Book picks similar to
Wounds by Razel Jones


non-fiction
memoir
nonfiction
goodreads-giveaways

ALS Saved My Life ... until it didn't


Jenni Kleinman Berebitsky - 2018
    But what do we do when nothing goes as we had ever hoped? Jenni Berebitsky, diagnosed in 2009 with ALS has been answering these questions every day. With the hope of helping others move forward after life altering events, Jenni shares her story of life wiht ALS, outlining practical and existential changes needed to adapt and thrive.

Work


Bud Smith - 2017
    It's about his hilarious blue-collar family. It's about growing up in a campground in NJ, skipping college, and moving to NYC on a drunken whim. It's about making art even if that means writing a novel during 1000 consecutive lunch breaks.

A Season with Mom: Love, Loss, and the Ultimate Baseball Adventure


Katie Russell Newland - 2021
    Along with black-and-white photographs, Katie shares letters written to her mom, who died of cancer before the two of them could go on this adventure of a lifetime together.A Season with Mom reminds readers that in life, as in baseball, sometimes you strike out, but sometimes you hit home runs. Even if the wait is longer than you’d hoped, dreams can come true.

Hundred Percent Chance


Robert K. Brown - 2020
    Perfect for fans of When Breath Becomes Air.In 1990, Robert K. Brown was an ordinary college student studying abroad in England when a series of unexpected and extraordinary events would change the trajectory of his life forever. Choosing to ignore ominous early symptoms, he was still troubled enough to write in his journal "just for the record ... I am frightened because things are happening to me that I can’t explain away."What follows is a race against time to return home to Seattle for months of chemotherapy, countless complications, and a search for as much normalcy as possible when you're forced to face your mortality at twenty."While memoirs of surviving disease are plenty, Hundred Percent Chance stands apart through its genuine humor and unflinching portrayal of both the physical and psychological struggles that accompany a diagnosis of disease. Brown avoids inspirational platitudes, instead demonstrating the need for perspective and perseverance in the face of illness."Every person Brown introduces, whether their role is significant or small, will leave a memorable impression on readers. This memoir's focus on the tiny moments that ultimately shape and define a life, are particularly poignant and engrossing" (The BookLife Prize).10% of all proceeds will benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Holy Guacamole: A Glorious Discovery of Your Undeniable Worth


Carrie Stephens - 2020
    Or your relationships. Or your job. Or your whatever.   Sometimes you even feel pushed to the side, put on the shelf, overlooked, and not particularly important to, well, anything.   Sometimes, you feel even less important. . .than a side of rice and beans. (You know, kind of like that stuff served on the side that no one really asked for?)   What if you found out you were something more like tableside guacamole—that fancy kind they wheel up to the table and make right on the spot?   What if you were made on purpose, for a purpose that can release God’s glorious colors and flavors in the world?   You didn’t arrive here by accident, nor have you been served up as an unwanted side dish. The God of creation has created you, and He isn't waiting for you to become some better version of yourself so He can finally love you. . .or use you. . .or delight in you. Generously seasoned with humor and empathy, with stories of triumph, failure, heartbreak, and redemption, Holy Guacamole will connect your heart to the unchanging truths of God’s Word and the unfailing power of God’s call to live a life full of His love for you and for the world. God longs to reveal to you all the ways you are His beautiful, flavorful, colorful creation. Let Him show you all the ways you are Holy Guacamole—His masterpiece, His signature offering to a world in need of His love.

No. 204 is Going Home: A True Story of Love, Survival, and Motherhood


Marie Lindstrom - 2021
    She’d never hear him again if she didn’t survive the tragedy…Marie Lindstrom was ready to take on the world. After months of research poured into planning a birthday trip to remember, the mother of two beamed with happiness as they touched down in Thailand. And she was positive they were bound for a trek full of lasting memories… until the tsunami wave hit.Terrified by the prospect of losing all she held dear, Marie struggled to keep her head above water after being swept underground and enshrouded in darkness. But even after the catastrophe passed and she embraced what remained, the guilt accompanying her survival proved staggering.Would the soul-wrenching pain tear her apart or be miraculously transformative?No. 204 is Going Home is a heart-shaking memoir about the unbreakable strength of motherhood. If you like honest depictions of disaster, raw emotional transformations, and moving accounts of healing, then you’ll love Marie Lindstrom’s sail through calamity.Buy No. 204 is Going Home to stare into the maw of real-life terror today!

A Great Fit: My Take on Confidence, Charisma, and the Career that Suits You Best


Tom Murry - 2019
    In his first book, Murry describes his decades of experience as a leader in the world of fashion along with personal advice on how he made it to the top of the profession he was destined to have—and how we can do the same in our careers.Murry gives us glimpses of well-known fashion personalities, institutions, and events, and in an easy-going, humble narrative, takes us from his childhood in Houston to the most influential runways of the world, including his travels around the globe and a stint on an oil rig as a young man. Equally important are Murry’s takeaways on what qualities he believes it takes to become a good leader and how we can use them to achieve success in any workplace. This is not a how-to, but rather a thoughtful and straightforward look at the talents and grace that allowed Murry to thrive in his chosen career. Everyone, no matter their career or stage in life—or their knowledge of or interest in the fashion world—will find this book a fun, informative, and inspirational gift from an author who wants everyone to enjoy the same success in their career that he has.

William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life: Bookmarked


Steve Almond - 2019
    It tells the story of William Stoner, who attends the state university to study agronomy, but instead falls in love with English literature and becomes an academic. The novel narrates the many disappointments and struggles in Stoner's academic and personal life, including his estrangement from his wife and daughter, set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century.In his entry in the Bookmarked series, author Steve Almond writes about why Stoner has endured, and the manner in which it speaks to the impoverishment of the inner life in America. Almond will also use the book as a launching pad for an investigation of America’s soul, in the process, writing about his own struggles as a student of writing, as a father and husband, and as a man grappling with his own mortality.

The Buddha and the Bee: Biking through America's Forgotten Roadways on a Journey of Discovery


Cory Mortensen - 2020
    but this is NOT a typical blah-blah-blah memoirPlanning is for sissies. A solo bike ride across the country will be filled with sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and 80 degree temps every day, right? Not so much. The Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, an alkaline desert, and the Sierra Nevadas lay miles and days ahead. Disappointment with unrealized potential, and the thirst for what’s next drew farther away in the rotating wide-angle shockproof convex rear-view mirror.I will ride my bike down a never-ending ribbon of asphalt wearing a backpack.Cory Mortensen began his bike ride across the United States from Chaska, Minnesota, to Truckee, California, without a route, a timeline, or proper equipment. Along the way, he gained more than technical skills required for a ride that would test every fiber of his physical being and mental toughness. Ride along as he meets “unusual” characters, dangerous animals, and sweet little old ladies with a serious vendetta for strangers in their town.Humor ■ Insight ■ Adventure ■ Gratitude ■ PeaceFrom long stretches of road ending in a vanishing point at the distant horizon, to stunning vistas, terrifying close calls, grueling conditions, failed equipment, and joyous milestones he stayed the course and gained an appreciation for the beauty of the land, the genius of engineering and marvel of nature.

Medical School: Stumbling Through with Amnesia (Playing Doctor, #1)


John Lawrence - 2020
    Those manic blogs from the hospital wards during under-slept call nights (which left a few friends wondering if he had invaded the hospital pharmacy) were the genesis for this book, Playing Doctor. This is a journey through medical training as interpreted by someone who told their college career advisor that the only thing they did not want to be was a doctor-not that medical schools want you believing their training was interpretive, like a modern dance company's version of Grey's Anatomy-and started school with a traumatic brain injury. This entertaining, heartfelt demystification of medical school via the confusion that seemed to litter John's medical trail, takes readers along the studies and clinical wards that miraculously teach students how to care for patients. The follow up books cover residency.

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric


Claudia Rankine - 2004
    I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.

Unaccompanied


Javier Zamora - 2017
    These poems recall and are rooted in the experiences of a nine-year-old boy traveling alone for thousands of miles and confronting everywhere the realities of borderland politics, racism, and economic injustice. Calling into question the concept of the American Dream, Zamora reimagines home, fusing music and memory to address the quandaries that tear families apart and—if we’re lucky—inspire the building of lives anew.

Jonesy: Put Your Head Down and Skate: The Improbable Career of Keith Jones


Keith Jones - 2007
    The improbable hockey career of Jonsey started in 1992, when he was with the Washington Capitals. After a brief stint in Colorado, Keith was traded to Philadelphia, where is hard work, dirty play and colorful personality made him one of the more popular players in recent history. Jonsey is the story of Keith s career in the league as well as all of the interesting stories he accumulated over the course of his career, playing with some of the leagues best players in the last 15 years, including Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Mark Recchi and Eric Lindros. The book will include a forward written by Hall of Fame defense-man Ray Bourque.

Becoming Facebook: The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World


Michael Hoefflinger - 2017
    But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect.Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders. As a computer engineer turned marketing innovator who worked with COO Sheryl Sandberg, Hoefflinger had a front-row seat to the company's growing pains, stumbles, and reinventions.Becoming Facebook tells the coming-of-age story of the now venerable giant. Filled with insights and anecdotes from crises averted and challenges solved, the book tracks the company's development, uncovering lessons learned on its way to greatness: How Facebook recovered from its "disastrous" IPO ● How the growth team achieved the impossible ● Why Facebook's News Feed ads were the company's most important business decision ever ● How Google+ attacked and lost ● Why—and how—Instagram and WhatsApp were added to the mix ● What the company does to win the talent wars ● What makes Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Cox, and other A-teamers tick ● Which products and technical advancements are on the horizon and why ● And much moreIntimate, fast-paced, and deeply informative, Becoming Facebook shares the true story of how Zuckerberg joined the ranks of iconic CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos—as Facebook grows up, overcomes setbacks, and works to connect the world.

The Griekwastad Murders: The Crime that Shook South Africa


Jacques Steenkamp - 2014
    It was shortly before 19h00 when Don Steenkamp jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the station’s charge office, covered in blood, to announce that his parents and sister had been brutally shot and killed on the family farm, Naauwhoek. Although the killings were initially thought to be just another farm attack, months later a sixteen-year-old youth was arrested for the murders, setting in motion a chain of events that would grip South Africa, and divide the people of Griekwastad.Based on interviews with all the role-players, including the investigating officers on the case, the forensic and ballistic experts, and family and friends of the deceased, this is the riveting account of what really happened on Naauwhoek farm on that fateful day, as told by the reporter who followed the case from day one…