The Ultimate Book of Outfit Formulas: A Stylish Solution to What Should I Wear?


Alison Lumbatis - 2021
    You have many important choices to make during the day and only so much mental bandwidth. Getting dressed can be a dreaded daily task that takes up valuable time best spent on something else.   Style expert Alison Lumbatis wants to help you make fashion fun again. Alison shows you how easy it is to build a basic yet beautiful wardrobe starting with the clothes you already own and adding other classic mix-and-match elements that work for any season on any budget.   Once your wardrobe is set, you can use the easy outfit formulas in the book to take the guesswork out of getting dressed, freeing you up to focus on bigger priorities.   Looking fabulous while saving time is the ultimate win-win.

Empathy and Eyebrows: A Survivalist's Stories on Reviving Your Spirit After Soul-Crushing Sh*tstorms


Danni Starr - 2017
    

The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness


Paula Poundstone - 2017
    I laughed. I cried. I got another cat.”  —Lily Tomlin “Paula Poundstone is the funniest human being I have ever known.” —Peter Sagal, host of Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice “Is there a secret to happiness?” asks comedian Paula Poundstone. "I don’t know how or why anyone would keep it a secret. It seems rather cruel, really . . . Where could  it be? Is it deceptively simple? Does it melt at a certain temperature? Can you buy it? Must you suffer for it before or after?” In her wildly and wisely observed book, the comedy legend takes on that most inalienable of rights—the pursuit of happiness. Offering herself up as a human guinea pig in a series of thoroughly unscientific experiments, Poundstone tries out a different get-happy hypothesis in each chapter of her data-driven search. She gets in shape with taekwondo. She drives fast behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. She communes with nature while camping with her daughter, and commits to getting her house organized (twice!). Swing dancing? Meditation? Volunteering? Does any of it bring her happiness? You may be laughing too hard to care.  The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness is both a story of jumping into new experiences with both feet and a surprisingly poignant tale of a single working mother of three children (not to mention dozens of cats, a dog, a bearded dragon lizard, a lop-eared bunny, and one ant left from her ant farm) who is just trying to keep smiling while living a busy life. The queen of the skepticism-fueled rant, Paula Poundstone stands alone in her talent for bursting bubbles and slaying sacred cows. Like George Carlin, Steve Martin, and David Sedaris, she is a master of her craft, and her comedic brilliance is served up in abundance in this book. As author and humorist Roy Blount Jr. notes, “Paula Poundstone deserves to be happy. Nobody deserves to be this funny.”

Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer


Dick Van Dyke - 2015
    He’s an established legend, having starred in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. And yet he’s still keeping himself busy, entertaining America on television, movies, the stage, and social media. Everyone wonders, “How does he do it?” For the first time, Van Dyke shares his secrets and tips on old age: Just keep moving. In a fun and folksy way of addressing readers, Keep Moving serves as an instruction book on how to embrace old age with a positive attitude. The chapters are filled with exclusive personal anecdotes that explore various themes on aging: how to adapt to the physical and social changes, deal with loss of friends and loved ones, stay current, fall in love again, and “keep moving” every day like there’s no tomorrow.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead


Sheryl Sandberg - 2013
    The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.

Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival


Kelly Sundberg - 2018
    "Now everyone is going to know." "I know," I said. "I’m sorry."Kelly Sundberg’s husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.To understand herself and her violent marriage, Sundberg looks to her childhood in Salmon, a small, isolated mountain community known as the most redneck town in Idaho. Like her marriage, Salmon is a place of deep contradictions, where Mormon ranchers and hippie back-to-landers live side-by-side; a place of magical beauty riven by secret brutality; a place that takes pride in its individualism and rugged self-sufficiency, yet is beholden to church and communal standards at all costs.Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary, and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman’s transformation as she gradually rejects the painful reality of her violent life at the hands of the man who is supposed to cherish her, begins to accept responsibility for herself, and learns to believe that she deserves better.

A Beautiful Work In Progress


Mirna Valerio - 2017
    When you meet her on the trail, you might be surprised to see she doesn’t quite fit the typical image of a long-distance runner. She’s neither skinny nor white, and she’s here to show just how misguided these stereotypes can be.In this prejudice-busting, body-positive memoir told with raw honesty, an adventurous spirit, and a sharp sense of humor, Valerio takes readers along on her journey from first-time racer to ultramarathoner and proves that anyone can become a successful athlete.

Housebroken: Admissions of an Untidy Life


Laurie Notaro - 2016
    Inspired by Victorian household manuals, Notaro chronicles her chronic misfortune in the domestic arts, including cooking, cleaning, and putting on Spanx while sweaty (which should technically qualify as an Olympic sport). Housebroken is a rollicking new collection of essays showcasing her irreverent wit and inability to feel shame. From defying nature in the quest to making her own Twinkies, to begging her new neighbors not to become urban livestock keepers, to teaching her eight-year-old nephew about hobos, Notaro recounts her best efforts—and hilarious failures—in keeping a household inches away from being condemned. After all, home wasn’t built in a day.

Somebody's Daughter


Ashley C. Ford - 2021
    For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who understands her. She thinks she understands him too. He's sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just as afraid of the dark. She's certain that one day they'll be reunited again, and she'll finally feel complete. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there.Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where the story really begins.Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

Small Doses


Amanda Seales - 2019
    Now, in her one-of-a-kind voice that blends academic intellectualism, Black American colloquialisms, and pop culture fanaticism, she’s bringing her life’s lessons and laughs to the page. This volume of essays, axioms, original illustrations, and photos provides Seales’s trademark “self-help from the hip” style of commentary, fueled by ideology formed from her own victories, struggles, research, mistakes, risks, and pay-offs. Unapologetic, fiercely funny, and searingly honest, Small Doses engages, empowers, and enlightens readers on how to find their truths while still finding the funny!

Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom


Tabitha Brown - 2021
    For years she pursued acting while raising a family and dealing with undiagnosed chronic autoimmune pain. Before she became vegan, her condition made her believe she wouldn’t live to see forty. Now she’s one of the most popular personalities in the world, with millions of followers on social media whom she inspires to live and eat well with her blend of homespun wisdom and delicious home cooking. With her relatable personality and health struggles, approachable and nonjudgmental take on plant-based living, and warm voice reflecting her Southern upbringing, Tabitha connects with readers with a good story and gentle hand. The most important lesson Tabitha shares with readers is how to make a life for themselves that is rooted in kindness and love, both for themselves and for others.Tabitha doesn't just spout inspirational platitudes. She roots her lessons in stories about her own life, career, faith, and family in this down-to-earth book, all structured around Tab’s catchphrases that her fans know and love, including:Hello There!: Introduction, and why hope, joy, and clarity are so very neededThat’s Your Business: Defining yourself, and being okay with thatHave the Most Amazing Day…: Choosing joy and living with intentionBut Don’t Go Messin' Up No One Else's: Learning to walk in kindness even when the world doesn’t feel kindLike So, Like That: Living life without measurementVery Good: Living in peace and creating good from the badRich with personal stories and inspirational quotes, and sprinkled with a few easy vegan recipes, Feeding the Soul will be eagerly embraced by Tabitha’s legion of adoring fans. Readers will return to this comforting book whenever they want to feel seen, loved, and heard—and they’ll share it with family and friends, too.

Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race


Lara Prior-Palmer - 2019
    On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan, and many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training. She was driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses. She raced for ten days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she rode out again on a fresh horse, scrambling up mountains, swimming through rivers, crossing woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open steppe, as American television crews chased her in their Jeeps.Told with terrific suspense and style, in a voice full of poetry and soul, Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of this breathtaking race.

Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason


Gina Frangello - 2021
    Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression." —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness. Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society: the violence they experience, the rage they suppress, the ways their bodies often reveal what they cannot say aloud, and finally, what it means to transgress "being good" in order to save your own life.

How to be Champion


Sarah Millican - 2017
    If you haven't done those things but wish you had, This Is Your Book. If you just want to laugh on a train/sofa/toilet or under your desk at work, This Is Your Book.

I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual


Luvvie Ajayi Jones - 2016
    "This truth-riot of a book gives us everything from hilarious lectures on the bad behavior all around us to the razor sharp essays on media and culture" (Shonda Rhimes, New York Times best-selling author of Year of Yes and executive producer of Scandal and Grey's Anatomy) "I don't know how Luvvie Ajayi got so smart so young about so many things, from feminism to social media, from the pervasiveness of rape culture to the excellence of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I'm just grateful she has chosen to share her wisdom with the rest of us..." (Jennifer Weiner, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Best Friends Forever) "You will love Luvvie Ajayi's I'm Judging You, and you will argue with it, laugh hysterically at it, shout 'AW HELL YES' at it, and carry parts of it in your heart to dissect or inspire... Perfect for starting important and meaty discussions about all of the topics your mama told you never to bring up at polite dinner parties." (Jenny Lawson, New York Times best-selling author of Furiously Happy) With over 500,000 readers a month at her enormously popular blog, AwesomelyLuvvie.com, Luvvie Ajayi has become a go-to source for smart takes on pop culture. I'm Judging You is her debut book of humorous essays that dissects our cultural obsessions and calls out bad behavior in our increasingly digital, connected lives—from the importance of the newest Shonda Rhimes television drama to serious discussions of race and media representation to what to do about your fool cousin sharing casket pictures from Grandma's wake on Facebook. With a lighthearted, razor-sharp wit and a unique perspective, I'm Judging You is the audiobook the world needs, doling out the hard truths and a road map for bringing some "act right" into our lives, social media, and popular culture.