Book picks similar to
Shape of a Boy: Family Life Lessons in Far Flung Places by Kate Wickers
memoir
non-fiction
travel
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Scummy Mummies
Ellie Gibson - 2017
It’s about how bringing up kids can be a tough business, but we’re all going through the same things, and it’s easier if we can have a good laugh about it. The book covers a range of themes relevant to modern parents, from pregnancy and potty training to school, sex, and nits. There are fun features like Sex Positions For Parents, quizzes such as Did Our Husbands Really Say That?, and Scummy Mummy Life Hacks.
Stepmother
Marianne Lile - 2016
It was a role she initially embraced--but she quickly discovered she was alone in a difficult situation, with no handbook and no mentor. Here, Lile describes the complexities of the stepmom position, in a family and in the community, and shares her experience wearing a tag that is often misunderstood and weighed down by the numerous myths in society. Candid and poignant, Stepmother is a story of love and like, resentments and exasperation, resignation and hope--and a story, ultimately, of family.
Outbreak In The Woods: Thru-Hiking During a Worldwide Pandemic
Ryan Michael Beck - 2021
Should they follow cautionary guidelines to return to a major city or take a chance by continuing north through the back country?Thru-hiking from Georgia to Maine on any given year has its own enormous obstacles. What do you eat? Where do you sleep and can you reach your family? In 2020, during a worldwide shutdown these challenges became nearly impossible to overcome. See how rural trail town communities were affected by the pandemic and understand an untold perspective of pursuing your dreams at all costs.Avoiding law enforcement, entering into "closed" federal land and even overcoming death - all while attempting the impossible. With a wife and two daughters at home, the outside world against him and seemingly unreliable information, this epic tale follows Ryan Michael Beck's journey 2,193 miles in pursuit of a dream to thru-hike the entire Appalachian Trail against all odds.
The Wrong Shade of Yellow
Margaret Eleanor Leigh - 2014
I couldn’t jack it in and go home, because I didn’t have a home to go to anymore. The bicycle and the tent were now home. Wherever I found myself on any given night was now home. And that meant, for tonight, Genoa Piazza Principe Railway Station was home.I was cycling across Europe in search of Utopia, a place I believed was located somewhere in Greece. When I found it, I would start a new life there. It was my big, fat, Greek midlife crisis. But now I was having a crisis within a crisis. What the hell had I been thinking?
In the Last Days: A Brief Guide to Christ's Second Coming for Latter-day Saints
Michael James Fitzgerald - 2015
Students of the Second Coming won't find anything sensational, highly speculative, or particularly new or groundbreaking in this book. Though not exhaustive, the guide walks through many of the major events surrounding the Second Coming of Christ, mainly through the Standard Works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price—but also through some archaeological, historical, and statistical sources. (It's a compilation of posts from the blog "Put on the Armor of Light," written between September 2014 and November 2015.)
Anywhere but Bordeaux!: Adventures of an American Teacher in France
Jacqueline Donnelly - 2019
Hoping to escape her predictable American life in the States, she runs away in search of adventure and self-discovery.The story reveals daily life in France, and the encounters with wonderful and not so wonderful characters along the way.It is perfect reading for anyone tempted to run away and ideal for a book club.
Torey Hayden Collection (Somebody Else's Kids, One Child, Ghost Girl, Beautiful Child)
Torey L. Hayden - 2011
Crossing The Ditch
James Castrission - 2009
It tells the story of two mates, a kayak, and the conquest of the Tasman.
The Exotic and the Mundane
Joyce Dickens - 2018
From the day they met, they’d been talking about “travelling more”, but in ten years they hadn’t advanced very far toward that dream and it had become more of a nagging dissatisfaction than an inspiring goal. Every time they returned from one of their brief yearly vacations, Joyce would spend weeks depressed, thinking there had to be a way to do more than this. They gradually came to the somewhat obvious realization that “travelling more” wasn’t just going to happen, they would need to decide what exactly they wanted, make a plan and commit to a lot of work. In early 2012, they made a decision to go all in on their travel dream, sell everything, and hit the road for an open-ended period of time.On March 31, 2013, they locked up their house one last time and left on a tour that would take them to 23 countries and 23 U.S. states over the next 14 months. This book is the chronicle of the first six months, spent in Central America and Africa, as they learned to slow down, look around and embrace wherever the heck they were. Alternately funny, frustrating and inspiring, their journey proves that anyone can travel more and that you don’t have to be rich, young or all that brave to get out and see the world.
Sole Searching on the Appalachian Trail
Sam Ducharme - 2018
With no hiking experience, he bought a backpack and a plane ticket to Georgia and started walking home to New England. One month after deciding to hike the 2,189- mile trail, and after three weeks of intensive YouTube-training, Sam takes his first step north, armed with all the critical gear REI could part with. The journey was long, dangerous and took a toll on his body, but as he lay in his hammock after yet another day of endless climbs and punishing descents, he was determined to finish… or at least make it to day three. This book takes the reader on a modern-day adventure along a 2,189-mile hike from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail. First-time hiker and retired prison guard “Sam I Am” entertains the reader with trail stories which are humorous, poignant and informative as he hikes northward in his quest to become a “Thru-Hiker.” Comparing himself to a bruised and dirty onion from a career spent inside prisons, Sam I Am takes the readers along as he interacts with thousands of people on the trail and worldwide. With the help of social media and YouTube, these people watched as he shared his adventure from the trail. The countless unexpected acts of kindness Sam I Am received from strangers slowly peeled each dirty layer away. When he stands on top of Katahdin nearly six months after he started, covered in dirt from the trail, it is the cleanest he has been in decades.
End to End: John O'Groats, Broken Spokes and a Dog called Gretna
Alistair McGuinness - 2016
With no training, no plan, and no idea about the benefits of Lycra, the ride was destined for misadventure.But the men had a purpose, and despite the odds, they survived three countries, thirteen pub-crawls, two storms, and one memorable night in a youth hostel. These 'end-to-enders' also learnt a thing or two about broken spokes.890 miles and twenty years later, it's time to tell their story. For one of the riders, it's a story that changed his life.
The Unofficial Guide to Universal Orlando
Seth Kubersky - 2015
Where to find the cheapest Universal Orlando admission tickets, how to save big on Universal on-site hotel rooms and skip the regular lines in the parks, when to visit Universal Orlando for the lightest crowds, and everything else you need to know for a stress-free Universal Orlando experience.
Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain
Steven Primrose-Smith - 2016
All 97 counties of it! Surely it can't be as bad as everyone tells him. After twenty years living abroad, he thinks the time is right to search his homeland for the best of British using new eyes, those of a foreign tourist, and in the only way he knows how – by bicycle. Armed with a list of recommendations gathered from friends and strangers alike and the most spontaneous of routes, he pedals 5,000 miles through damp English country lanes, soggy Welsh moorland and windswept Scottish mountains. He gets wet quite often. Following on from the success and irreverent style of both No Place Like Home, Thank God and Hungry for Miles, Steven seeks out the quirky in the people he meets, the places he visits and the food he eats. Can his initial store of positivity survive the journey, or will it be ground down by the traffic, the weather and his British, vegetable-free diet of beer, pies and pork scratchings? In this, Book 1, The Journey South, Steven travels from Merseyside to Warwickshire, through the whole of Wales, the West Country, the south coast and to London. Armed with a bag of googly eyes, he meets a poetry-prescribing nurse, stumbles across Hilda Ogden's lawnmower, has his footwear stolen by foxes, discovers some very special Mexican fleas, crashes the TARDIS and visits dozens of British capitals, including its infidelity capital, its boob job capital and its dogging capital. He experiences "real" Britain – the good and the bad – its Morris dancers, pie 'n' mash and the pinnacle of British culture, a good old-fashioned street fight. The concluding part, The Journey North, covering the east of England, Scotland and the north-west of England will be available in Summer 2017.
Better Late Than Never: From Barrow Boy to Ballroom
Len Goodman - 2009
Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.
Faring to France on a Shoe
Valerie Poore - 2017
After eight years of owning their barge, Hennie-Ha, eight years involving catastrophe and crisis, Val and her partner finally go 'faring' to France for the first time. This travelogue is about the places they visit and the people they meet along the canals on their route from the Netherlands, through Belgium and into northern France. It tells a gentle story about how they experience their life on board during the four weeks they spent cruising. Written as a journal, it follows them on their travels through rain and shine and reveals how day by day, Val learns to cast aside the stresses and demands of her job and to appreciate life's simplest of pleasures to the full. And why 'Faring to France on a Shoe'? Well, download a sample and then all will be clear, or just have a 'look inside'!