Book picks similar to
For Your Tomorrow: The Way of an Unlikely Soldier by Melanie Murray
non-fiction
canada
andrew-library
favourites
The Lost Colony Murder on the Outer Banks: Seeking Justice for Brenda Joyce Holland (True Crime)
John Railey - 2021
The Story Of Channon Rose Part II
Channon Rose - 2019
She shares secret stories about working as a high class escort and talks about her encounters with celebrities, athletes and politicians. She manages to create a captivating story that is both tragic and empowering. Not shying away from the truth and it's consequences, Channon leads the reader through a series of shattering, first-hand revelations about her suicide attempts, shady celebs, past relationships, her abortions, crime and murders - creating a scene that's hard to look away from. Go behind the scenes of the Howard Stern show and find out what it's like working for Playboy TV; and among it all learn how a person can find love, even in hopeless places. From a marriage ending in divorce, through a series of trials finally leading towards finding a true purpose in life, this is a not a journey for the faint of heart. But from the first page of this true story, you'll feel like you're walking in Channon's shoes, and you won't be able to put it down until you've learned to run in stiletto heels.
God Has Better Things to do Than My Laundry (and Other Observations by an Overly Dramatic Mom)
Heather Nestleroad - 2012
Heather Nestleroad gathers all of her blog posts from the last few years into a comprehensive book that can be enjoyed by parents, chocolate lovers, and coffee drinkers of all types. Read about how Heather learned to like (and order) coffee, explores her questions about the purpose of our lives, bares her neurotic confessions, and details conversations you'll swear you just had with someone in your family.
The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose
Oprah Winfrey - 2019
And, according to Oprah Winfrey, "Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honor your calling in the best way possible."That journey starts right here.In her latest book, The Path Made Clear, Oprah shares what she sees as a guide for activating your deepest vision of yourself, offering the framework for creating not just a life of success, but one of significance. The book's ten chapters are organized to help you recognize the important milestones along the road to self-discovery, laying out what you really need in order to achieve personal contentment, and what life's detours are there to teach us.Oprah opens each chapter by sharing her own key lessons and the personal stories that helped set the course for her best life. She then brings together wisdom and insights from luminaries in a wide array of fields, inspiring readers to consider what they're meant to do in the world and how to pursue it with passion and focus. These renowned figures share the greatest lessons from their own journeys toward a life filled with purpose.Paired with over 100 awe-inspiring photographs to help illuminate the wisdom of these messages, The Path Made Clear provides readers with a beautiful resource for achieving a life lived in service of your calling - whatever it may be.
God Wrote a Book
James MacDonald - 2002
The book, of course, is the Bible, and because God is its author, it's the most important work ever written. Millions across the world agree with that, yet many believe it only conceptually, doubting that the words of the Bible are in fact the very words of God.Pastor James MacDonald addresses today's disturbing trend away from taking God's Word seriously. He clarifies the misconceptions that surround the infallibility, reliability, and historicity of the Bible and explains why he believes it is the inspired Word of God, how it originated, what the Bible is good for, and its benefits to us. Written to believers and non-believers who have questions, this book on the Good Book has the answers.
The Reason You Walk
Wab Kinew - 2015
The Reason You Walk spans that 2012 year, chronicling painful moments in the past and celebrating renewed hopes and dreams for the future. As Kinew revisits his own childhood in Winnipeg and on a reserve in Northern Ontario, he learns more about his father's traumatic childhood at residential school. An intriguing doubleness marks The Reason You Walk, itself a reference to an Anishinaabe ceremonial song. Born to an Anishinaabe father and a non-native mother, he has a foot in both cultures. He is a Sundancer, an academic, a former rapper, a hereditary chief and an urban activist. His father, Tobasonakwut, was both a beloved traditional chief and a respected elected leader who engaged directly with Ottawa. Internally divided, his father embraced both traditional native religion and Catholicism, the religion that was inculcated into him at the residential school where he was physically and sexually abused. In a grand gesture of reconciliation, Kinew's father invited the Roman Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to a Sundance ceremony in which he adopted him as his brother. Kinew writes affectingly of his own struggles in his twenties to find the right path, eventually giving up a self-destructive lifestyle to passionately pursue music and martial arts. From his unique vantage point, he offers an inside view of what it means to be an educated Aboriginal living in a country that is just beginning to wake up to its aboriginal history and living presence. Invoking hope, healing and forgiveness, The Reason You Walk is a poignant story of a towering but damaged father and his son as they embark on a journey to repair their family bond. By turns lighthearted and solemn, Kinew gives us an inspiring vision for family and cross-cultural reconciliation, and for a wider conversation about the future of aboriginal peoples.
Brave Enough
Cheryl Strayed - 2015
Around the world, thousands of people have found inspiration in the words of Cheryl Strayed, who in her three prior books and in her Dear Sugar columns has shared the twists and trials of her remarkable life. Her honesty, spirit, and ample supply of tough love have enabled many of us, even in the darkest hours, to somehow put one foot in front of the other--and be brave enough.This book gathers, each on a single page, more than 100 of Strayed's indelible quotes and thoughts--"mini instruction manuals for the soul" that urge us toward the incredible capacity for love, compassion, forgiveness, and endurance that is within us all.Be brave enough to break your own heart.You can't ride to the fair unless you get on the pony.Keep walking.Acceptance is a small, quiet room.Romantic love is not a competitive sport.Forward is the direction of real life.Ask yourself: "What is the best I can do?" And then do that.
For Freddie: A Mother's Final Gift to Her Son
Rachael Bland - 2019
Courageous and life-affirming, this is a mother's final gift to her son.
My beautiful son, I so wish that I didn't have to leave you now. But believe me, I tried EVERYTHING I could to stay around for you, and for every moment I could eke out of this life.
From the start, it was not a fair fight. My cancer was too big, and too aggressive, and we didn't start on a level playing field. You were fourteen months old and at the beginning I was so full of fierce intention that we could get past this. I would lay you in your cot each night and silently intone from my mind to yours, 'I will do this Freddie, I will gladly take whatever they throw at me if it means we can stay together'.
In 2016, beloved broadcaster and journalist Rachael Bland was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly afterwards she made the brave decision to share her story, and she spoke with beautiful poignancy through her blog and podcast, You Me & the Big C. Having been told that she only had a matter of months left to live and writing this in what was sadly her final days, Rachael brings her warmth, courage and humour to the page in this heart-warming and heart-breaking story. Part memoir, part advice, For Freddie beautifully encapsulates the grace and fearlessness in which Rachael lived her life. This is her legacy and an incredible final gift to her son.
Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War
Jake Wood - 2013
Disillusioned with the dullness and amorality of the banking world, he escapes back to the army for a third tour of duty. But in Afghanistan he discovers the savage, dehumanizing effects that war has on both the body and the mind. Diagnosed with chronic PTSD on his return, he must now fight the last enemy—himself—in order to exorcise the ghosts of his past. Brutally honest and beautifully written, this memoir brings home the harsh reality of frontline combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the courage of the troops who risk their lives for their country, as well as revealing the devastating aftereffects of service.
For the Love of Scott!
Jo Hamilton - 2011
She taught her family how to read Scott’s medical chart and to ask pointed questions, no longer leaving his care to the medical professionals who had overdosed him with drugs to the very brink of death in less than three days.“Jo, you have to tell people what they’ve done to me. You have to tell them!”pleaded her little brother, as he lay writhing in agony.In “For the Love of Scott!”, the author recollects her family’s poignant story of love, bewilderment, and lingering frustration when faced with catastrophic medical mistakes. Read the experiences of Scott Hamilton’s family members as they struggle through a storm of horrific medical errors that could have been prevented and recognize what you need to do when someone you love is faced with life-threatening circumstances created by health experts.It took Jo 27 years to put this heartbreaking event down on paper. Writing opened old wounds and required hours of research and documentation. It forced her family to relive a chapter in their own lives that they desperately wanted closed. Yet, they rallied together to help Jo with her mission to keep that promise.To help further her goals, Jo Hamilton will be donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of her book, to the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal Winner, Scott Hamilton's foundation, The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative. The Scott Hamilton CARES Initiative was created to help with cancer research, support cancer patients and their families, and find a cure cancer.
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Elizabeth Smart - 1945
In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife;the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.
The LawDog Files: African Adventures
D. LawDog - 2017
But long before he put on the deputy's star, he grew up in Nigeria, where his experiences were equally unforgettable. In THE LAWDOG FILES: AFRICAN ADVENTURES, LawDog chronicles his encounters with everything from bush pilots, 15-foot pythons, pygmy mongooses, brigadier-captains, and Peace Corp hippies to the Nigerian space program. THE LAWDOG FILES: AFRICAN ADVENTURES are every bit as hilarious as the previous volume, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. Africa wins again, and again, and again, but, so too does the reader in this sobering, but hilarious collection of true tales from the Dark Continent.
North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both
Cea Sunrise Person - 2014
. . bug stew? In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person’s compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counter-culture family in the Canadian wilderness—a searing story of physical, emotional, and psychological survival.In the late 1960s, riding the crest of the counterculture movement, Cea’s family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness. But unlike most commune dwellers of the time, the Persons weren’t trying to build a new society—they wanted to escape civilization altogether. Led by Cea’s grandfather Dick, they lived a pot-smoking, free-loving, clothing-optional life under a canvas tipi without running water, electricity, or heat for the bitter winters.Living out her grandparents’ dream with her teenage mother Michelle, young Cea knew little of the world beyond her forest. She spent her summers playing nude in the meadow and her winters snowshoeing behind the grandfather she idolized. Despite fierce storms, food shortages, and the occasional drug-and-sex-infused party for visitors, it seemed to be a mostly happy existence. For Michelle, however, now long separated from Cea’s father, there was one crucial element missing: a man. When Cea was five, Michelle took her on the road with a new boyfriend. As the trio set upon a series of ill-fated adventures, Cea began to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at the centre of it—questions that eventually evolved into an all-consuming search for a more normal life. Finally, in her early teens, Cea realized she would have to make a choice as drastic as the one her grandparents once had in order to save herself.While a successful international modeling career offered her a way out of the wilderness, Cea discovered that this new world was in its own way daunting and full of challenges. Containing twenty-four intimate black-and-white family photos, North of Normal is Cea’s funny, shocking, heartbreaking, and triumphant tale of self-discovery and acceptance, adversity, and strength that will leave no reader unmoved.
The Cat's Table
Michael Ondaatje - 2011
At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table" - as far from the Captain's Table as can be - with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story - by turns poignant and electrifying - about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.
Saving Private Sarbi
Sandra Lee - 2011
Against all odds, Sarbi had survived her injuries, the enemy's weapons, a bitter winter, one brutal summer and the harsh unforgiving landscape on her own. She was the miracle dog of Tarin Kot.Sarbi's story, and those of the other brave Australian Army dogs in Afghanistan, will resonate with anyone who has known the unconditional love of man's best friend, and understands the rewards of unbidden loyalty, trust and devotion. It will appeal to all those who appreciate the selflessness of serving your country and the inherent dangers of putting your life on the line for others in a war zone. And it will strike a chord with anyone who has experienced the magical connection with a dog.