Book picks similar to
Forever Boy: A Mother's Memoir of Finding Joy Through Autism by Kate Swenson
autism
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memoir
biography-memoir
The Patient
Jane ShemiltJane Shemilt
He will be her downfall.The bestselling phenomenon returns…When Rachel meets Luc, the attraction is instant.But she is a doctor, and he is her patient.She gives him the drugs he needs – but in doing so, risks everything.And when a secret is exposed, they’re both in the firing line.Not all patients are telling the truth.
Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting
Anna Quindlen - 2019
. . . All I know is: The hand. The little hand that takes yours, small and soft as feathers. I'm happy our grandson does not yet have sophisticated language or a working knowledge of personal finance, because if he took my hand and said, "Nana, can you sign your 401(k) over to me," I can imagine myself thinking, well, I don't really need a retirement fund, do I? And besides, look at those eyelashes. Or the greeting. Sometimes Arthur sees me and yells "Nana!" in the way some people might say "ice cream!" and others say "shoe sale!" No one else has sounded that happy to see me in many many years.Before blogs even existed, Anna Quindlen became a go-to writer on the joys and challenges of family, motherhood, and modern life, in her nationally syndicated column. Now she's taking the next step and going full Nana in the pages of this lively, beautiful, and moving book about being a grandmother. Quindlen offers thoughtful and telling observations about her new role, no longer mother and decision-maker but secondary character and support to the parents of her grandson. She writes, "Where I once led, I have to learn to follow." Eventually a close friend provides words to live by: "Did they ask you?"Candid, funny, frank, and illuminating, Quindlen's singular voice has never been sharper or warmer. With the same insights she brought to motherhood in Living Out Loud and to growing older in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, this new nana uses her own experiences to illuminate those of many others.
Broken (In the Best Possible Way)
Jenny LawsonJenny Lawson - 2021
In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
Dessert Can Save the World: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes for a Stubbornly Joyful Existence
Christina Tosi - 2022
Dessert connects us heart-to-heart like almost nothing else. It brings us together in good times and bad, celebration and solace. Desserts mark big milestones and small wins and create indelible memories of comfort and joy. And Christina Tosi, the founder and CEO of Milk Bar, believes it can save the world. Does she really think the combination of sugar, flour, and butter has some magical ability to fix all the craziness of our modern existence? Of course not. Even with her trademark exuberance for baked goods that has touched millions of lives through her products, books, and television shows, Tosi knows a cookie is just a cookie. But bringing the joy a cookie holds into every area of your life most definitely can. The spirit of dessert—the relentless, unflinching commitment to finding or creating joy even when joy feels hard to come by—is what can save us. And then we, in turn, can each save the world. In Dessert Can Save the World, Tosi chronicles her path to success in work and life. Along the way, she shares the wisdom she learned growing up surrounded by strong, amazing women who passed along the legacy of baking to harness love and create connection with others, as well as personal stories about succeeding in the highly competitive food world by unapologetically expressing her true self. Tosi also shares a few very personal and unorthodox recipes, of course. Dessert Can Save the World reveals all the secret ingredients for transforming our outlooks, our relationships, our work, and our entire collective existence into something boldly optimistic and stubbornly joyful.
National Geographic Complete Birds of North America
Jonathan Alderfer - 2005
More an encyclopedia than a field guide, National Geographic's Complete Birds is a browsable treasure trove of facts. This comprehensive volume profiles every bird observable in the continental United States and Canada, featuring species accounts with details that include calls and songs, breeding behaviors, molting patterns, and the vast extent of their polar and neotropical migrations. The precision maps, illuminating photographs, and more than 4,000 exquisite pieces of annotated art make this the biggest and best bird book ever.This third edition, thoroughly updated, includes:Information on more than 1,000 species and subspeciesOverviews of every familyOrganization reflecting current taxonomy850 range maps, more than half updated since the last editionSidebars on identification challenges such as distinguishing between Bay-breasted and Blackpoll Warblers in fall or separating the various species of white egretsThese 752 pages add up to a lifetime of learning for all devoted birders, from those just beginning birders to those who have been building their life lists for decades. Bird lovers will appreciate many other titles from National Geographic, including:Field Guide to the Birds of North AmericaBackyard Guide to the Birds of North AmericaHow to Know the Birds Birds of the Photo Ark
Out Loud: A Memoir
Mark Morris - 2019
Often the only boy in the dance studio, he was called a sissy, a term he wore like a badge of honor. He was unlike anyone else, deeply gifted and spirited.Moving to New York at nineteen, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Audiences in 1976 had the luxury of Merce Cunningham's finest experiments with time and space, of Twyla Tharp's virtuosity, and Lucinda Childs's genius. Morris was flat broke but found a group of likeminded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. No one wanted to break the spell or miss a thing, because "if you missed anything, you missed everything." This collective, led by Morris's fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group.Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorker's critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelo's David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative.Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candor and disarming wit, Morris's memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mold, a brilliant maverick who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.
Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury: A Novel
Kinley Bryan - 2021
Two Great Lakes. One furious storm.It's 1913 and Great Lakes galley cook Sunny Colvin has her hands full feeding a freighter crew seven days a week, nine months a year. She also has a dream—to open a restaurant back home—but knows she'd never convince her husband, the steward, to leave the seafaring life he loves.In Sunny’s Lake Huron hometown, her sister, Agnes Inby, mourns her husband, a U.S. Life-Saving Serviceman who died in an accident she believes she could have prevented. Burdened with regret and longing for more than her job at the dry goods store, she looks for comfort in a secret infatuation.Two hundred miles away in Cleveland, the youngest sister, Cordelia Blythe, has pinned her hopes for adventure on her marriage to a lake freighter captain. Finding herself alone and restless in her new town, she joins him on the season’s last trip up the lakes.On November 8, 1913, a deadly storm descends on the Great Lakes, bringing hurricane-force winds, whiteout blizzard conditions, and mountainous waves that last for days. Amidst the chaos all three women are offered a glimpse of the clarity they seek, if only they dare to perceive it.Inspired by actual events during the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury is meticulously researched and grippingly told. A powerful debut.
Good Girl: A Memoir
Sarah Tomlinson - 2015
After two years of attempted family life in Boston, her father's gambling addiction and broken promises led her mother to pool her resources with five other families to buy 100 acres of land in Maine and reunite with her college boyfriend. Sarah would spend the majority of her childhood on "The Land" with infrequent, but coveted, visits from her father, who—as a hitchhiking, acid-dropping, wannabe mystic turned taxi driver—was nothing short of a rock star in her eyes.Propelled out of her bohemian upbringing to seek the big life she equated with her father, Sarah entered college at fifteen, where a school shooting further complicated her quest for a sense of safety. While establishing herself as a journalist and rock critic on both coasts, Sarah's father continued to swerve in and out of her life, building and re-breaking their relationship, and fracturing Sarah's confidence and sense of self. In this unforgettable memoir, Sarah conveys the dark comedy in her quest to repair the heart her father broke.Bittersweet, honest, and ultimately redemptive, Good Girl takes an insightful look into what happens when the people we love unconditionally are the people who disappoint us the most, and how time, introspection, and acceptance can help us heal.
The Last Hunter
J.N. ChaneyJ.N. Chaney - 2022
Actions speak louder than words. The Confederation doesn’t think the Locusts are coming back.But what if the politicians are wrong?Snared in a scheme he doesn’t fully understand or trust, Jack gets his promotion, but it comes with a catch. With a crew of rejects, he must restore the most powerful warship humanity has ever built, after centuries of neglect and decay, before time runs out.If he fails, humanity might not need to worry about history repeating itself ever again.
A Higher Calling: Pursuing Love, Faith, and Mount Everest for a Greater Purpose
Harold Earls - 2020
But as a novice mountain climber and newlywed, could he really leave his wife, Rachel, on the other side of the world to pursue such a dangerous quest? After all, Rachel's dream was to be a wife and mother. She knew that her husband's audacious goal might lead to her to give up everything.A Higher Calling takes us on a beautiful journey through the ups and downs of their relationship, from their unlikely introduction and whirlwind romance to their fairy-tale wedding and the dreams they shared. Dreams that required tremendous sacrifice and faith--in each other and in God.As their dreams are realized, witness how Harold and Rachel used their powerful bond of love to overcome obstacles and learn that life is about doing versus having, serving versus getting, being versus wanting.A Higher Calling shows each of us that when God's purpose and our passion meet, we can transcend any sacrifice we make on the mountains of adversity. And as we approach life with an attitude of thanksgiving, we realize that being joyful and living in love is worth it. Every time.
Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption
Vanessa McGrady - 2019
Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay.Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts.Written with wit, candor, and compassion, Rock Needs River is, ultimately, Vanessa’s love letter to her daughter, one that illuminates the universal need for connection and the heroine’s journey to find her tribe.
Roughhouse Friday
Jaed Coffin - 2019
A year out of college, he had been biding his time as a tutor at a local high school in Sitka, Alaska, without any particular life plan. That evening, Coffin joined a ragtag boxing club. For the first time, he felt like he fit in.Coffin washed up in Alaska after a forty-day solo kayaking journey. Born to an American father and a Thai mother who had met during the Vietnam War, Coffin never felt particularly comfortable growing up in his rural Vermont town. Following his parents’ prickly divorce and a childhood spent drifting between his father’s new white family and his mother’s Thai roots, Coffin didn’t know who he was, much less what path his life should follow. His father’s notions about what it meant to be a man—formed by King Arthur legends and calcified in the military—did nothing to help. After college, he took to the road, working odd jobs and sleeping in his car before heading north.Despite feeling initially terrified, Coffin learns to fight. His coach, Victor “the Savage,” invites him to participate in the monthly Roughhouse Friday competition, where men contend for the title of best boxer in southeast Alaska. With every successive match, Coffin realizes that he isn’t just fighting for the championship belt; he is also learning to confront the anger he feels about a past he never knew how to make sense of.Deeply honest and vulnerable, Roughhouse Friday is a meditation on violence and abandonment, masculinity, and our inescapable longing for love. It suggests that sometimes the truth of what’s inside you comes only if you push yourself to the extreme.
The Necklace
Matt WittenMatt Witten - 2021
Even worse, her prime suspect has a young daughter who's at terrible risk. With no money and no time to spare, Susan sets out to uncover the truth before an innocent man gets executed and another little girl is killed.But the FBI refuses to reopen the case. They—and Susan's own mother—believe she's just having an emotional breakdown. Reaching deep, Susan finds an inner strength she never knew she had. With the help of two unlikely allies—a cynical, defiant teenage girl and the retired cop who made the original arrest—Susan battles the FBI to put the real killer behind bars. Will she win justice for the condemned man—and her daughter—at last?
Fighting Infertility: Finding My Inner Warrior Through Trying to Conceive, IVF, and Miscarriage
Samantha Busch - 2021
She shares both in this honest and relatable account where faith, family, love, and loss intersect. As Samantha’s and Kyle’s public lives grew more pronounced, their private life was being torn apart. The frustrations and uncertainty of their fertility problems took a toll on them as individuals and as a couple, creating a cyclone of emotions that threatened everything they had worked so hard for. Through these trials, they learned how to build a stronger relationship, foster a deeper faith, and find humor through the tears. They also discovered a passion for helping other couples gain access to fertility treatments. In this memoir, Samantha uses her voice to break the silence and stigma that surround the infertility community. She details her battle with infertility, including her IVF experience, her miscarriage, a failed cycle, and the overwhelming grief and depression that surrounded these obstacles. By sharing practical advice as well as candid and inspiring stories of her journey, she provides support, validation, community, and education for others experiencing similar tribulations. Fighting Infertility is an opportunity to feel understood, to gain strength through the struggle, and to ignite your inner warrior.
Cost of Living: Essays
Emily Maloney - 2022
A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions.When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways.Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.