Download or read book These Precious Days written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Download or read book The Particulars of Peter written by Kelly Conaboy and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This might be one of the month’s, if not the year’s, sweetest books — zaniest, too.” ―The Washington Post "A hilarious addition to the dogoir canon.” ―People "Perhaps the greatest love story ever told.” ―Refinery29 "The feel-good book the world needs." —PopSugar From one of the Internet's most original voices, a hilarious journey through the odd corners of obsessive dog ownership and the author's own infatuation with her perfect dog Peter. The author met Peter in the spring of 2017. He -- calm, puppy-eyed, with the heart of a poet and the soul of, also, a poet -- came to her first as a foster. He was unable to stay with his previously assigned foster for reasons that are none of your business, but which we will tell you were related to frequent urination. The rescue needed someone free of the sort of responsibilities that would force her to regularly leave the house for either work or socializing, and a writer was the natural choice. Thus began a love story for the ages. The Particulars of Peter is a funny exploration of the joy found in loving a dog so much it makes you feel like you're going to combust, and the author's potentially codependent relationship with her own sweet dog, Peter. Readers will follow Peter and his owner to Woofstock, "the largest outdoor festival for dogs in North America," and accompany them to lessons in Canine Freestyle, a sport where dogs perform a routine set to music, creating the illusion that they're dancing with their owners. From learning about Peter's DNA, to seeing if dogs can sense the presence of ghosts, The Particulars of Peter will give readers a smart, entertaining respite from the harsh world of humans into the funny little world of dogs. Readers will accompany this lovable duo through exciting trips, lessons, quiet moments of connection, and probably a failure or two. By fusing memoir and infotainment, The Particulars of Peter promises to refresh the perennially popular dog lit category in a scrumptiously bighearted barnstormer of a book.

Download or read book Austen Years written by Rachel Cohen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2020 "A thoroughly authentic, smart and consoling account of one writer’s commitment to another." --The New York Times Book Review (editors' choice) "An absolutely fascinating book: I will never read Austen the same way again." —Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk An astonishingly nuanced reading of Jane Austen that yields a rare understanding of how to live "About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author." In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen’s novels. Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter, a moment paired with the grief of Sense and Sensibility and the social bonds of Pride and Prejudice. Later, moving with her family to Chicago, Cohen grapples with her growing children, teaching, and her father’s legacy, all refracted through the denser, more complex Mansfield Park and Emma. With unusual depth and fresh insight into Austen’s life and literature, and guided by Austen’s mournful and hopeful final novel, Persuasion, Rachel Cohen’s Austen Years is a rare memoir of mourning and transcendence, a love letter to a literary master, and a powerful consideration of the odd process that merges our interior experiences with the world at large.

Download or read book The Wonders of Daily Drawing written by Julia Zass and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Drawing Journal is about finding the inspiration hidden in the beauty of our everyday environment. It's a personal diary where you capture your memories through drawing, writing, and other visual mediums.You'll find it a great way to be inspired by your daily routine, develop your drawing skills, and remember special moments forever. This guide was created for all ages and drawing levels. It's for anyone who wants to try something new or feels a lack of creativity and art in their daily life.In this book, Julia Zass shares her personal experience in keeping a Drawing Journal for over 3 years and shows how you can discover the wonders of daily drawing for yourself.

Download or read book Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine written by Gary Fisher and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine is an anthology of travel accounts, by a diverse range of writers and academics. Challenging conventional academic ‘authority’, each contributor writes, from memory during the Covid-19 lockdown, about a place they have previously visited, ‘accompanied’ by an historical traveller who published an account of the same place. As immobility is forced upon us, at least for the immediate future, we have the chance to reflect. Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine presents opportunities to approach a text as a scholar differently. We break with the traditional academic ‘rules’ by inserting ourselves into the narrative and foregrounding the personal, subjective elements of literary scholarship. Each contributor critiques an historical description of a place about which, simultaneously, they write a personal account. The travel writer, Philip Marsden, posits a fundamental difference between traditional ‘academic’ writing and travel writing in that travel narratives do not, or ought not anyway, begin by assuming a scholarly authoritative understanding of the places they describe. Instead, they attempt to say what they found and how they felt about it. The very good point we think Marsden makes, and the one this book tries to demonstrate, is that, as a matter of form, the first-person narrative has the ability to expose the research process: to allow the reader to see when and how a scholarly transformation takes place; to give the scholar the opportunity to openly foreground their own subjectivity and say ‘this is the personal journey that led me to my conclusions’; to problematize the unchallenged authority of the scholar. Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine challenges the idea of scholarly authority by embracing the subjective nature of research and the first-person element. We address a problematic distance between travel writing practice and travel writing scholarship, in which the latter talks about the former without ever really talking to it. Defining travel writing as a genre has often proved more difficult than it might seem, but Peter Hulme has suggested that it is ethically necessary for the writer to have visited the place described. Hulme asserts that ‘travel writing is certainly literature, but it is never fiction’. If this seems obvious, Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine asks the reader to consider the idea that if visiting the place described is necessary for the writer to claim they have produced a travel account, might it also be necessary, or at least advantageous and valuable, for the writer of a scholarly critique of that account to have done the same.

Download or read book Capsule written by Mel Torrefranca and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-10 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a menacing app by the name of Capsule downloads itself onto sixteen-year-old Jackie's phone, she enters a game interlaced with reality. A game threatening to erase two strangers from her high school forever.

Download or read book Coming of Age in 2020 written by Katherine Schulten and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A time capsule of art and artifacts, created by Gen Z. Everyone knows what coming of age in America is supposed to look like. Then came 2020. Instead of proms and championship games and all-night hangouts with friends, there was school on Zoom from bed. In this book, teenagers from across the country show how they coped with a world on fire, as a pandemic raged, political divides hardened, and the Black Lives Matter movement galvanized millions. Via diary entries, comics, photos, poems, paintings, charts, lists, Lego sculptures, songs, recipes, and rants, they tell the story of the year that will define their generation. The pieces in this collection, chosen from more than 5,500 submitted to a contest on the New York Times Learning Network, provide an arresting documentation of how ordinary teenagers experienced extraordinary events. But for every creative expression of terror, frustration, loneliness, and anxiety, there is another of meaning, joy, resilience, and hope.

Download or read book The Quarantine Diaries written by Mantimes Publishing and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is your perfect notebook for quarantine . - Matte Paperback - (6x19) - 120 pages - Lined journal This notebook features: Great for notes, poetry, journaling, recipes, writing, drawing and more. place your order now!

Download or read book Cold Silence written by Danielle Girard and published by Saddle Peak Entertainment. This book was released on 2021-04-23 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A widow and ex-FBI agent of hard-earned courage, Cody O'Brien is enjoying a quiet life, providing a good home for her eight-year-old son, Ryan. Then Ryan is kidnapped in broad daylight.

Download or read book My Life with the Walter Boys written by Ali Novak and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a fresh new voice on the contemporary YA scene, My Life with the Walter Boys centers on the prim, proper, and always perfect Jackie Howard. When her world is turned upside down by tragedy, Jackie must learn to cut loose and be part of a family again. Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades-the perfect daughter. And then... Surprise #1: Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident. Surprise #2: Jackie has to move cross-country to live with the Walters-her new guardians. Surprise #3: The Walters have twelve sons. (Well, eleven, but Parker acts like a boy anyway) Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with it. Jackie is surrounded by the enemy-loud, dirty, annoying boys who have no concept of personal space. Okay, several of the oldest guys are flat-out gorgeous. But still annoying. She's not stuck-up or boring-no matter what they say. But proving it is another matter. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect? Ali Novak wrote My Life with the Walter Boys when she was just 15 years old. First a hit on the online community Wattpad, this debut novel has already been read over 33 million times and is loved by readers around the world.

Download or read book Restoration House written by Kennesha Buycks and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You don't have to live in your dream house to make your living spaces feel more like home. Home is meant to be a place to belong. A place to gather and connect. A place of beauty. A place to restore your soul. In Restoration House, author and designer Kennesha Buycks will encourage you to embrace your home and your story so you can create mindful spaces that give life to you, your loved ones, and all who enter. Tips from Restoration House have been featured in Better Homes and Garden, Apartment Therapy, Design Sponge, and The Washington Post. Kennesha will teach you how to: Make the best out of your living space, whether you're renting or a homeowner Create a home your visitors will feel comfortable in Decorate your home on a budget Make purposeful design decisions that are beautiful and functional Restoration House is ideal for: Christian women of all ages who want to make their houses feel more like home Housewarming gifts, Mother's Day, birthdays, and holiday gifting

Download or read book Draw with Rob at Christmas written by Rob Biddulph and published by HarperCollins Children's Books. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merry Christmas! The internet phenomenon #DrawWithRob is now a fantastically festive art activity book for you to draw with Rob at home... The second book based on the viral videos seen everywhere on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, TV, and more, from the creative genius and bestselling author Rob Biddulph! Christmas is different this year, with more families at home and wondering what to do! Pick up your pencils and join thousands of children around the world and #DrawWithRob - celebrating Christmas has never been so much fun! The first DRAW WITH ROB activity book went to Number One in the charts and was named 'Book of the Year' at the 2020 Sainsbury's Children's Book Awards! Now every family can share this fantastically festive new art activity book for Christmas. Join Rob and learn to draw your favourite Christmas characters - from Polar Bears to Elves and from Father Christmas to a Snowman, this perfect present is packed with arts, crafts and festive fun. The bestselling and award-winning author/illustrator Rob Biddulph is the genius behind the phenomenal, viral sensation that is DRAW WITH ROB and the accompanying activity book, and now the sensational DRAW WITH ROB AT CHRISTMAS - bringing joy to families everywhere with his easy to follow instructions and warm-hearted humour. So whether you're in home education, home-schooling, learning to draw or just having fun, let Rob show you that anyone can learn to #DrawWithRob! *WITH PERFORATED PAGES SO YOU CAN EASILY TEAR OUT AND DISPLAY YOUR ART!* Rob's original hit videos are also available at www.robbiddulph.com, and on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, with Rob appearing on TV to talk about them too. Perfect stay-at-home fun for boys, girls, and everyone aged three to one hundred and three, and a wonderful introduction to Rob Biddulph's bestselling picture book range - including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize-winning Blown Away, Odd Dog Out, and many more! Available in all good bookstores and online retailers, and perfect for children who are learning to read - or just love to!

Download or read book Taming the Lion written by Richard Farleigh and published by Harriman House Limited. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended for anyone with an interest in trading or investing, whether they are amateurs or professionals. Its framework is applicable to all markets, whether they are bonds, money market, commodities, currencies, stocks, or property.

Download or read book The Secret to Hummingbird Cake written by Celeste Fletcher McHale and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friends since kindergarten, Carrigan, Ella Rae, and Laine thought they'd been through everything together. But when cancer threatens to rip the trio apart, their world spins in a way they've never known before. Through it all, will they discover the secret to the divine taste of hummingbird cake—and to friendships that never end? In the South you always say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” You know everybody’s business. Football is a lifestyle not a pastime. Food—especially dessert—is almost a religious experience. And you protect your friends as fiercely as you protect your family—even if the threat is something you cannot see. In this Southern novel brimming with wit and authenticity, Laine, Carrigan, Ella Rae first met on the playground when they were five years old. Now, as adults, they’re still almost inseparable as they handle the outrageous curveballs that life sometimes throws—from devastating pain to absolute joy. As the three friends navigate everything from a devastating medical diagnosis to the rocky path of marriage, their bond is tested. Through it all, you’ll experience the essence and the joy of true friendship. And if you’re lucky, you just may discover the secret to hummingbird cake along the way. Women’s fiction, focused on friendship, and set in the South Full length, stand-alone novel Includes discussion questions for book clubs

Download or read book Taking Paris written by Martin Dugard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Martin Dugard, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series with Bill O’Reilly, comes the spellbinding story of the Allied liberation of Paris from the grip of the Nazis during World War II “Taking Paris does for Paris during World War II what The Splendid and the Vile did for London.”—James Patterson • “Heroes and villains abound. You’ll enjoy this fast-paced book immensely.”—Bill O’Reilly • “Succeeds triumphantly.”—The Washington Post May 1940: The world is stunned as Hitler's forces invade France with a devastating blitzkrieg aimed at Paris. Within weeks, the French government has collapsed, and the City of Lights, revered for its carefree lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and love of liberty, has fallen under Nazi control—perhaps forever. As the Germans ruthlessly crush all opposition, a patriotic band of Parisians known as the Resistance secretly rise up to fight back. But these young men and women cannot do it alone. Over 120,000 Parisians die under German occupation. Countless more are tortured in the city's Gestapo prisons and sent to death camps. The longer the Nazis hold the city, the greater the danger its citizens face. As the armies of America and Great Britain prepare to launch the greatest invasion in history, the spies of the Resistance risk all to ensure the Germans are defeated and Paris is once again free. The players holding the fate of Paris in their hands are some of the biggest historical figures of the era: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, General George S. Patton, and the exiled French general Charles de Gaulle, headquartered in London's Connaught Hotel. From the fall of Paris in 1940 to the race for Paris in 1944, this riveting, page-turning drama unfolds through their decisions—for better and worse. Taking Paris is history told at a breathtaking pace, a sprawling yet intimate saga of heroism, desire, and personal sacrifice for all that is right.

Download or read book Open Your Bible Bible Study Book written by Raechel Myers and published by Lifeway Church Resources. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you longing to hear from God, aching to know who He really is? The beautiful truth is this—we can encounter the living God today and every day in the pages of His Word. Whether you are a seasoned Bible reader or struggle to keep up with studying Scripture, Open Your Bible will leave you with a greater appreciation for the Word of God, a deeper understanding of its authority, and a stronger desire to know the Bible inside and out. Using powerful storytelling, real-life examples, and scripture itself, Open Your Bible will quench a thirst you might not even know you have, one that can only be satisfied by God's Word.

Download or read book The Wild Robot written by Peter Brown and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island with no memory of where she is from or why she is there, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants.