Why cope with insecurities I don't already have?That last one's just me? All right, then.But if the rest sounds familiar, you are experiencing Girl Logic: a characteristically female way of thinking that appears contradictory and circuitous but is actually a complicated and highly evolved way of looking at the world. You end up considering every repercussion of every choice (about dating, career, clothes, lunch) before making a move toward what you really want. And why do we attempt these mental hurdles? Well, that's what this book is all about.The fact is, whether you're obsessing over his last text or the most important meeting of your career, your Girl Logic serves a purpose: It helps push you, question what you want, and clarify what will make you a happier, better person. Girl Logic can be every confident woman's secret weapon, and this book shows you how to wield it.

    Mothering is an adventure to be sure--from baby's first kisses and cute messy faces to trips to the playground and pushing a grocery cart with a screaming toddler, a mom's life is full of adventures with her children. But it's not only about the kids. Mothering is also an adventure in personal growth for every woman who undertakes this important role. The Mommy Diaries is a collection of encouraging, heartwarming, and funny true stories from moms just like you. These honest and open reflections on mothering will help you rediscover yourself amidst the demands of motherhood. The stories cover all the issues that are close to your heart as a mother, including • reclaiming your identity as a woman • remembering your own personal growth • cultivating meaningful adult relationships • asking for help when you need it • gaining perspective on the everyday demands of motherhood • keeping hope alive The Mommy Diaries is your chance to catch a fresh glimpse of who you are and how you can grow in the midst of the mothering process. You may be too busy on the adventure to write in your own diary, but you'll see yourself in these stories and be encouraged on your own daily adventure!

    Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads.The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she's learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal singles life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong's letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and disgusting) for all.

    Like twelve million other Americans, Sandra Beasley suffers from food allergies. Her allergies—severe and lifelong—include dairy, egg, soy, beef, shrimp, pine nuts, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, macadamias, pistachios, cashews, swordfish, and mustard. Add to that mold, dust, grass and tree pollen, cigarette smoke, dogs, rabbits, horses, and wool, and it’s no wonder Sandra felt she had to live her life as “Allergy Girl.” When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, cupcakes and other treats of childhood are out of the question—and so Sandra’s mother used to warn guests against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with “Don’t kill the birthday girl!” It may seem that such a person is “not really designed to survive,” as one blunt nutritionist declared while visiting Sandra’s fourth-grade class. But Sandra has not only survived, she’s thrived—now an essayist, editor, and award-winning poet, she has learned to navigate a world in which danger can lurk in an unassuming corn chip. Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl is her story. With candor, wit, and a journalist’s curiosity, Sandra draws on her own experiences while covering the scientific, cultural, and sociological terrain of allergies. She explains exactly what an allergy is, describes surviving a family reunion in heart-of-Texas beef country with her vegetarian sister, delves into how being allergic has affected her romantic relationships, exposes the dark side of Benadryl, explains how parents can work with schools to protect their allergic children, and details how people with allergies should advocate for themselves in a restaurant. A compelling mix of memoir, cultural history, and science, Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl is mandatory reading for the millions of families navigating the world of allergies—and a not-to-be-missed literary treat for the rest of us.

     Making Babies, is the intimate, engaging, and very funny record of the journey from early pregnancy to age two. Written in dispatches, typed with a sleeping baby in the room, it has the rush of good news - full of the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of it all. An antidote to the high-minded, polemical 'How-to' baby manuals, Making Babies also bears a visceral and dreamlike witness to the first years of parenthood. Anne Enright wrote the truth of it as it happened, because, for these months and years, it is impossible for a woman to lie.

    A child is born, chaos ensues, and it seems like life will never return to normal.In You Are a F*cking Awesome Mom, award-winning journalist and Instagram star Leslie Anne Bruce acknowledges that, yes, motherhood is a total mind f*ck—but then she offers the self-empowerment lessons new mothers need to get through the psychic upheaval and emerge stronger than ever. After childbirth, a woman's body, her relationships, and her very sense of self are tested like never before. Bruce encourages readers to look past the sugarcoated truisms about the miracles of child-rearing in order to embrace the real joys of motherhood, spit-up stains and all.Loaded with unfettered support from a mom who has been through it all, You Are a F*cking Awesome Mom offers a lifeline of encouragement, inspiration, and community for the new mama who got a baby, lost her mind, and desperately wants to find herself again.

     Sure, black men and women have been through four hundred years of slavery, oppression, murder, and watching white college students try to dance. But now that it's hip to have black friends, white people aren't sure how to go about it. And that is a real American tragedy. Thank God Nick Adams is here to help you avoid potential racial pitfalls and successfully make the transition from white to "aiight." Now, you'll know not to start a conversation with, "So, that new Jay-Z album is pretty great, right?" Or tell a co-worker he looks just like (fill in blank with name of dark-skinned person who works in the other building.) You'll know that a lot of black people you meet at parties or work functions don't care who played Thelma's husband on "Good Times," don't want to discuss the Malcolm X biography you just read and definitely don't want to listen to country music. Ever. Yes, it's a good thing Nick is here to explain. Because if we're going to live together in peace and harmony, you people are going to need help. Black People, Briefly Explained. A Q&A with Nick Adams Q: Nick, what is the correct term to use when addressing my new friends: Black or African-American?A: Personally, I always liked Afro-American. I liked being named after a 1970's hairdo. But then I wondered why we didn't become the Jheri-curled Americans or High Top Fade Americans. Q: Nick, if black people can use the "N" word as a term of endearment, can I, a white person, do so? A: No. I don't care if you have your hair in cornrows while wearing a Phat Farm t-shirt at an R. Kelly concert. Black people don't get to be president, and white people don't get to use the word nigger. Can we just call it even now? Q: Nick, I'd like to try slang. Is that okay? A: When you guys start using our words, that's when we know it's time for us to stop using them. Every time a white, middle-aged math teacher calls a student, "dog," black people all over the country are notified via email. Believe it. Q: Nick, surely you have to agree that Eminem is a hip-hop visionary? A: Let's try this one more time: Kurtis Blow, RUN-DMC, LL Cool J, Rakim, Chuck D, KRS-One, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Common, Mos Def, Bitch!

    Forever. But here’s the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.” In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candor and winningly wry observations.With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she’s experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can—from her unusual path to the performing arts (Vanilla Ice and baggy neon pants may have played a role) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial “dating experiments” (including only liking boys who didn’t like her back) to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual “man-child.”Enter Anna’s world and follow her rise from “scrappy little nobody” to somebody who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page—with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).

    Rob and Renee's life together - they wed after graduate school, both became music journalists, and were married only five years when Renee died suddenly on Mother's Day, 1997 - is shared through the window of the mix tapes they obsessively compiled. There are mixes to court each other, mixes for road trips, mixes for doing the dishes, mixes for sleeping - and, eventually, mixes to mourn Rob's greatest loss. The tunes were among the great musical output of the early 1990s - Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, REM, Weezer - as well as classics by The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin and more. Mixing the skilful, tragic punch of Dave Eggers and the romantic honesty of Nick Hornby, LOVE IS A MIX TAPE is a story of lost love and the kick-you-in-the-gut energy of great pop music.

    Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life is the laugh-out-loud story of the trials and tribulations of a very particular family.

    Instead of glowing theyre glistening. Theres morning sickness. And suddenly a favorite pair of jeans no longer fits. Erin MacPherson has created a comprehensive guide thats packed with information that every newly pregnant Christian mama needs including exercising while pregnant, a detailed guide to each trimester (including sleep, doctor check-ups, pregnancy sex), how to use your Bible as your pregnancy resource, and how to use this time of waiting to really draw closer to God through prayer. Filled with helpful tips (how do you quell that not-just-in-the-morning sickness?), humorous accounts (doesnt everyone crave peanut-butter-and-olive sandwiches?), and supportive spiritual advice (what does a godly pregnancy attitude actually look like anyway?). The Christian Mamas Guide to Having a Baby has the advice a mama-to-be wants to hear. Erin MacPherson assures, at the end of nine months, you really will be glowing.

    This book affirms that parents are not alone in the daily chaos, struggles and joys of child-rearing.

    Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but went on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and garner the highest accolades for his acting, as well as for his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches--all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when "life goes skidding sideways." He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor. Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. He learned Economics as a starving artist; an unexpected turn as a neophyte activist schooled him in Political Science; and his approach to Comparative Literature involved stacking books up against their movie versions. Replete with personal stories and hilarious anecdotes, Michael J. Fox's new book is the perfect gift for graduates.

    Suddenly, that life was over. Her husband, Josiah, announced that he was leaving her and their two young sons.When Josiah took a teaching job at a Midwestern college, Isabel and their sons moved with him from New York City to Ohio, where Isabel taught acting, threw herself into the college community, and delighted in the less-scheduled lives of toddlers raised away from the city. But within a few months, the marriage was over. The life Isabel had made crumbled. "Happens every day," said a friend.Far from a self-pitying diatribe, Happens Every Day reads like an intimate conversation between friends. Gillies has written a dizzyingly candid, compulsively readable, ultimately redemptive story about love, marriage, family, heartbreak, and the unexpected turns of a life. On the one hand, reading this book is like watching a train wreck. On the other hand, as Gillies herself says, it is about trying to light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, and loving your life even if it has slipped away. Hers is a remarkable new voice -- instinctive, funny, and irresistible.

    From an important new American writer comes this powerful collection of personal essays on fear, creativity, art, faith, academia, the Internet, and justice.In this poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. In her titular piece “The Wrong Way To Save Your Life,” she answers the question of what has value in our lives—a question no longer rhetorical when the apartment above her family’s goes up in flames. “Here is My Heart” sheds light on Megan’s close relationship with her father, whose continued insistence on climbing mountains despite a series of heart attacks leads the author to dissect deer hearts in a poetic attempt to interrogate her own feelings about mortality. Whether she's imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra's work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.Intellectually fierce and viscerally intimate, Megan Stielstra's voice is witty, wise, warm, and above all, achingly human.“Stielstra is a masterful essayist.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger