The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country


Amanda GormanAmanda Gorman - 2021
    Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe. Her poem “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” can now be cherished in this special gift edition. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

The Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love, and Orgasms


Olive B. Persimmon - 2019
    Just say yes!Meet Olive Persimmon. Growing up, she looked exactly like Danny DeVito, except she was thirteen and a girl. By some miracle, she grew into a relatively normal, well-adjusted thirty-something woman living in New York City—with one notable exception: she hasn’t had sex in five years, one month, three days, two-point-five hours . . . and counting.Faced with bona fide sex rut, she decides it's time to take action to save her love life and get her mojo back. Challenged by a friend to "say yes" to experiences she might normally avoid, Olive embarks on a series of adventures and explores everything from BDSM classes to cuddlers-for-hire, from foot fetishes to lessons with a top-ranked pickup artist, and more! Each awkward, funny, and sometimes downright embarrassing encounter brings Olive closer to discovering the power of saying yes—to herself, others, and life itself.For fans of Jenny Slate, this is a funny, irreverent, and honest tale of one young woman's journey to reclaim her sexuality on the fringes of New York City's sex and dating world.Readers can see for themselves how this girl next door overcame insecurities around dating, sex, and love--all with openness, honesty, and a wicked sense of humor. Along the way, readers will wonder: Will Olive ever have sex again? Will her love life be okay? Will her toe fungus come back? Does she ever find her mojo, and where was it hiding?

The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-In-Law


Haywood Smith - 2009
    Bestselling author Haywood Smith and her pals have lots of personal experience in the joys, sorrows, pitfalls and flat-out hysteria of Mother-in-Lawness. Now, Smith, a very Southern mother-in-law's humorous advice to mothers-in-law everywhere. From the multiple offers a handy and fun booklet of pithy advice to mothers-in-law everywhere. Smith's sassy observations and gentle wisdom are delivered with her trademark southern charm, packing the sweet, heady punch of bourbon ice cubes melting in a mint julep. The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-in-Law is the perfect gift book for showers, engagement parties, family celebrations or just to share with that special DIL (Daughter-in-Law) or SIL (Son-in-Law). It can even safely be given to a Mother-in-Law

I Can't Be Good All the Time: An Anne Taintor Collection


Anne Taintor - 2003
    This first-ever collection of her wildly popular artwork celebrates the pleasures of being bad in a good girl's world. Taintor's sassy, saucy creations pair vintage illustrations with witty new slogans, and her well-mannered women enjoy deliciously less-than-well-mannered thoughts. ("Had she made him suffer enough...how could she be sure?") A collection of Taintor's best-loved images on the fun and folly of romance, I Can't Be Good All the Time includes nearly 100 images of nice ladies saying exactly what they mean - and it isn't pretty. We never said it would be pretty.

Bald in the Land of Big Hair: A True Story


Joni Rodgers - 2001
    More than just a cancer book, this is a deeply affecting memoir of one woman's struggle to come to terms with everything that life throws her way.Ultimately, this is a moving celebration of the true meaning of human triumph and courage, the importance of community and the imperative of living every day with joy.

Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence


Geoff Dyer - 1997
    H. Lawrence. He wanted, in fact, to write his "Lawrence book." The problem was, he had no idea what his "Lawrence book" would be, though he was determined to write a "sober academic study." Luckily for the reader, he failed miserably.Out of Sheer Rage is a harrowing, comic, and grand act of literary deferral. At times a furious repudiation of the act of writing itself, this is not so much a book about Lawrence as a book about writing a book about Lawrence. As Lawrence wrote about his own study of Thomas Hardy, "It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy, I am afraid-queer stuff-but not bad."

The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir


Vivian Gornick - 2015
    Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick's exchange of more than twenty years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has "shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy" she has known. The exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator's continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful. In Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees.Written as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, The Odd Woman and the City beautifully bookends Gornick's acclaimed Fierce Attachments, in which we first encountered her rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis.

Big As All Hell And Half Of Texas (Memoirs of Marlayna Glynn Brown)


Marlayna Glynn - 2013
    This final volume candidly explores the pertinent societal question: how does an ill-equipped adult child of alcoholics navigate life after a childhood fraught with abuse, scarcity and neglect? Continuing her engrossing journey from the moment City of Angeles ends, Glynn Brown shares the vignettes of her life - replete with enlightening mistakes, edifying consequences, forgiveness and personal redemption. Big As All Hell And Half Of Texas is an honest and inspirational account of Glynn Brown's ultimately successful battles with depression, divorce, single parenting, and ill-fitting love affairs."This memoir is a journey in self-examination lived not as a victim but as a searcher always hoping that the universe will smile the next day. The author asks several questions of herself. Perhaps the most searing query is, "Why am I not enough?" The answer suggested is that finding someone who sees any one of us as enough is a challenge that may consume a lifetime. And, perhaps, even more critically, is that moment when we find that we are more adequate than we believed, that those who reject are more deeply wounded or lost than we imagined. Marlayna's tale is compelling, painful, joyous, and riveting." - R. Vincent

Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn


Melanie Shankle - 2013
    Filled with personal stories—from the decision to become a mother to the heartbreak of miscarriage and ultimately, to the joy of raising a baby and living to tell about it—Sparkly Green Earrings will make you feel like you’re sitting across the table from your best friend. A must-read for anyone who’s ever had a child or even thought about it.

Go the F**k to Sleep


Adam Mansbach - 2011
    You know where you can go? The f**k to sleep.”Go the Fuck to Sleep is a book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, it captures the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. Read by a host of celebrities, from Samuel L. Jackson to Jennifer Garner, this subversively funny bestselling storybook will not actually put your kids to sleep, but it will leave you laughing so hard you won’t care.

Gift from the Sea


Anne Morrow Lindbergh - 1955
    Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman.The sea and the beach are elements that have been woven throughout Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life. She spent her childhood summers with her family on a Maine island. After her marriage to Charles Lindbergh in 1929, she accompanied him on his survey flights around the North Atlantic to launch the first transoceanic airlines. The Lindberghs eventually established a permanent home on the Connecticut coast, where they lived quietly, wrote books and raised their family.After the children left home for lives of their own, the Lindberghs traveled extensively to Africa and the Pacific for environmental research.

About Alice


Calvin Trillin - 2006
    You mean I peaked in December of 1963?I’m afraid so.But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays


Sloane Crosley - 2008
    Courtney Sullivan. Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, this debut collection of literary essays from Sloane Crosley is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory.From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions -- or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a startlingly funny and revealing portrait of a complex and utterly recognizable character who aims for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she is. I Was Told There'd Be Cake introduces a strikingly original voice, chronicling the struggles and unexpected beauty of modern urban life.The pony problem --Christmas in July --The ursula cookie --Bring your machete to work day --The good people of this dimension --Bastard out of Westchester --The beauty of strangers --Fuck you, Columbus --One-night bounce --Sign language for infidels --You on a stick --Height of luxury --Smell this --Lay like broccoli --Fever faker

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures


Amber Dusick - 2013
    But sometimes, it just sucks. I know. I'm Amber Dusick and I started my blog Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures because I needed a place to vent about the funny (and frustrating) day-to-day things that happened to me as a parent. Turns out, poop is hilarious! At least when you're not the one wiping it up.This book won't make your frustrating moments any less crappy. But these stories about my Crappy Baby, Crappy Boy and my husband, Crappy Papa, will hopefully make you laugh. Because you're not alone. And sometimes the crappiest moments make the best memories. Parenting is wonderful! And also, well, you know.

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me


Adrienne Brodeur - 2019
    On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me.    Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms.  Wild Game is a brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us.