting drunk in the pool with her husband. Again. And maybe she’ll discover that the key to happiness does, in fact, lie in Martha’s perfectly arranged cupboards and charcuterie platters.
Download or read book Hillbilly Elegy written by J. D. Vance and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
Download or read book Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 written by Garrison Keillor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-08-27 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet fourteen-year-old Gary. A self-described "tree-toad,"a sly and endearing geek, Gary has many unwieldy passions, chief among them his cousin Kate, his Underwood typewriter and the soft-porn masterpiece, High School Orgies. The folks of Lake Wobegon don't have much patience for a kid's ungodly obsessions, and so Gary manages to filter the hormonal earthquake that is puberty and his hopeless devotion to glamorous, rebellious Kate through his fantastic yarns. With every marvellous story he moves a few steps closer to becoming a writer. And when Kate gets herself into trouble with the local baseball star, Gary also experiences the first pangs of a broken heart. With his trademark gift for treading "a line delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment"(Cleveland Plain Dealer), Garrison Keillor brilliantly captures a newly minted post-war America and delivers an unforgettable comedy about a writer coming of age in the rural Midwest.
Download or read book Bad Blood written by John Carreyrou and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.
Download or read book Failure Is an Option written by H. Jon Benjamin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Writing this funny requires immense talent.” —AV Club H. Jon Benjamin—the lead voice behind Archer and Bob's Burgers—helps us all feel a little better about our own failures by sharing his own in a hilarious memoir-ish chronicle of failure. Most people would consider H. Jon Benjamin a comedy show business success. But he'd like to remind everyone that as great as success can be, failure is also an option. And maybe the best option. In this book, he tells stories from his own life, from his early days ("wherein I'm unable to deliver a sizzling fajita") to his romantic life ("how I failed to quantify a threesome") to family ("wherein a trip to P.F. Chang's fractures a family") to career ("how I failed at launching a kid's show"). As Jon himself says, breaking down one's natural ability to succeed is not an easy task, but also not an insurmountable one. Society as we know it is, sadly, failure averse. But more acceptance of failure, as Jon sees it, will go a long way to making this world a different place . . . a kinder, gentler place, where gardens are overgrown and most people stay home with their pets. A vision of failure, but also a vision of freedom. With stories, examples of artistic and literary failure, and a powerful can't-do attitude, Failure Is an Option is the book the world doesn't need right now but will get regardless.
Download or read book It Looked Different on the Model written by Laurie Notaro and published by Villard. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Everyone’s favorite Idiot Girl, Laurie Notaro, is just trying to find the right fit, whether it’s in the adorable blouse that looks charming on the mannequin but leaves her in a literal bind or in her neighborhood after she’s shamefully exposed at a holiday party by delivering a low-quality rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Notaro makes misstep after riotous misstep as she shares tales of marriage and family, including stories about the dog-bark translator that deciphers Notaro’s and her husband’s own “woofs” a little too accurately, the emails from her mother with “FWD” in the subject line (“which in email code means Forecasting World Destruction”), and the dead-of-night shopping sprees and Devil Dog–devouring monkeyshines of a creature known as “Ambien Laurie.” At every turn, Notaro’s pluck and irresistible candor set the New York Times bestselling author on a journey that’s laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable.
