Book picks similar to
Ladies Lunch and Other Ways to Wholeness by Gilda Cordero-Fernando
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Why We Left An Anthology of American Women Expats
Janet Blaser - 2019
“Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats” is a fun, inspiring and humorous read you'll enjoy from cover to cover, full of useful and encouraging words of wisdom from 27 women who made the move and couldn’t be happier. In inspiring words straight from the heart, the contributors share their plans and preparations, hardships and challenges, joys and satisfactions as their new lives in Mexico unfold.
Mentally Incontinent: That Time I Burned Down a Hooters, That Time My Stalker Crashed on My Couch, and Nine Other Stories from My Weird Life
Joe Peacock - 2005
For the amusement of his friends, he?d often recount in long e-mails his latest misadventure, whether it was witnessing an armed robbery or being vomited on during his first sexual experience. In 2002, he started collecting those stories on a Web site he founded, mentallyincontinent.com. Soon he had a large following of visitors, including a rabid core group who suggested edits and helped him hone his writing craft. In 2005, he self-published the best stories from his site as a collection and in the years since he?s been holding impromptu readings across the country, selling thousands of copies (mostly out of the back of his truck). In Mentally Incontinent, Joe delivers a batch of hilarious and brand-new stories, featuring his misadventures with a stalker, his blind date with a fifteen-year-old, and his frustrated attempts to convince his mom that he?s not gay. A natural storyteller and a self-proclaimed magnet for weirdness, Joe Peacock has emerged from the bowels of the Internet with some interesting tales to tell.
Empire of Memory
Eric Gamalinda - 1992
Because of this we have no memory of ourselves: we remember only the last deluge, the last seismic upheaval. Two friends are hired by Marcos to rewrite Philippine history. Their mission: to make it appear that Marcos was destined to rule the country in perpetuity. Working from an office called Agency for the Scientific Investigation of the Absurd, they embark on a journey that will take them across a surreal panorama of Philippine politics and history, and in the process question all their morals and beliefs. This landscape includes mythological sultans, mercenaries, the Beatles, messianic Amerasian rock stars, faith healers, spies, torturers, sycophants, social climbers, sugar barons, millenarian vigilantes, generals and communists--the dizzying farrago of lovers and sinners who populate the country's incredible story. By the end of their project--and this breathtaking novel--the reader emerges from a world that is at once familiar and unbelievable. It's what real life might look like if both heaven and hell were crammed into it, and all its creatures were let loose.
The Food Wars
Walden Bello - 2009
In The Food Wars, Walden Bello traces the evolution of this crisis, examining its eruption in Mexico, Africa, the Philippines and China. Daring in vision and impassioned in tone, The Food Wars speaks out against the obscene imbalance in the most basic commodities between northern and southern hemispheres.
Marching Bands Are Just Homeless Orchestras
Tim Siedell - 2010
The bookstore or library is half full of that kind of crap. What you're holding here is a collection of quips and observations with a refreshingly gloomy, sometimes twisted, always funny take on life. Or lack thereof.With illustrations by renowned artist Brian Andreas, this book is a glimpse inside the humorously askew mind of a writer whose witticisms have been featured on NPR, printed onto t-shirts, performed on stage in Germany, and posted online at the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. He's been named one of the top funniest people on Twitter by the likes of Maxim, MSNBC and Mashable.
The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life
Geoff Tibballs - 2011
We all know one! They like to groan and grumble, offering their own commentary on the shortcomings of modern life. Whether it is queues at the supermarket, the state of the health system, the price of a pint these days, the hairstyles of teenagers, or the number of Maltesers you actually get in a bag, there is always something that will get their goat. 'The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life' is a hilarious celebration of all these grumps, how to identify one, what exactly they find so irritating and why we find their rants quite so amusing.
Notes on a Shared Landscape: Making Sense of the American West
David Bayles - 2005
Bayles now turns that same attention to his native West.When European Americans “discovered” the American West, they fell in love with the resplendent landscape. The love affair and its congenital flaws persists to this day.Bayles writes: “. . . the question is why my people bungled our occupation of the West so badly when no one really wanted to, when there was every chance to get it right, when voices of caution were constantly raised, when what needed to be done was frequently obvious, and when, occasionally, we did get it right (think: National Parks).”Notes on a Shared Landscape engages the issues that make the West the West—widely ranging over the autobiographical and the cultural, the ecological and the epistemological, the cow and the potato. This is an intensely personal book, and though the Western library is huge, there is not another book like it. Much of the text unfolds in Yellowstone, where Bayles writes:In the Lamar valley of the Yellowstone, beaver gnaw the trunks of cottonwoods, elk browse their leaves. The shadows are long, even in summer. Even so, it is just another place. In it, just as elsewhere, we see the marks of our own hands faintly because we don’t have to know very much about the land we live in, because we are equally a part of and apart from nature, and because there is hardly any moment when humans are more delusional than when self recognition is required.
O Albany!
William Kennedy - 1983
Kennedy retells the exploits of the bootlegger Jack 'Legs' Diamond, the bungled 1933 kidnapping of John O'Connell, Jr., heir to the Albany Democratic machine and explores the Albany of his past, including its demographics and vanished neighborhoods.
Wasted
Gerry Alanguilan - 2013
Jenny fell out of love from Eric. Eric started a killing spree out of desperation for the love of his life.
Trese Bloodlines, #1
Budjette Tan - 2020
When the sun sets in the city of Manila and the denizens of the dark prepare to prey on its people, the Trese family take their posts at the dimly-lit corners of the metro.These are the stories of Alexandra, her brothers, and the many monsters and demons they battle in order to save the whole city or fight for that one soul.
Painted Lives
Charlotte Vale Allen - 1990
Mattie Sylvester, a widow of one of America's most celebrated painters, reveals the sordid truth of the past, and of her husband, to her secretary.
Morning, Noon and Night
Spalding Gray - 1999
Horrified by the prospect of having another son, considering what he and his two brothers did to their father, and ambivalent about the idea of living in a small, quaint town on eastern Long Island that seems an odd detour for a man destined for California, Gray comes to feel, of course, a profound affinity for his baby boy, born with the looks of a "wet, blue beaver." But this is not merely a father's account of an infant son; it's the story of his new life with his girlfriend Kathie; his regally precocious eleven-year-old stepdaughter, Marissa ("Please don't let me die a virgin!"); and his older son, Forrest, who stymies Gray time and again with his metaphysical inquisitiveness-"Daddy, what's behind the stars?" "How do flies celebrate?"A richly comic work about parenthood, about adults who don't grow up and children who do, Morning, Noon and Night stands as Gray's most mature work to date.
Every Girl's Guide to Heartache
Marla Miniano - 2012
She’s angry, she wants revenge, and most of all, she wants him back. But when life throws her a curve ball in the form of Miguel, literally The Boy a Few Houses Down, Anna thinks she can be happy again—or is her heart just playing tricks on her?“This book is exactly what teen lit should be—smart, funny, and filled with all the thrilling firsts that shape girls into bright, young women. Readers will love Anna, a refreshingly offbeat heroine, because for all her quirks, she speaks in a voice that’s strong, clear, and true.”-Candy magazine
Churchy: The Real Life Adventures of a Wife, Mom, and Priest
Sarah Condon - 2016
Unflinchingly honest yet unfailingly hopeful, Rev. Sarah is a genre unto herself. You've never had this much fun going to church
Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport
Hannah Palmer - 2017
Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn, Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homes—and of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Palmer's journey takes her from the ruins of kudzu-covered, airport-owned ghost towns to carefully preserved cemeteries wedged between the runways; into awkward confrontations with airport planners, developers, and even her own parents. Along the way, Palmer becomes an amateur detective, an urban historian, and a mother. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport’s fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for My Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there’s little home left.