Book picks similar to
What the Man in the Moon Told Me: Living With Bipolar II A Memoir by Frank Stanton
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One Last Dance: My Life in Mortuary Scrubs and G-strings
Emma Jane Holmes - 2021
But when the bills mounted after her marriage breakdown, she turned to her other dream - dancing on stage as a showgirl - and her glittering alter ego Madison was born. Emma Jane kept Madison a secret. Madison kept Emma Jane an even bigger one.But what happens when death touches the neon world of the strip club? And sex - in the form of a cute co-worker - encroaches on the funeral home? Could the answer be life, lived in the day, because that's the only day you have?
The Church of 80% Sincerity
David Roche - 2008
Born with a severe facial deformity, David's life has been anything but easy. Still, over time, he's learned to accept his gifts as well as his flaws, and to see that, sometimes, they are one and the same. In this compelling book, he shares his hard-earned lessons, providing an irresistible and unforgettable glimpse of his (and everyone's) inner beauty and offering profound encouragement in dealing with whatever life brings.
Reasons to Stay Alive
Matt Haig - 2015
Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it. Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.
The Prison Doctor
Amanda Brown - 2019
From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it all. In this memoir, Amanda reveals the stories, the patients and the cases that have shaped a career helping those most of us would rather forget.
Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me
Lucinda Franks - 2014
She’s a radical, self-styled hippie, and he is New York’s famous district attorney, a legal luminary of the establishment; she’s a prizewinning New York Times journalist who has chained herself to fences, bloodied draft files, and otherwise broken the law for her beliefs, and he is a secret iconoclast who could have put her in jail. Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me is the memoir of their triumph against the odds, their ongoing thirty-five-year marriage, a union between two people so deeply in love but so different—and with so many decades separating them—that their family and friends fought to keep them apart. Franks offers a confidential tour of their marriage, as well as the never-revealed, behind-the-scenes details of Morgenthau’s famous cases. We see a red-faced Ronald Lauder storm into Morgenthau’s office after the DA seizes a priceless Egon Schiele painting from the walls of the Museum of Modern Art; we witness the CIA dismissing Morgenthau’s discovery of the growing terrorist cell in New York that would become al-Qaeda headquarters. This is an unusually close look at the privates lives of two well-known people who have always refused to reveal themselves to the public.
My Horses, My Teachers
Alois Podhajsky - 1967
Timeless, inspiring, and full of valuable advice. A book every rider should read.
After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father
Natascha McElhone - 2010
Presents a story of a magical love affair and all-consuming grief, of being a mother alone and trying to live for the future.
In Search of River Phoenix: The Truth Behind The Myth
Barry C. Lawrence - 2004
The complete book about the life of Academy Award nominee River Phoenix, from his parents beginning, his birth, member of a cult religion, to his TV acting, activism, veganism and movie career.
Original Spin: Misadventures in Cricket
Vic Marks - 2019
Apart from Richards, 'all of us were eighteen years old, though Botham seemed to have lived a bit longer - or at least more vigorously - than the rest.'In this irresistible memoir of a life lived in cricket, Vic Marks returns to the heady days when Richards and Botham were young men yet to unleash their talents on the world stage while he and Roebuck looked on in awe. After the high-octane dramas of Somerset, playing for England was almost an anti-climax for Marks, who became an unlikely all-rounder in the mercurial side of the 1980s. Moving from the dressing room to the press box, with trenchant observations about the modern game along the way, Original Spin is a charmingly wry, shrewdly observed account of a golden age in cricket.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets
Greg Prince - 2009
Prince, coauthor of the highly regarded blog of the same name, examines how the life of the franchise mirrors the life of its fans, particularly his own. Unabashedly and unapologetically, Prince stands up for all Mets fans and, by proxy, sports fans everywhere in exploring how we root, why we take it so seriously, and what it all means. What was it like to enter a baseball world about to be ruled by the Mets in 1969? To understand intrinsically that You Gotta Believe? To overcome the trade of an idol and the dissolution of a roster? To hope hard for a comeback and then receive it in thrilling fashion in 1986? To experience the constant ups and downs the Mets would dispense for the next two decades? To put ups with the Yankees right next door? To make the psychic journey from Shea Stadium to Citi Field? To sort the myths from the realities? Greg Prince, as he has done for thousands of loyal Faith and Fear in Flushing readers daily since 2005, puts it all in perspective as only he can.
We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life
Laura McKowen - 2020
The truest, most generous, honest, and helpful sobriety memoir I’ve read. It’s going to save lives." -Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Warrior and Carry On, Warrior"Laura McKowen’s fearless, eloquent, powerful story is an ode to living an awakened life. Yes, this is a book about getting (and staying) sober, but it’s so much more than that. It is about embracing the beautiful messiness of being human." -Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of InheritanceWhat could possibly be “lucky” about addiction? Absolutely nothing, thought Laura McKowen when drinking brought her “to her knees.” As she puts it, she “kicked and screamed . . . wishing for something — anything — else” to be her issue. The people who got to drink normally, she thought, were so damn lucky. But in the midst of early sobriety, when no longer able to anesthetize her pain and anxiety, she realized, with more than a bit of amazement, that she was actually the lucky one. Lucky to feel her feelings, live honestly, really be with her daughter, change her legacy.She recognized that “those of us who answer the invitation to wake up, whatever our invitation, are really the luckiest of all.” McKowen addresses issues such as facing facts, the question of AA, and other people’s drinking. Without sugarcoating the struggles of recovery, she relentlessly emphasizes the many blessings of an honest life, one without secrets and debilitating guilt. McKowen flips the script on how we talk about sobriety and shows readers that the question we should be asking in our lives is not, “Is this bad enough that I have to change?” but rather, “Is this good enough to stay the same?”
Notes from a Doctor's Pocket: Heartwarming Stories of Hope and Healing
Robert D. Lesslie - 2013
Robert Lesslie, whose routine faced him with times of grief or pain, relief or delight, life or death. Such everyday happenings and encounters gave rise to these vignettes—in which readers will meet up with the characters, coincidences, and complications common to the emergency room:characters like Freddy, who literally shoots himself in the footcoincidences like finally having the chance to hear what patients say to each other when doctors and nurses aren’t in the roomcomplications such as dealing with parents who buy lottery tickets and alcohol instead of medicine for their little boyThese heart-tugging, heart-lifting slices of life will prompt readers to search for opportunities to give the comfort of a touch, the grace of a kind word, or a prayer that brings hope and healing.
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Susannah Cahalan - 2012
Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.
The Tenth Island: Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores
Diana Marcum - 2018
A long-buried personal sadness is enfolding her—and her career is stalled—when she stumbles upon an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California. She follows them on their annual return to the remote Azorean islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active, and the people celebrate festas to ease their saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it can’t be fully translated.Years later, California is in a terrible drought, the wildfires seem to never end, and Diana finds herself still dreaming of those islands and the chuva—a rain so soft you don’t notice when it begins or ends.With her troublesome Labrador retriever, Murphy, in tow, Diana returns to the islands of her dreams only to discover that there are still things she longs for—and one of them may be a most unexpected love.
Mi Vida Loca: The Crazy Life of Johnny Tapia
Johnny Tapia - 2005
Fighting against your opponent and fighting against your own inner demons become one in the same. Those who survive both in and out of the ring are beloved worldwide, and those who do not spiral downward into drugs, prison, and even murder. This title tells the legendary tale of Johnny Tapia's life.