So Sad Today: Personal Essays


Melissa Broder - 2016
    In the fall of 2012, she went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread that wouldn't abate for months. So she began @sosadtoday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings, and which quickly gained a dedicated following. In So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into the existential themes she explores on Twitter, grappling with sex, death, love, low self-esteem, addiction, and the drama of waiting for the universe to text you back. With insights as sharp as her humor, Broder explores—in prose that is both gutsy and beautiful, aggressively colloquial and achingly poetic—questions most of us are afraid to even acknowledge, let alone answer, in order to discover what it really means to be a person in this modern world.

The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need


Scott Pape - 2016
    So what makes this one different? Well, you won't be overwhelmed with a bunch of 'tips' … or a strict budget (that you won't follow). You'll get a step-by-step formula: open this account, then do this; call this person, and say this; invest money here, and not there. All with a glass of wine in your hand. This book will show you how to create an entire financial plan that is so simple you can sketch it on the back of a serviette … and you'll be able to manage your money in 10 minutes a week. You'll also get the skinny on: Saving up a six-figure house deposit in 20 months Doubling your income using the 'Trapeze Strategy' Saving $78,173 on your mortgage and wiping out 7 years of payments Finding a financial advisor who won't rip you off Handing your kids (or grandkids) a $140,000 cheque on their 21st birthday Why you don't need $1 million to retire … with the 'Donald Bradman Retirement Strategy' Sound too good to be true? It's not. This book is full of stories from everyday Aussies — single people, young families, empty nesters, retirees — who have applied the simple steps in this book and achieved amazing, life-changing results. And you're next.

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction


Matthew B. Crawford - 2015
    Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind.We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self.Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature.The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of common experience, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy itself, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.

Woman: An Intimate Geography


Natalie Angier - 1999
    Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk.A self-proclaimed "scientific fantasia of womanhood." Woman ultimately challenges widely accepted Darwinian-based gender stereotypes. Angier shows how cultural biases have influenced research in evolutionary psychology (the study of the biological bases of behavior) and consequently led to dubious conclusions about "female nature." such as the idea that women are innately monogamous while men are natural philanderers.But Angier doesn't just point fingers; she offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood. Woman is a seminal work that will endure as an essential read for anyone intersted in how biology affects who we are as women, as men, and as human beings.

Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics


Lara Parker - 2020
    But I was getting there. I wanted the world to know that all of this pain I had been feeling…that it was related to my vagina. Thus, Vagina Problems was born. It was a cutesy name. It was my way of taking this pain and saying, “Whatever. I’m here. I have it. It sucks. Let’s talk about it.”In April 2014, Deputy Editorial Director at BuzzFeed Lara Parker opened up to the world in an article on the website: she suffers from endometriosis. And beyond that? She let the whole world know that she wasn’t having any sex, as sex was excruciatingly painful. Less than a year before, she received not only the diagnosis of endometriosis, but also a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction, vulvodynia, vaginismus, and vulvar vestibulitis. Combined, these debilitating conditions have wreaked havoc on her life, causing excruciating pain throughout her body since she was fourteen years old. These are her Vagina Problems. It was five years before Lara learned what was happening to her body. Five years of doctors insisting she just had “bad period cramps,” or implying her pain was psychological. Shamed and stigmatized, Lara fought back against a medical community biased against women and discovered that the ignorance of many doctors about women’s anatomy was damaging more than just her own life. One in ten women have endometriosis and it takes an average of seven years before they receive an accurate diagnosis—or any relief from this incurable illness’ chronic pain. With candid revelations about her vaginal physical therapy, dating as a straight woman without penetrative sex, coping with painful seizures while at the office, diet and wardrobe malfunctions when your vagina hurts all the time, and the depression and anxiety of feeling unloved, Lara tackles it all in Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics with courage, wit, love, and a determination to live her best life."

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are - Sidekick


Bibliomaniac - 2016
    Brené Brown has given readers yet another self-help book to wow audiences and transform readers’ lives. She hasn’t disappointed with her books in the past and The Gifts and Imperfections is no different. In this book she defines what it means to live a wholehearted life and then gives readers ten solid guideposts to incorporating wholehearted living into readers’ lives.   This sidekick explores the idea of wholehearted living on a deeper level and will help readers take Dr. Brown’s self-help book and ask the questions she asks along with the ones her novel begs to be asked as well. This sidekick includes several guides to help readers explore Dr. Brown’s concepts on more in-depth levels.   Specifically this sidekick will help readers by giving them:   Detailed chapter summaries to refresh and help readers recall important details   An introduction to Dr. Brené Brown, her famous works and her background   A thorough analysis of the themes Dr. Brown is trying to portray and teach through the book   A comprehensive list of the challenges Dr. Brown extends to her readers through the book for easy reference   A set of discussion questions and topics for both individuals and groups to consider as they read through the book and after completing the book   Important discussion quotes for readers to find and reference   A discussion on the writing style and structure of the book   Disclaimer: This book serves as an accompaniment to the bestseller The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown. It is meant to broaden the reader's understanding of the book and to offer some insights which can easily be overlooked. You should order a copy of the actual book before reading this.

For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity


Liz Plank - 2019
    Men grow up being told that boys don’t cry and dolls are for girls. They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners. They must be the romantic pursuers. This hasn’t been good for the culture at large: 99% of school shooters are male; men in fraternities are 300% more likely to rape; a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than to be killed by enemy fire.In For the Love of Men, author Liz Plank offers a smart, insightful, and deeply researched guide for what we're all going to do about toxic masculinity. For both women looking to guide the men in their lives and men who want to do better and just don’t know how, For the Love of Men will lead the conversation on men's issues in a society where so much is changing but gender roles have remained strangely stagnant.What are we going to do about men? Plank has the answer--and it has the possibility to change the world for men and women alike.

Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life


Sari Solden - 1995
    This book includes a chapter on friendship for women with ADHD.

I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual


Luvvie Ajayi Jones - 2016
    "This truth-riot of a book gives us everything from hilarious lectures on the bad behavior all around us to the razor sharp essays on media and culture" (Shonda Rhimes, New York Times best-selling author of Year of Yes and executive producer of Scandal and Grey's Anatomy) "I don't know how Luvvie Ajayi got so smart so young about so many things, from feminism to social media, from the pervasiveness of rape culture to the excellence of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits. I'm just grateful she has chosen to share her wisdom with the rest of us..." (Jennifer Weiner, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Best Friends Forever) "You will love Luvvie Ajayi's I'm Judging You, and you will argue with it, laugh hysterically at it, shout 'AW HELL YES' at it, and carry parts of it in your heart to dissect or inspire... Perfect for starting important and meaty discussions about all of the topics your mama told you never to bring up at polite dinner parties." (Jenny Lawson, New York Times best-selling author of Furiously Happy) With over 500,000 readers a month at her enormously popular blog, AwesomelyLuvvie.com, Luvvie Ajayi has become a go-to source for smart takes on pop culture. I'm Judging You is her debut book of humorous essays that dissects our cultural obsessions and calls out bad behavior in our increasingly digital, connected lives—from the importance of the newest Shonda Rhimes television drama to serious discussions of race and media representation to what to do about your fool cousin sharing casket pictures from Grandma's wake on Facebook. With a lighthearted, razor-sharp wit and a unique perspective, I'm Judging You is the audiobook the world needs, doling out the hard truths and a road map for bringing some "act right" into our lives, social media, and popular culture.

Unnatural Causes: The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist


Richard Shepherd - 2018
    When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?From serial killer to natural disaster, 'perfect murder' to freak accident, Shepherd takes nothing for granted in pursuit of truth. And while he's been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it's often the less well known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.But a life in death, bearing witness to some of humanity's darkest corners, exacts a price and Shepherd doesn't flinch from counting the cost to him and his family.

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right: & Other Essays on Modern Life


Pandora Sykes - 2020
    We’re told that happiness lies within and we can be whoever we want to be. But with endless possibility comes a feeling of restlessness; like we’re somehow failing to live our best life. What does doing it right even look like? And why do so many women feel like they’re getting it wrong?From that Zara dress to millennial burnout, the explosion of wellness to the rise of cancel culture, Pandora Sykes interrogates the stories we’ve been sold and the ones we tell ourselves. Wide-ranging, thoughtful and witty, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? explores the anxieties and myths that consume our lives and the tools we use to muddle through.So sit back and take a breath. It’s time to stop worrying about the answers ­– and start delighting in the questions.

The Hormone Myth: How Junk Science, Gender Politics, and Lies about PMS Keep Women Down


Robyn Stein DeLuca - 2017
    This provocative book exposes pervasive myths about women’s hormones and shows how flawed, obsolete research and sexism have combined to keep women “in their place.”Although the idea that women become raving lunatics when their hormones fluctuate is firmly entrenched in American culture—images of hormone-crazed women are prominent on TV and in movies, books, and magazines—a thorough examination of the evidence overwhelmingly tells us otherwise. This book will confront the pervasive myth that women are at the mercy of their reproductive hormones, and illustrate how the perpetuation of this stereotype harms women.Scientific evidence shows that the majority of women do not experience major mental or physical symptoms linked to their hormones. Rather, much of women’s supposed “irrationality” can be attributed to environmental factors and the cultural and social realities of being a woman in the Western world.With a thorough exploration of women’s hormonal lives, from the initiation of menstruation through menopause, The Hormone Myth will help you reject the negative stereotype of the hormone-crazed woman and gain an appreciation for the natural changes that occur over time.

Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You


Jenara Nerenberg - 2020
    Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups. When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely. Between a flawed system that focuses on diagnosing younger, male populations, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all. As a result, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame. Meanwhile, we all miss out on the gifts their neurodivergent minds have to offer.Divergent Mind is a long-overdue, much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy, they have an overwhelming excess of it).Nerenberg also offers us a path forward, describing practical changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.

In the Meantime: Finding Yourself and the Love You Want


Iyanla Vanzant - 1998
    You know exactly what you want in life, but what you want is nowhere in sight. Perhaps your vision is unclear, your purpose still undefined. On top of it all, your relationships, particularly your romantic relationships, are failing. If these scenarios feel familiar way down in the deepest part of your gut—then you, my dear, are smack dab in the middle of the meantime. Every living being wants to experience the light of love. The problem is that our windows are dirty! The windows of our hearts and minds are streaked with past pains and hurts, past memories and disappointments. In this book, Iyanla Vanzant teaches us how to do our mental housekeeping so that we can clean the windows, floors, walls, closets, and corners of our minds. If we do a good job, our spirits will shine bringing in the light of true love and happiness.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time


Brigid Schulte - 2014
    It is a deeply reported and researched, honest and often hilarious journey from feeling that, as one character in the book said, time is like a "rabid lunatic" running naked and screaming as your life flies past you, to understanding the historical and cultural roots of the overwhelm, how worrying about all there is to do and the pressure of feeling like we're never have enough time to do it all, or do it well, is "contaminating" our experience of time, how time pressure and stress is resculpting our brains and shaping our workplaces, our relationships and squeezing the space that the Greeks said was the point of living a Good Life: that elusive moment of peace called leisure.Author Brigid Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post - and harried mother of two - began the journey quite by accident, after a time-use researcher insisted that she, like all American women, had 30 hours of leisure each week. Stunned, she accepted his challenge to keep a time diary and began a journey that would take her from the depths of what she described as the Time Confetti of her days to a conference in Paris with time researchers from around the world, to North Dakota, of all places, where academics are studying the modern love affair with busyness, to Yale, where neuroscientists are finding that feeling overwhelmed is actually shrinking our brains, to exploring new lawsuits uncovering unconscious bias in the workplace, why the US has no real family policy, and where states and cities are filling the federal vacuum.She spent time with mothers drawn to increasingly super intensive parenting standards, and mothers seeking to pull away from it. And she visited the walnut farm of the world's most eminent motherhood researcher, an evolutionary anthropologist, to ask, are mothers just "naturally" meant to be the primary parent? The answer will surprise you.Along the way, she was driven by two questions, Why are things the way they are? and, How can they be better? She found real world bright spots of innovative workplaces, couples seeking to shift and share the division of labor at home and work more equitably and traveled to Denmark, the happiest country on earth, where fathers - and mothers - have more pure leisure time than parents in other industrial countries. She devoured research about the science of play, why it's what makes us human, and the feminist leisure research that explains why it's so hard for women to allow themselves to. The answers she found are illuminating, perplexing and ultimately hopeful. The book both outlines the structural and policy changes needed - already underway in small pockets - and mines the latest human performance and motivation science to show the way out of the overwhelm and toward a state that time use researchers call ... Time Serenity.