Dear Samantha: A Year In Our Lives

Dear Samantha: A Year In Our Lives
Author: Larry Simpson
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2016-01-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1329790243

A year long collection of letters written from a grandfather newly diagnosed with inoperable cancer to his infant granddaughter beginning shortly after her birth.

The Shapeless Unease

The Shapeless Unease
Author: Samantha Harvey
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0802148840

“Sleeplessness gets the Susan Sontag illness-as-metaphor treatment in this pensive, compact, lyrical inquiry into the author’s nighttime demons.” —Kirkus Reviews In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help. The Shapeless Unease is Harvey’s darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from “this generation’s Virginia Woolf” (Telegraph). “Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish.” —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author “Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about ‘shapeless unease’ is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life.” —Daily Mail “What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I’ve read about what it’s like to be alive now, in this country.” —Max Porter, award-winning author of Lanny

Meaty

Meaty
Author: Samantha Irby
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0988825864

The smart, edgy, hilarious, and unabashedly raunchy New York Times bestselling author explodes onto the printed page in her uproarious first collection of essays. "Whether she’s writing about her latest inflammatory bowel disease attack or documenting a sexual escapade gone awry (sometimes simultaneously), you’ll most likely be able to relate to Irby’s tell-all book. Her raw honesty and scathing sense of humor will make you laugh out loud." —JET Irby laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood: chin hairs, depression, bad sex, failed relationships, masturbation, taco feasts, inflammatory bowel disease and more. Updated with her favorite Instagramable, couch-friendly recipes, this much-beloved romp is treat for anyone in dire need of Irby's infamous, scathing wit and poignant candor. Don't miss Samantha Irby's bestselling new book, Quietly Hostile!

The Things You Would Have Said

The Things You Would Have Said
Author: Jackie Hooper
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1101561114

A collection of extraordinary letters expressing the joys, sorrows, and surprises of ordinary lives. We've all missed the chance to say something important. Friends fall out of touch, loved ones pass away, or sometimes the courage required is simply lacking -- and thank-yous, regrets, feelings, and secrets are left unshared. In 2009, Jackie Hooper came up with a way to help people recapture a moment that had once passed them by -- she began asking them to write letters. Based on the popular blog The Things You Would Have Said, this extraordinary collection of letters brings together the moving, surprising, and inspiring stories of ordinary people. By turns heartwarming, funny, sad, and wise, the letters showcase a remarkable range of voices and subjects. From the indignant young boy urging his bully to become "a better man," to the woman apologizing to the girl she picked on in high school, to a man thanking the woman who protected his family from Nazis, the letters bring together an outpouring of emotion that is as compelling as it is cathartic.

Dear Thief

Dear Thief
Author: Samantha Harvey
Publisher: Atavist Books
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1937894452

“You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy,” writes the unnamed narrator of Dear Thief. The thief is Nina, or Butterfly, who disappeared eighteen years earlier and who is being summoned by this letter, this bomb, these recollections, revisions, accusations, and confessions. “Sometimes I imagine, out of sheer playfulness, that I am writing this as a kind of defence for having murdered and buried you under the patio.” Dear Thief is a letter to an old friend, a song, a jewel, and a continuously surprising triangular love story. Samantha Harvey writes with a dazzling blend of fury and beauty about the need for human connection and the brutal vulnerability that need exposes. “While I write my spare hand might be doing anything for all you know; it might be driving a pin into your voodoo stomach.” Here is a rare novel that traverses the human heart in original and indelible ways.

Dear Mom, You're Ruining My Life

Dear Mom, You're Ruining My Life
Author: Jean Van Leeuwen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1990
Genre: Book clubs
ISBN: 9780140343861

Samantha Slayton's eleventh year includes losing her last baby teeth, towering over every boy in dance school, and being mortified by everything her mother does.

‘Happy’ Norman, Volume I (1927-1957)

‘Happy’ Norman, Volume I (1927-1957)
Author: Keith J. Norman
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2016-12-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1460285700

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man in Letters to my Grandchildren and Other Friends “Give me the child... and I will give you the man” is the first of five volumes that constitute the autobiography of Keith Norman. Having approached an age when one is naturally drawn to reflection, Keith decided to share his experiences through letters to his grandchildren, offering friendly advice, - not designed to instruct, but rather to protect and illuminate. After the first letters were enthusiastically received, and succumbing to pressure from friends and family, Keith embarked on a task of writing about his life to a wider audience. The first book begins with the question whether our lives are more determined by our childhood experiences and environment or by our DNA. St. Francis Xavier Cabrini seemed to assert that anyone’s potential can be formed in the first 7 years of a child’s life, but is it so? As the details of his life are placed on paper in an orderly fashion, Keith is attempting to discover how and why his life unfolded the way it did: from a young boy who spent his early years as an WW2 evacuee with little direct adult guidance and away from his parents. Only after his release from the Army in 1948 was he reunited with his family, and within a year he had set out a completely independent path of his own. This period would account for his immense sense of independence and self sufficiency. But what made him seek and attain some of the best university degrees the Western World had to offer? And how this mixture of experience and education guided, sometimes mislead him, in his personal and entrepreneurial challenges in life. This first volume presents an entertaining and intelligent self-examination of the formative years of a life that stretches over eight decades, five continents, dozens of cultures and industries with wit, integrity and humility. When you turn the last page of this volume you will see that there is nothing ordinary about Keith Norman, - as he opens the door into his life and invites you on to a journey which cannot fail to move and entertain.”

Google It

Google It
Author: Newton Lee
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2016-10-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1493964151

From Google search to self-driving cars to human longevity, is Alphabet creating a neoteric Garden of Eden or Bentham’s Panopticon? Will King Solomon’s challenge supersede the Turing test for artificial intelligence? Can transhumanism mitigate existential threats to humankind? These are some of the overarching questions in this book, which explores the impact of information awareness on humanity starting from the Book of Genesis to the Royal Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC to the modern day of Google Search, IBM Watson, and Wolfram|Alpha. The book also covers Search Engine Optimization, Google AdWords, Google Maps, Google Local Search, and what every business leader must know about digital transformation. “Search is curiosity, and that will never be done,” said Google’s first female engineer and Yahoo’s sixth CEO Marissa Mayer. The truth is out there; we just need to know how to Google it!