Roughing It, Part 1.


Mark Twain - 1913
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Never Said Nothing


Liz Phair - 2021
    In Never Said Nothing, the latest in Audible’s Words + Music series, Phair charts her unlikely journey from making her first record—one that’s now ensconced on Rolling Stone’s "500 Greatest Albums of All Time"—to a trial by fire (she’d never set foot on stage before its release), to even more improbably, a second and a third, maybe fourth act, depending on how one counts these things.In this honest and disarming look inside her unique career, Phair talks of how her meteoric rise was accompanied by an equally intense case of the dreaded imposter syndrome, discovering music’s strange magic, and her possibly unique ability to chart her future through songs. Although she includes herself in the class of ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things,’ listening to Never Said Nothing, along with her performances—which include "‘6’1," "Polyester Bride," and "Stars and Planets,"—one can’t help but feel that ‘fearless person doing extraordinary things’ is the better description.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - A 30-minute Chapter-by-Chapter Summary


Instaread Summaries - 2014
    We read every chapter and summarize it in one or two paragraphs so you can get the information contained in the book at a much faster rate. This is an InstaRead Summary of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the summary: Prologue The year is 1995. Cheryl, the narrator and author of the story, explains that she was 26 years old when at the lowest point of her life she began her solo trek on the Pacific Crest Trail. She describes the trail as being 2,663 miles long and two feet wide, stretching from Mexico to Canada and including nine mountain ranges. She has embarked on her journey just 38 days before in an effort to find herself. As she stops to rest at the peak of a mountain, one of her hiking boots tumbles away down the mountain and into some trees far below. Realizing the other is of no use to her anymore, she tosses it out into the trees as well. She reflects on her situation and decides that though she is alone, battered and bruised, shoeless, and at least days from the next supply stop, she must walk on. Part One: The Ten Thousand Things Chapter One: The Ten Thousand Things Cheryl reflects on when her journey actually began and decides that it truly began a over four years ago, on the day that she had learned her forty-five year-old mother was going to die of advanced stage lung cancer. She recalls being at the Mayo clinic with her mother and stepfather on the day of the diagnosis and cursing the smaller town doctors that had given the same diagnosis in the weeks leading up to the visit to Mayo.  She had wanted them to be wrong. Angry at her absent older sister and younger brother, and refusing to believe that her extremely health-conscious, non-smoking mother could possibly have cancer, she argues with the doctor, then crumbles at the news that her mother has a year, at most, to live. She describes the deep love and devotion of her mother to her and her two siblings. Pregnant at nineteen, her mother had married her father only to find out within three short days that he was brutal and abusive. Her mother left him several times, but not permanently until she was twenty-eight years old. A single mother of three, her mother worked all the time, but never seemed to get ahead. She sugar-coated poverty for her children, making games out of their plight and dating an interesting slew of men. Her mother finally met Eddie, a man eight years her junior, and he married her and took on the roles of husband and father with ease. After a disabling accident and settlement, the couple bought forty acres of land an hour and half from Duluth, Minnesota...

Remarkable People: Extraordinary Stories of Everyday Lives


Dan Walker - 2020
    An uplifting tonic for the darkness and negativity of recent times.We live in an age of anxiety, besieged by bad news and uncertainty. But Dan Walker, the host of BBC1's Breakfast and Football Focus, is determined to shine a light onto stories of selflessness and compassion that seldom make the headlines. In the course of his professional life, Dan has encountered many inspiring stories of bravery and kindness. In Remarkable People, he recounts tales of incredible humanity, empathy, compassion, and a steely determination to transform lives, restore trust, renew hope.Remarkable People is the perfect book for these challenging times; an escape from the negativity of our everyday news cycle, and a tribute to courage and positivity.

Reflections: The Sunday Times bestselling book of life lessons from superstar presenter Holly Willoughby


Holly Willoughby - 2021
    It feels so authentic . . . Encompassing and inclusive . . . Reads beautifully and fluidly and feels like having a chat with your best friend' - Elizabeth Day on HOW TO FAIL'The book is a triumph...an accessible insight into the woman behind the brand' Grazia________________________Have you ever found yourself in that moment where you just wonder - what's next? I could carry on as I am but there's a yearning for something else. That's where this book started for me...Presenter. Fashion icon. Wife. Mother. Holly Willoughby lights up the nation's TV screens every day but, like all of us, she has struggled with moments of self-doubt, feelings of guilt, anger and detachment. Here she shares how she has learned to reconnect with herself in order to face her fears head on. With her trademark warmth, Holly shows how listening to her inner voice and celebrating life's little moments of beauty and joy - like looking up at the moon or finding the perfect red lipstick - helped her feel whole again. Reflections is an empathetic, encouraging book that will inspire you to live your most beautiful, authentic life.WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:-'I rarely read and read this book in two days! Much of what Holly wrote about resonated with me and I've taken so much practical advice away with me.'-'Like little snippets of therapy'-'This book is brilliant. Holly addresses many things that we all face in life and gives her best advice on how to overcome them. Fantastic for anyone but mostly anyone who suffers any kind of anxieties or self consciousness. -'Amazing . . . Holly is just fabulous and I can't put it down, so nice to know we aren't in this journey alone' -'So beautifully written and relatable in lots of ways. It will be a book that I am sure I will keep taking off of my book shelf to keep going back to read for a long time'

I'm Sorry… Love, Your Husband: Honest, Hilarious Stories From a Father of Three Who Made All the Mistakes (and Made up for Them)


Clint Edwards - 2018
    He describes parenting as “a million different gears turning in a million different directions, all of them covered in sour milk.” In this inspiring and unconventional book of essays, he sheds light on the darker yet hilarious side of domestic life.Owning up to all his mishaps and dumbassery, Edwards shares essays on just about every topic fellow spouses and parents can appreciate, including: stupid things he’s said to his pregnant wife, the trauma of taking a toddler shopping, revelations on buying a minivan and the struggle to not fight the nosy neighbor (who is five years old).Clint’s funny, heartwarming account of the terrifying yet completely rewarding life of a parent is a breath of fresh air. Each essay in I’m Sorry...Love, Your Husband will have you thinking finally, someone gets it.

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook


Joanne M. Braxton - 1998
    This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray.Perhaps more than any other single text, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helped to establish the mainstream status of the renaissance in black women's writing. This casebook presents a variety of critical approaches to this classic autobiography, along with an exclusive interview with Angelou conducted specially for this volume and a unique drawing of her childhood surroundings in Stamps, Arkansas, drawn by Angelou herself.

Bikeman: An Epic Poem


Thomas F. Flynn - 2008
    Both heartbreaking and haunting, his words will stay with you like that 'forever September morning.'" --Meredith Vieira, NBC's  Today Tom Flynn brings to his subject three invaluable attributes: the eye of a seasoned journalist, the soul of a poet, and his stunning, first-hand experience of that horrific day." --David Friend, Vanity FairFrom Bikeman:The dead from hereare my forever companionsI am their pine box,their marble reliquary,their bronze urn,the living, breathing coffin they never had,their final resting place without a stone.I move on at peace.Modeled on Dante's Inferno, veteran journalist Thomas Flynn's Bikeman chronicles the morning of September 11, 2001 like no other published work. Flynn delivers a personal account of his experiences beginning with the first strike on the World Trade Center when he decided to follow his journalist's instinct and point his bike's handlebars in the direction of the north tower. His story continues as he transitions from reporter to participant hoping to survive the fall of the south tower. Now Flynn, as both journalist and now survivor, must come to terms with the harrowing ordeal and somehow find peace in the very act of surviving.Part journalist's record, part survivor's eulogy, Flynn writes:Survival is the absence of death.It is a subdued, a hushed existence. . .I live to talk about it,to relate the tale as it happens,not only its extremities and cruelty,but also the goodness that flourishes too.

Tales From the Farm by the Yorkshire Shepherdess


Amanda Owen - 2021
    

Rolling with the Punchlines: A Memoir


Urzila Carlson - 2020
    Urzila talks candidly about her childhood with a great family, apart from her abusive dad, and about growing up in South Africa. She shares crazy but true tales about her OE, her move to New Zealand, coming out, getting married and having children, and her life in comedy. This is a great listen from one of our most loved and most popular comedians.

Short Stories: The Autobiography of Columbus Short


Columbus Short - 2020
    Short has lived many livespacked into one-from a family filled with turmoil to tumultuous loveaffairs and enough scandals of his own. But somewhere in the middle, Short's realization that there has to be a better way comes into fullview. "Coming Up Short" not only details Columbus Short's journey fromchildhood to Hollywood, it shows how even the most checkered of pastscan create a different person with the right amount of will and drive,especially when it comes to fulfilling your true destiny.

I'll Give You Something to Cry About: A memoir of a daughter's struggle to survive a mother with paranoia, schizophrenia, and manic depression


Elizabeth Acker - 2016
    Elizabeth is forced to become estranged from her father and struggles alone to create hope and meaning for her life while serving her mother like a slave. This book is a true account of a daughter's struggle to survive a mother with paranoia, schizophrenia, and manic depression.

Over the Wire: A POW's Escape Story from the Second World War


Philip H. Newman - 1983
    After several failed attempts he got out over the wire and journeyed for weeks as a fugitive from northern France to Marseilles, then across the Pyrenees to Spain and Gibraltar and freedom. He was guided along the way by French civilians, resistance fighters and the organizers of the famous Pat escape line. His straightforward, honest and vivid memoir of his work as a surgeon at Dunkirk, life in the prison camps and his escape attempts gives a fascinating insight into his wartime experience. It records the ingenuity and courage of the individuals, the ordinary men and women, who risked their lives to help him on his way. It is also one of the best accounts we have of what it was like to be on the run in occupied Europe.

Chunk (Kindle Single)


Brian Donovan - 2015
    Chunk follows him along his crazy, overweight journey; from the chubby 10-year old who stole brownies and tricked his parents into thinking he’d lost weight, to the teenage boy who made regular after-school plans to eat entire pies, to the adult man who still hates working out and still loves Cinnabons. It’s a bracingly funny and delightfully uncomfortable collection of essays exploring food, fitness, and the funny things that happen when we try to slim down and grow up. Brian Donovan has written for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, National Public Radio, and, most recently, ABC’s The Neighbors. His work has also appeared on Chapelle’s Show, Funny or Die, and Off Broadway in New York City. His “Not a Match: My True Tales of Online Dating Disasters” is currently being developed for television. Cover design by Adil Dara.

A Light That Never Goes Out: A Memoir


Keelin Shanley - 2020
    But a light so bright never really goes out, especially since, in her last few months, Keelin wrote a fantastic record of her life.Charting the twists and turns of both a remarkable career as an investigative journalist and a lengthy battle with cancer, in A Light That Never Goes Out Keelin reveals with real honesty what it's like to keep living your life and career - right up to becoming a co-anchor of RT�'s Six One News - while dealing with the challenges of cancer treatment.Written with the help of Alison Walsh and completed posthumously by Keelin's husband Conor Ferguson, A Light That Never Goes Out is a remarkable story of courage and resilience and a memorable reflection on how to live well, no matter what you're facing.