Moods Of Future Joys


Alastair Humphreys - 2006
    Cycling across five continents and sailing over the oceans, his ride took him four years to complete, on a tiny budget of hoarded student loans. Moods of Future Joys is the story of the remarkable first stage of the expedition.

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life


Gary John Bishop - 2016
    The truth is, most of it fails to capture what it truly takes to overcome our greatest barrier to a greater life…ourselves. What if everything you ever wanted resided in you like a well of potential, waiting to be expressed? Unfu*k Yourself is the handbook for the resigned and defeated, a manifesto for real life change and unleashing your own greatness.

Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries


Jon Ronson - 2012
    Collected here from various sources (including the Guardian and GQ America) are the best of his adventures. Always intrigued by our ability to believe the unbelievable, Jon meets the man preparing to welcome the aliens to earth, the woman trying to build a fully-conscious robotic replica of the love of her life and the Deal or No Deal contestants with a fool proof system to beat the Banker. Jon realises that it’s possible for our madness to be a force for good when he meets America’s real-life superheroes or a force for evil when he meets the Reverend ‘Death’ George Exoo, who has dubiously assisted in more than a hundred mercy killings.He goes to a UFO convention in the Nevada desert with Robbie Williams, asks Insane Clown Posse (who are possibly America’s nastiest rappers) whether it’s true they’ve actually been evangelical Christians all along and rummages through the extensive archives of Stanley Kubrick. Frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always entertaining, these compelling encounters with people on the edge of madness will have you wondering just what we’re capable of.

The Urban Cycling Survival Guide: Need-to-Know Skills and Strategies for Biking in the City


Yvonne Bambrick - 2015
    Yet our cities weren’t designed for bicycles, making for intimidating, and sometimes dangerous, environments for cyclists.The Urban Cycling Survival Guide is an accessible, straight-forward pocket guide that helps cyclists new to the urban environment negotiate all the challenges, obstacles, and rules — spoken and unspoken — that come with sharing the roads. From picking the bike that’s right for you to smart riding strategies, tips for drivers, and bike maintenance, Cycle Toronto founding executive director Yvonne Bambrick is your trusted guide.With illustrations to help clarify even the trickiest bike situation, The Urban Cycling Survival Guide is an indispensable, attractive set of training wheels that can make anyone a confident, joyful city rider.

Why We Run: A Natural History


Bernd Heinrich - 2002
    At once lyrical and scientific, Why We Run shows Heinrich's signature blend of biology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy, infused with his passion to discover how and why we can achieve superhuman abilities.

The Honest Life: Living Naturally and True to You


Jessica Alba - 2013
    But she was frustrated by the lack of trustworthy information on how to live healthier and cleaner—delivered in a way that a busy mom could act on without going to extremes. In 2012, with serial entrepreneur Brian Lee and environmental advocate Christopher Gavigan, she launched The Honest Company, a brand where parents can find reliable information and products that are safe, stylish, and affordable. The Honest Life shares the insights and strategies she gathered along the way.The Honest Life recounts Alba’s personal journey of discovery and reveals her tips for making healthy living fun, real, and stylish, while offering a candid look inside her home and daily life. She shares strategies for maintaining a clean diet (with favorite family-friendly recipes) and embraces nontoxic choices at home and provides eco-friendly decor tips to fit any budget. Alba also discusses cultivating a daily eco beauty routine, finding one’s personal style without resorting to yoga pants, and engaging in fun, hands-on activities with kids. Her solutions are easy, chic, and down-to-earth: they’re honest. And discovering everyday ways to live naturally and authentically—true to you—could be honestly life-changing.

London


Edward Rutherfurd - 1997
    He brings this vibrant city's long and noble history alive through the ever-shifting fortunes, fates, and intrigues of half-a-dozen families, from the age of Julius Caesar to the 20th century. Generation after generation, these families embody the passion, struggle, wealth, and verve of the greatest city in the world.

Chicken Soup for the Soul


Jack Canfield - 1993
    Canfield and Hansen bring you wit and wisdom, hope and empowerment to buoy you through life's dark moments.

Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States


Dave Barry - 1989
    Every single momentous event and crucial moment is covered, including...The Birthing Contractions of a Nation; Kicking Some British Butt; The Fifties: Peace, Prosperity, Brain Death, right up through the scintillating Reagan-Bush years. If you love to laugh, and you love your country, this is the book you've been waiting for since 1776. Or at least since Super Bowl III.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Road Headed West: America Coast to Coast: A Cycling Odyssey


Leon McCarron - 2014
    If I were a betting man I’d have reckoned on the most dangerous thing in this state being sheer boredom. The scenery hadn’t changed for weeks and I was slowly dissolving into stimulation-deprived madness. My current predicament, then – attempting to escape through cornfields from a gun-toting alcohol-soaked rancher – was not something I expected. Just months after graduating from university, Leon received disastrous news: he had been offered a job. Terrified at the prospect of a life spent behind a desk, without challenge or adventure, he took off to cross America on an overloaded bicycle packed with everything but common sense. Over five months and 6,000 miles, Leon cycled from New York to Seattle and then on to the Mexican border, facing tornados, swollen river crossings and one hungry black bear along the way. But he also met kind strangers who offered their food, wisdom, hospitality and even the occasional local history lesson, and learned what happens when you take a chance and follow the scent of adventure.

Resisting Happiness


Matthew Kelly - 2016
    and how to start choosing happiness again!Are you happy? It may be the wrong question. Most of us think we are relatively happy, while at the same time knowing that we could be happier—maybe even a lot happier. Ordinary people and the finest philosophers have been exploring the question of happiness for thousands of years, and theories abound. But this is not a book of theory. Resisting Happiness is a deeply personal, disarmingly transparent look at why we sabotage our own happiness and what to do about it.Are you overwhelmed? Do you procrastinate? Do you sometimes feel like you are your own worst enemy? Are you ignoring your dreams? Have you lost the courage to truly be yourself? Do you feel that your life lacks meaning and purpose? Do you find yourself avoiding the real issues in your life and focusing on the superficial?We all experience these feelings and doubts from time to time. But do you know what to do when you experience them? In this fascinating book, Matthew Kelly, uses his signature combination of the profound and the practical, to help us understand why we feel these things and how to rise above them.Breaking through resistance, Kelly tells us, is essential to becoming the-best-version-of-ourselves and living with passion and purpose.What is resistance? It's that sluggish feeling of not wanting to do something that you know is good for you. It's the inclination to do something that you unabashedly know is not good for you. It's the desire and tendency to delay something you should be doing right now.It is resistance that stands between you and happiness. In these pages you will learn not only what it is, but how to recognize and conquer it in your own life.

Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life


Thomas Moore - 1988
    Promising to deepen and broaden the reader's perspective on his or her own life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing "care of the soul," as well as his studies of the world's religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society.

How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew


Erin Bried - 2009
    Food is instant, ready-made, and processed with unhealthy additives. Dry cleaners press shirts, delivery guys bring pizza, gardeners tend flowers, and, yes, tailors sew on those pesky buttons. But life can be much simpler, sweeter, and richer–and a lot more fun, too! As your grandmother might say, now is not the time to be careless with your money, and it actually pays to learn how to do things yourself!Practical and empowering, How to Sew a Button collects the treasured wisdom of nanas, bubbies, and grandmas from all across the country–as well as modern-day experts–and shares more than one hundred step-by-step essential tips for cooking, cleaning, gardening, and entertaining, including how to• polish your image by shining your own shoes• grow your own vegetables (and stash your bounty for the winter)• sweeten your day by making your own jam• use baking soda and vinegar to clean your house without toxic chemicals• feel beautiful by perfecting your posture• roll your own piecrust and find a slice of heaven• fold a fitted sheet to crisp perfection• waltz without stepping on any toesComplete with helpful illustrations and brimming with nostalgic charm, How to Sew a Button provides calm and comfort in uncertain times. By doing things yourself, with care and attention, you and your loved ones will feel the pleasing rewards of a job well done.

Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany


Jane Mount - 2018
    Book lovers, rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. Readers will:• Tour the world's most beautiful bookstores• Test their knowledge of the written word with quizzes• Find their next great read in lovingly curated stacks of books• Sample the most famous fictional meals• Peek inside the workspaces of their favorite authorsA source of endless inspiration, literary facts and recommendations, and pure bookish joy, Bibliophile is sure to enchant book clubbers, English majors, poetry devotees, aspiring writers, and any and all who identify as bookworms.

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design


Charles Montgomery - 2012
    Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and condo towers an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience and Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how our cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world--and all of us can help build it.