Book picks similar to
Jean's Way by Derek Humphry
medical
non-fiction
death-and-dying
memoir
Camp Nurse: My Adventures at Summer Camp
Tilda Shalof - 2009
It’s an experience we remember vividly; a time of food fights and cabin raids, first kisses and bittersweet heartbreaks, endless days of sun and fun away from parents. But there’s one person who has a take on camp unlike anyone else: the camp nurse.Camp Nurse reveals what it’s like to be the person kids turn to for help, comfort, and advice. Throughout nurse Tilda Shalof’s six summers at camp, kids troop through the infirmary with a variety of ordinary—as well as some extraordinary—complaints, questions, and ailments, including the symptom endemic to every summer camp: homesickness. Along the way she discovers it’s often the emotional boo-boos that need more attention than the bug bites, poison ivy, and scrapes and scratches that come with the territory.Camp Nurse is funny, entertaining, insightful, and above all heartwarming. It’s filled with all the twinges of nostalgia one expects to get when remembering long-ago summers at camp.Praise for Tilda Shalof’s other books:
“A cracking good read.”
– Quill & Quire
“The best-seller no one can put down.”
– Montreal Gazette
The Undying
Anne Boyer - 2019
For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious.
The Cost of Hope: A Memoir
Amanda Bennett - 2012
When Wall Street Journal reporter Amanda Bennett meets the eccentric, infuriating, yet somehow irresistible Terence Bryan Foley while on assignment in China, the last thing she expects is to marry him. They are so different—classic and bohemian, bow ties and batik, quirky and sensible. But Terence is persistent. “You are going to be somebody,” he tells her. “You’re going to need somebody to take care of you.” Though initially as combative as their courtship, their marriage brings with it stormy passion, deep love and respect, two beloved children, and a life together over two decades. Then comes illness, and the fight to win a longer life for Terence. The Cost of Hope chronicles the extraordinary measures Amanda and Terence take to preserve not only Terence’s life but also the life of their family. After his death, Bennett uses her skills as a veteran investigative reporter to determine the cost of their mission of hope. What she discovers raises important questions many people face, and vital issues about the intricacies of America’s healthcare system. Rich in humor, insight, and candor, The Cost of Hope is an unforgettable memoir, an inspiring personal story that sheds light on one of the most important turning points in life.
On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist: Expeditions in an in-between world where therapy ends and stories begin
Michael Harding - 2017
All of a sudden, he found himself falling back into the old religious devotions of an earlier time. The meaning he had found through years of engagement with therapy began to dissolve.
Here, in On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist, Harding examines the search for meaning in life which keeps him fastened to the idea of god.
After many therapy sessions focused on an effort to uncover personal truth, and long solitary months on the road with a one man show, Harding is finally led to an artists' retreat in the shadow of Skellig Michael.Mixing stories from the road with dispatches from his Irish Times columns, On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a spell-binding and powerful book about the human condition, the narratives we weave around the self, and the ultimate bliss of living in the present moment.
'What happens between one story and the next? That's the really interesting part. That's the space where we find bliss; where we float sometimes, suspended, and only for a brief moment. Perhaps only for a few scarce moments in an entire life.'
Until I Say Goodbye: A Book about Living
Susan Spencer-Wendel - 2012
She was forty-four years old, with a devoted husband and three young children, and she had only one year of health remaining.Susan decided to live that year with joy.She quit her job as a journalist and spent time with her family. She built an outdoor meeting space for friends in her backyard. And she took seven trips with the seven most important people in her life. As her health declined, Susan journeyed to the Yukon, Hungary, the Bahamas, and Cyprus. She took her sons to swim with dolphins, and her teenage daughter, Marina, to Kleinfeld's bridal shop in New York City to see her for the first and last time in a wedding dress.She also wrote this book. No longer able to walk or even to lift her arms, she tapped it out letter by letter on her iPhone using only her right thumb, the last finger still working.However, Until I Say Good-Bye is not angry or bitter. It is sad in parts--how could it not be?--but it is filled with Susan's optimism, joie de vivre, and sense of humor. It is a book about life, not death. One that, like Susan, will make everyone smile.From the Burger King parking lot where she cried after her diagnosis to a snowy hot spring near the Arctic Circle, from a hilarious family Christmas disaster to the decrepit monastery in eastern Cyprus where she rediscovered her heritage, Until I Say Good-Bye is not only Susan Spencer-Wendel's unforgettable gift to her loved ones--a heartfelt record of their final experiences together--but an offering to all of us: a reminder that "every day is better when it is lived with joy."
Jonesy: Put Your Head Down and Skate: The Improbable Career of Keith Jones
Keith Jones - 2007
The improbable hockey career of Jonsey started in 1992, when he was with the Washington Capitals. After a brief stint in Colorado, Keith was traded to Philadelphia, where is hard work, dirty play and colorful personality made him one of the more popular players in recent history. Jonsey is the story of Keith s career in the league as well as all of the interesting stories he accumulated over the course of his career, playing with some of the leagues best players in the last 15 years, including Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Mark Recchi and Eric Lindros. The book will include a forward written by Hall of Fame defense-man Ray Bourque.
Barefoot in the Bindis
Angela Wales - 2019
What he lacked in experience and expertise, he made up for in enthusiasm. Or so he hoped.When the family arrived on a lonely hill in northern New South Wales, they had no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make that tangle of bush their home. From Angela Wales, eldest of the five kids, comes this extraordinarily vivid and evocative account of the next ten years as they tried to tame six thousand acres and navigate the challenges of country life.Filled with drama and hilarity, joy and back-breaking toil, Barefoot in the Bindis portrays a childhood spent in the bush, and is a sensational picture of Australia past.
The Yogurt Man Cometh
Kevin Revolinski - 2006
Revolinski relates in candid style his encounters in a foreign culture, all told with an open mind and a sense of humor. An enjoyable read for anyone who has spent time in Turkey or who plans to do so.
The Fasting Highway: Graeme Currie takes you on a journey through the highs and lows of beating a crippling food addiction by losing 60kg (132 pounds) living an Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle
Graeme Currie - 2020
Nothing Was the Same
Kay Redfield Jamison - 2009
In direct, straightforward, and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty, candor, wit, and simplicity, she describes his death, her own long, difficult struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression.But she also recalls the great joy that Richard brought her during the nearly twenty years they had together. Wryly humorous anecdotes mingle with bittersweet memories of a relationship that was passionate and loving—if troubled on occasion by her manic-depressive (bipolar) illness—as Jamison reveals the ways in which her husband encouraged her to write openly about her mental illness and, through his courage and grace taught her to live fully.A penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself, Nothing Was the Same is also a deeply moving memoir by a superb writer.
The Griekwastad Murders: The Crime that Shook South Africa
Jacques Steenkamp - 2014
It was shortly before 19h00 when Don Steenkamp jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the station’s charge office, covered in blood, to announce that his parents and sister had been brutally shot and killed on the family farm, Naauwhoek. Although the killings were initially thought to be just another farm attack, months later a sixteen-year-old youth was arrested for the murders, setting in motion a chain of events that would grip South Africa, and divide the people of Griekwastad.Based on interviews with all the role-players, including the investigating officers on the case, the forensic and ballistic experts, and family and friends of the deceased, this is the riveting account of what really happened on Naauwhoek farm on that fateful day, as told by the reporter who followed the case from day one…
Two's Company: A Fifty-Year Romance with Lessons Learned in Love, Life & Business
Suzanne Somers - 2017
For the first time, Suzanne will expose the inner workings of her marriage: a winning combination of love, business, and family. Starting from the very beginning, when a big-city guy from Toronto met a small-town girl from San Bruno, California, readers will get a behind-the-scenes perspective on Suzanne's groundbreaking success as a TV star and Las Vegas diva, multiple-bestselling author, and successful entrepreneur and businesswoman, along with her more personal life as a mother, partner, and ultimately self-fulfilled woman. Through fame, fortune, sickness and blended families, Suzanne and Alan have kept the vitality of their marriage alive-- together 24/7 (and haven't spent a night apart in 37 years), and combining business savvy in their constantly evolving relationship. Now, Suzanne reveals hard-won advice on how to rely on another person without sacrificing individual strengths.In this mixture of love story, memoir, and practical guide, readers, too, will discover how to forge and maintain a true partnership that's built to last.
Eyes to the Wind: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance
Ady Barkan - 2019
But one day, he noticed a troubling weakness in his hand. At first, he brushed it off as carpal tunnel syndrome, but after a week of neurological exams and two MRIs, he learned the cause of the problem: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. At age thirty-two, Ady was given just three to four years to live. Yet despite the devastating diagnosis, he refused to let his remaining days go to waste. Eyes to the Wind is a rousing memoir featuring intertwining storylines about determination, perseverance, and how to live a life filled with purpose and intention. The first traces Ady’s battle with ALS: how he turned the initial shock and panic from his diagnosis into a renewed commitment to social justice—not despite his disability but because of it. The second, told in flashbacks, illustrates Ady’s journey from a goofy political nerd to a prominent figure in the enduring fight for equity and justice whose “selfless activism fighting to make health care a right should be an inspiration to us all” (Senator Bernie Sanders). From one of today’s most vocal advocates for social justice, Eyes to the Wind’s “primary question is existential: how to live when you are dying? Barkan’s answer is to share, open up, act, and capital-R Resist, and his memoir, clearly and candidly written, establishes a legacy” (Booklist).
Twelve Cases: A Psychiatrist’s True Stories of Mental Illness and Addiction [and Other Human Predispositions]
Daniel Mierlak - 2018
Daniel Mierlak, a psychiatrist for twenty-five years, on a journey to the stranger corners of human experience. Here you’ll meet: Tony, chauffeur to the fabulously rich, who overcomes crippling anxiety only to find himself descend into a homicidal rage following a botched cosmetic procedure. Amanda, hospitalized for mania, who sees a change to her medicine as an assassination attempt, and then stalks her doctor for a year after discharge. James, a schizophrenic hearing voices telling him to kill himself, whose piano playing leads to a shocking secret about his past. Psychiatric treatment is normally a private encounter and often misunderstood. In describing twelve of his most challenging cases, Dr. Mierlak brings you into his sessions, into his patients’ lives, and into the world of psychiatry. Get ready for some surprises.
Ocean Star: A Memoir
Christina Dimari - 2006
"Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.