So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister


Anna Akana - 2017
    In the months that followed, she realized that the one thing helping her process her grief and begin to heal was comedy. So she began making YouTube videos as a form of creative expression and as a way to connect with others. Ten years later, Anna has more than a million subscribers who watch her smart, honest vlogs on her YouTube channel. Her most popular videos, including "How to Put On Your Face" and "Why Girls Should Ask Guys Out," are comical and provocative, but they all share a deeper message: Your worth is determined by you and you alone. You must learn to love yourself.In So Much I Want to Tell You, Anna opens up about her own struggles with poor self-esteem and reveals both the highs and lows of coming-of-age. She offers fresh, funny, hard-won advice for young women on everything from self-care to money to sex, and she is refreshingly straightforward about the realities of dating, female friendship, and the hustle required to make your dreams come true. This is Anna's story, but, as she says, it belongs just as much to Kristina and to every other girl who must learn that growing up can be hard to do. Witty and real, Anna breaks things down in a way only a big sister can.Advance praise for So Much I Want to Tell You"This book is filled with the kind of honesty, vulnerability, and determination that makes Anna such a captivating person. One warning: You'll want to hug her a lot while reading this."--Natalie Tran, actress and comedian"As a woman working in entertainment, Anna Akana is accustomed to feeling vulnerable. Which means that she's used to being brave. This book is a tribute to the duality of bravery and fear as told through Anna's experiences to date."--Hannah Hart, New York Times bestselling author of Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded"Frank advice on how to live a productive, happy life . . . written in tribute to a 'fearless, talented, and bold' sister."--Kirkus Reviews

Fourteen: A Daughter's Memoir of Adventure, Sailing, and Survival


Leslie Johansen Nack - 2015
    The abuse begins at age nine and doesn't end until she begins to fight back, finally, at age fourteen. Her father, a larger-than-life Norwegian, assumed full custody of Leslie and her two sisters and moved the family from their 63-acre rustic ranch in Northern California to a 45-foot sailboat in Southern California. The family spent two years living aboard their boat preparing for the trip of their father's dreams: a trip around the world. On February 5, 1975, the family set sail for French Polynesia. Intense and inspiring, Fourteen is a coming-of-age adventure story about a young girl who comes into her own power, fights back against abuse, becomes an accomplished sailor, and falls in love with the ocean and the natural world. The outer voyage is a mirror of her inner journey, and her goal is to find the strength to endure in a dangerous world, and within a difficult family.

One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America


Gene Weingarten - 2019
    That day--chosen completely at random--turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.That Sunday between Christmas and New Year's turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling.One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as "ordinary" when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.

The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out


William Dameron - 2019
    On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity—a forty-year-old straight white male—had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance. Was it all an ironic cosmic joke? Almost a decade prior, William himself had been living a lie that had lasted for more than twenty years. His secret? He was a gay man, a fact he hid from his wife and two daughters for almost as long as he had hidden it from himself.In this emotional and unflinchingly honest memoir of coming out of the closet late in life, owning up to the past, and facing the future, William Dameron confronts steroid addiction, the shame and homophobia of his childhood, the sledgehammer of secrets that slowly tore his marriage apart, and his love for a gay father of three that would once again challenge the boundaries of trust. At the true heart of The Lie is a universal story about turning self-doubt into self-acceptance and about pain, anger, and the long journey of both seeking and giving forgiveness.

Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales


Oliver Sacks - 2019
    Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, all told with his characteristic compassion, erudition, and luminous prose. From the celebrated case history of Spalding Gray that appeared in The New Yorker four months before his death to reflections on mental asylums; from piercing accounts of Schizophrenia to a reminiscence of Robin Williams; from the riveting tale of a medical colleague falling victim to Alzheimer's to the cinematography of Michael Powell, this volume celebrates and reflects the wondrous curiosity of Oliver Sacks.

Sightlines


Kathleen Jamie - 2012
    Her gaze swoops vertiginously too; from a countryside of cells beneath a hospital microscope, to killer whales rounding a headland, to the constellations of satellites that belie our sense of the remote. Written with her hallmark precision and delicacy, and marked by moments in her own life, Sightlines offers a rare invitation to pause and to pay heed to our surroundings.

The Coconut Latitudes: Secrets, Storms, and Survival in the Caribbean


Rita M. Gardner - 2014
    Leaving a successful career in the U.S., a father makes the fateful decision to settle his wife and two young daughters on an isolated beach in the Dominican Republic. He plants ten thousand coconut seedlings and declares they are the luckiest people alive.In reality, the family is in the path of hurricanes and in the grip of a brutal dictator. Against a backdrop of shimmering palms and kaleidoscope sunsets, a crisis causes the already fragile family to implode. "The Coconut Latitudes" is a haunting, lyrical memoir of surviving a reality far from the envisioned Eden, the terrible cost of keeping secrets, and the transformative power of truth and love.

Yokohama Threeway: And Other Small Shames


Beth Lisick - 2013
    Funny, odd, deeply personal, yet somehow universal, these are the kind of memories that haunt us all, the small awful moments of shame and humiliation that we'd rather forget than relive.Beth Lisick has made a career of opening her life to her readers in all of its messy, smart hilarity, but this type of story doesn't usually find its way into a memoir. With her trademark humor and sly intelligence, writing in short flashes the way these episodes tend to pop up in memory, Lisick recounts her most embarrassing moments with gusto. From a trick she played on a neighbor thirty years ago to what she accidentally blurted out at last night's dinner party, she explores the bad judgments and free-floating regrets that keep her up at night, and the result is a daring, candid, and wickedly funny collection of embarrassment embraced, the triumph of humor and perspective over everyday mortification.Writer, performer, and independent film actress Beth Lisick is the author of the New York Times best-selling comic memoir Everybody Into the Pool and the gonzo self-help manifesto Helping Me Help Myself.

Rick Steves' Pocket Florence


Rick Steves - 2013
    Everything a busy traveler needs is easy to access: a neighborhood overview, city walks and tours, sights, handy food and accommodations charts, an appendix packed with information on trip planning and practicalities, and a fold-out city map.Rick Steves' Pocket Florence includes the following walks and tours:Renaissance Walk Accademia Tour: Michelangelo's David Uffizi Gallery Tour Bargello Tour Duomo Museum Tour

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments


David Foster Wallace - 1997
    In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner — David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada


Will Ferguson - 2004
    In a helicopter above the barren lands of the subarctic, in a canoe with his four-year-old son, aboard seaplanes, and along the Underground Railroad, Will's travels have taken him from Cape Spear on the coast of Newfoundland to the sun-dappled streets of old Victoria.Funny, poignant, and insightful, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw is a provocative tribute to a land that is akin to a series of loosely connected outposts peopled with some of the most interesting folks in the world.

We Carry Kevan: Six Friends. Three Countries. No Wheelchair.


Kevan Chandler - 2019
    Kevan is just one of the guys. It's impossible to know him and not become a little more excited about life. He is an inspiring man permeated by joy, unafraid of sorrow, full of vitality and life! His sense of humor is infectious and so is his story.He grew up, he says, at "belt-buckle level" and stayed there until Kevan's beloved posse decided to leave his wheelchair at the Atlanta airport, board a plane for France, and have his friends carry him around Europe to accomplish their dream to see the world together! Kevan's beloved posse traveled to Paris, England, and Ireland where, in the climax of their adventure, they scale 600 feet up to the 1,400-year-old monastic fortress of Skellig Michael.In We Carry Kevan the reader sits with Kevan, one head-level above everyone else for the first time in his life and enjoys camaraderie unlike anything most people ever experience. Along the way they encounter the curiosity and beauty of strangers, the human family disarmed by grace, and the constant love of God so rich and beautiful in the company of good friends. We Carry Kevan displays the profound power of friendship and self-sacrifice.

Humans of New York


Brandon Stanton - 2013
    With four hundred color photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that showcases the outsized personalities of New York.Surprising and moving, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of the city.

Join Me!


Danny Wallace - 2003
    Just to see what would happen, he placed a whimsical ad in a local London paper. It said, simply, "Join Me." Within a month, he was receiving letters and emails from teachers, mechanics, sales reps, vicars, schoolchildren and pensioners--all pledging allegiance to his cause. But no one knew what his cause was. Soon he was proclaimed Leader. Increasingly obsessed and possibly power-crazed, Danny risked losing his sanity and his loyal girlfriend. But who could deny the attraction of a global following of devoted joinees?A book about dreams, ambition, and the responsibility that comes with power, Join Me is the true story of a man who created a cult by accident, and is proof that whilst some men were born to lead, others really haven't got a clue.

Letters to a Young Scientist


Edward O. Wilson - 2013
    Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career--both his successes and his failures--and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans' depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being's modest place in the planet's ecosystem in his readers.