Book picks similar to
The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure by Larry Smith
non-fiction
essays
nonfiction
memoir
On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard
Jennifer Pastiloff - 2019
Centered around the touchstone stories Jen tells in her popular workshops, On Being Human is the story of how a starved person grew into the exuberant woman she was meant to be all along by battling the demons within and winning.Jen did not intend to become a yoga teacher, but when she was given the opportunity to host her own retreats, she left her thirteen-year waitressing job and said “yes,” despite crippling fears of her inexperience and her own potential. After years of feeling depressed, anxious, and hopeless, in a life that seemed to have no escape, she healed her own heart by caring for others. She has learned to fiercely listen despite being nearly deaf, to banish shame attached to a body mass index, and to rebuild a family after the debilitating loss of her father when she was eight. Through her journey, Jen conveys the experience most of us are missing in our lives: being heard and being told, “I got you.” Exuberant, triumphantly messy, and brave, On Being Human is a celebration of happiness and self-realization over darkness and doubt. Her complicated yet imperfectly perfect life path is an inspiration to live outside the box and to reject the all-too-common belief of “I am not enough.” Jen will help readers find, accept, and embrace their own vulnerability, bravery, and humanness.
You're Not Special
Meghan Rienks - 2020
As an only child raised in a town of less than 8,000 people and without a Starbucks in sight, Meghan Rienks has always been pretty good at entertaining herself. Then one day—cue the dramatic voiceover—her life changed forever.On June 12th, 2010, Meghan was diagnosed with mononucleosis. Mono is basically just a really bad case of the flu, right? Wrong. To a party crazed 16-year-old, mono is social suicide. More than anything, it’s just plain boring. So, Meghan opened up her 2009 MacBook, used the webcam for something other than a bad Andy Warhol-style photobooth session, and recorded her first YouTube video. Since then, Meghan has shared the ups and downs of her life with the internet, documenting her teenage years for the whole world to see.Now that she’s (mostly) through her awkward stage, Meghan’s here to tell you that it gets better. You’re not alone in the thoughts you think. Sometimes a bad hair day feels worse than a punch in the gut and asking a boy out seems about as difficult as achieving that perfect dewy glow. But despite what you’ve been told, your problems are not unique, your struggles have taken form in everybody else’s life too, and somebody else has felt the way you feel right at this very moment.You’re not special. But you’re also not alone on the bumpy road to adulthood.
Joan
Sara Davidson - 2011
It is a treasure trove of Didion's no-nonsense wisdom about the art of literature and life, and about the power of both endurance and surrender.
You'll Grow Out of It
Jessi Klein - 2016
These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("Miss" sounds like you weigh ninety-nine pounds).Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.
What Am I Doing Here?
Bruce Chatwin - 1989
In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'
Tabloid Love: Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places, A Memoir
Bridget Harrison - 2006
While her London friends begin to marry, Bridget chases her dream of becoming a hard-news journalist. But just as she perfects the art of interviewing strangers about ghoulish crimes, she discovers that finding a mate seems impossible in the ultimate singles city. Then Bridget lands her very own Post dating column, and half a million New Yorkers read about her weekly romantic disasters. Whether covering celebrity parties in the Hamptons or struggling to hide her inter-office crush, Bridget retains such humor and humility “you’ll not only root for her, you’ll wish she were your best friend.” (Harper’s Bazaar)
[Don't] Call Me Crazy
Kelly JensenStephanie Kuehn - 2018
Because there’s no single definition of crazy, there’s no single experience that embodies it, and the word itself means different things—wild? extreme? disturbed? passionate?—to different people. (Don’t) Call Me Crazy is a conversation starter and guide to better understanding how our mental health affects us every day. Thirty-three writers, athletes, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore their personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and do not talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone crazy. If you’ve ever struggled with your mental health, or know someone who has, come on in, turn the pages, and let’s get talking.
Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet
Nathan Foster - 2010
With no hiking experience to draw on, they embarked on a journey of physical challenge, discovering just how far they could push themselves. For Nathan a parallel journey took him inside himself. Having grown up in the shadow of a famous father, Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, Nathan had a lot of questions about who his father really was. Would hiking open the door for him to get to know this distant figure? As the one-time experiment evolved into a decade of challenging hikes up Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, the Fourteeners, Nathan navigated his twenties--finishing college, choosing a career, a possible cross-country move, the early years of marriage and a major personal crisis. Along the way he would discover exactly what his father could offer him. This book also includes an afterword by Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and coauthor of Longing for God.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency
Olivia Laing - 2020
The turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Olivia Laing makes a brilliant, inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living.Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.
Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Ada Calhoun - 2017
Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single.In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.”Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”
Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity
Felicia Day - 2019
Including Felicia’s personal stories and hard-won wisdom, Embrace Your Weird offers: —Entertaining and revelatory exercises that empower you to be fearless, so you can rediscover the things that bring you joy, and crack your imagination wide open —Unique techniques to vanquish enemies of creativity like: anxiety, fear, procrastination, perfectionism, criticism, and jealousy —Tips to cultivate a creative community —Space to explore and get your neurons firing Whether you enjoy writing, baking, painting, podcasting, playing music, or have yet to uncover your favorite creative outlet, Embrace Your Weird will help you unlock the power of self-expression. Get motivated. Get creative. Get weird.
Everything's Trash, But It's Okay
Phoebe Robinson - 2018
She tackles a wide range of topics, such as giving feminism a tough-love talk in hopes it can become more intersectional; telling society's beauty standards to kick rocks; and demanding that toxic masculinity close its mouth and legs (enough with the manspreading already!), and get out of the way so true progress can happen.
Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend: Notes from the Other Side of the Fist Bump
Ben Philippe - 2021
He takes us through his immigrant childhood, from wanting nothing more than friends to sit with at lunch, to his awkward teenage years, to college in the age of Obama, and adulthood in the Trump administration—two sides of the same American coin.Ben takes his role as your new black friend seriously, providing original and borrowed wisdom on stereotypes, slurs, the whole “swimming thing,” how much Beyoncé is too much Beyoncé, Black Girl Magic, the rise of the Karens, affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other conversations you might want to have with your new BBFF.Oscillating between the impulse to be "one of the good ones" and the occasional need to excuse himself to the restrooms, stuff his mouth with toilet paper, and scream, Ben navigates his own Blackness as an "Oreo" with too many opinions for his father’s liking, an encyclopedic knowledge of CW teen dramas, and a mouth he can't always control.From cheating his way out of swim tests to discovering stray family members in unlikely places, he finds the punchline in the serious while acknowledging the blunt truths of existing as a Black man in today’s world.
Rookie Yearbook One
Tavi Gevinson - 2012
It was a place where, from the confines of her bedroom in the suburbs, she could write about personal style and chronicle the development of her own. Within two years, the blog was averaging fifty thousand hits per day. Soon fashion designers were flying her around the world to attend and write about fashion shows, and to be a guest of honor at their parties. Soon Tavi’s interests grew beyond fashion, into culture and art and, especially, feminism. In September 2011, when she was fifteen, she launched Rookie, a website for girls like her: teenagers who are interested in fashion and beauty but also in dissecting the culture around them through a uniquely teen-girl lens. Rookie broke one million page views within its first six days. Rookie Yearbook One collects articles, interviews, photo editorials, and illustrations from the highly praised and hugely popular online magazine. In its first year, Rookie has established a large inclusive international community of avid readers. In addition to its fifty-plus regular writers, photographers, and illustrators (many of whom are teenage girls themselves), Rookie’s contributors and interviewees have included prominent makers of popular culture such as Lena Dunham, Miranda July, Joss Whedon, Jon Hamm, Zooey Deschanel, David Sedaris, Elle Fanning, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, John Waters, Chloe Sevigny, Liz Phair, Dan Savage, JD Samson, Ira Glass, Aubrey Plaza, Daniel Clowes, Carrie Brownstein, Paul Feig, Bethany Cosentino, Kimya Dawson, Fred Armisen, and Winnie Holzman. As a young teenager, Gevinson couldn’t find what she was looking for in a teen magazine; Rookie is the one she created herself to fill that void. Her coolheaded intellect shines in Rookie, arguably the most intelligent magazine ever made for a teen-girl audience. Gevinson writes with a humble but keen authority on such serious topics as body image, self-esteem, and first encounters with street harassment. She’s equally deft at doling out useful advice, such as how to do a two-minute beehive, or how to deliver an effective bitchface. Rookie’s passionate staffers and faithful readers have helped make Rookie the strong community that it is. To date, Gevinson has written for Harper’s Bazaar, Jezebel, Lula, and Pop, and is a contributing editor for Garage magazine. She has been profiled in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and has been on the cover of Pop, L’Officiel, Zeit Magazin, and Bust. As a speaker, she has made numerous presentations at venues such as IdeaCity, TEDxTeen, L2 Forum, and the Economist World in 2012 Festival. Last year Lady Gaga called her “the future of journalism.”
Southern Lady Code: Essays
Helen Ellis - 2019
While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.Making a marriage magically tidy --Topeka three-way --How to stay happily married --Free to be...you and me (and childfree) --Room of one's own (that's full of gay men) --Other woman's Burberry coat --Peggy Sue got marijuana --What every girl should learn from ABC's The bachelor --Ghost experience --Party foul --Today was a good day --Straighten up and fly right. --Halloween people --Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1979 --How to be the best guest --When to write a thank-you note --An Emily Post for the apocalypse --How I watch pornography like a lady --Dumb boobs --Young ladies, listen to me --Seven things I'm doing instead of a neck lift --Serious women --That kind of woman