In the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, Jon Krakauer had not slept in fifty-seven hours and was suffering from the brain-altering consequences of oxygen deprivation. Twenty other climbers were still tenaciously making their way to the summit as he turned to start his lengthy, perilous descent from 29,028 feet. Nobody had noticed how the sky was starting to get cloudy. Krakauer collapsed in his tent six hours later, 3,000 feet lower, in blinding snow and 70-knot gusts, safe but experiencing weariness and hallucinations. He discovered the next morning that six of his climbing companions had not returned to their campsite and were frantically fighting for their life. Five of them would be dead when the storm eventually subsided, and the sixth would have suffered so severe frostbite that his dominant arm would need to be amputated.
In this book, Krakauer explores what it is about Everest that has inspired so many people, including himself, to forgo caution, disregard the advice of loved ones, and willingly put their lives in danger, endure misery, and spend so much money. The firsthand account of what transpired on the roof of the world by Krakauer is a unique accomplishment since it is written with lot clearer and reinforced by his unquestionable reporting.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.”
“Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.”
“With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” Hall observed. “The trick is to get back down alive.”
“We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality”
“Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.”
The heartbreaking account of the battle as seen by a child soldier. Beah describes how, when he was twelve years old, he ran away from rebels who were attacking and wandered a violently altered landscape. By the age of thirteen, he had joined the government army and was a soldier. My new friends are starting to think I haven’t given them the whole truth about my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometimes.”
The way wars are fought today is by young people who have been drugged up and are armed with AK-47s. Children are now preferred as soldiers. There are thought to be some 300,000 child soldiers involved in the more than fifty conflicts that are currently raging around the world. One of them used to be Ishmael Beah.
What is combat like from a child soldier’s perspective? How does a killer get started? The best way to stop? Journalists have chronicled child soldiers, and novelists have had a difficult time imagining their experiences. However, the first-person story of someone who made it through this torment and survived has not yet been published. Beah, who is now 25 years old, narrates a gripping tale in A Long Way Gone about how, when he was 12 years old, he ran away from rebels who were invading and traveled to a country that had been devastated by war. By the time he was thirteen, the government army had taken him in, and Beah, a youngster who was kind at heart, discovered that he was able of doing some pretty horrible things.
This is a unique and captivating story that is heartbreakingly honest and written with tremendous literary intensity.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. ”
“In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.”
“I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end…”
“We must strive to be like the moon”
“My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.”
A tender, poignant story of unwavering love in a family that gave the author the ferocious desire to carve out a prosperous life on her own terms despite its obvious imperfections.
Jeannette Walls was raised by parents whose values and obstinate nonconformity served as both a curse and a blessing for them. Four kids were born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls. They initially led a nomadic lifestyle, traveling between Southwest desert settlements and camping in the mountains. When Rex was sober, he captivated his children’s attention by teaching them about physics, geology, and, most importantly, how to live freely. Rex was a captivating, bright man. Rose Mary, a writer and painter who couldn’t stomach having to support her family, referred to herself as an “excitement addict.” Making an artwork that would endure a lifetime was more appealing than preparing a dinner that would be eaten in fifteen minutes.
The Walls eventually returned to the depressing West Virginia mining town, and the family from which Rex Walls had tried everything in his power to flee when the money ran out or the romanticism of the nomadic existence faded. He ingested. He took the cash for groceries and vanished for many days. As the family’s instability worsened, Jeannette and her siblings were left to fend for themselves. They helped one another cope with their parents’ betrayals until they eventually had the means and the determination to leave the house.
Not only does Jeannette Walls’ ability to escape with her wits, courage, and determination astound us, but she also portrays her parents with such warmth and kindness. Hers is a tale of triumph over all adversity as well as a beautiful, touching account of unwavering love in a family that, despite its severe defects, gave her the burning desire to forge a prosperous life in her own way.
Jeannette Walls concealed her ancestry for 20 years. She now shares her own narrative.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”
“Things usually work out in the end.”
“What if they don’t?”
“That just means you haven’t come to the end yet.”
“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”
“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”
“Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”
American author Mitch Albom’s memoir, Tuesdays with Morrie, details a number of visits he paid to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz as Schwartz slowed down and eventually passed away from ALS.
Perhaps it was a grandmother, teacher, or coworker. Someone more experienced, kind, and wise who helped you navigate it when you were young and in search of answers. Morrie Schwartz, his college lecturer from over two decades ago, was that person for Mitch Albom. The insights may have gone because, like Mitch, you lost sight of this mentor as you moved forward. Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to that individual once again and ask the deeper questions that are still bothering you?
It was a second chance for Mitch Albom. In the final few months of the elderly man’s life, he rediscovered Morrie. Every Tuesday, just as they were accustomed to when they were in college, Mitch visited Morrie in his study since he knew he had ALS, also known as motor neuron disease. Their restored romance evolved into one last “class” of life lessons.
One day Lori Gottlieb works as a therapist in Los Angeles, helping clients. Then, a disaster sends her world spiraling out of control. Enter Wendell, the eccentric but skilled therapist in whose clinic she finds herself out of the blue. He seems like he was cast by Therapist Central Casting with his cardigan, khakis, and balding head. He will, however, prove to be anything but that.
A self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen trying to threaten to end her life on her birthday if nothing changes, and a twenty-something who simply can not stop hooking up with the wrong guys are just a few of the patients Gottlieb explores as she delves into the inner workings of their lives.
Gottlieb explores the truths and lies we tell ourselves and others as we walk the fine line between love and desire, significance and mortality, guilt and atonement, dread and courage, hope and transformation. She does it with stunning wisdom and humor.
Perhaps You Should Speak to Someone is groundbreaking in its candor. It offers a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and gives the rarest of gifts: a boldly suggestive portrait of what it means to be human, as well as a disarmingly funny and enlightening account of our own mysterious lives and our power to change them.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”
“We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.”
“But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”
“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Susanna Kaysen, then 18 years old, was placed in a taxi and taken to McLean Hospital in 1967 following an appointment with a psychiatrist she had never seen before. She spent most of the following two years at a mental facility that was equally renowned for its famous patients as it was for its cutting-edge approaches to caring for those who could afford its sanctuary, including Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles.
In addition to painting evocative portrayals of her fellow patients and their caregivers, Kaysen’s story includes terror and razor-edged vision. It is a brilliant portrayal of a “parallel universe” situated in the late 1960s’ constantly evolving environment. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-eyed, unwavering documentary that lends permanent and precise depth to our conceptions of sanity and insanity, mental illness, and healing.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.”
“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
“Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
“Scar tissue has no character. It’s not like skin. It doesn’t show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It’s like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what’s beneath. That’s why we grow it; we have something to hide. ”
“Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”
The first time Tara Westover entered a classroom, she was 17 years old. She was raised by survivalists in the highlands of Idaho, where she stocked up on home-canned peaches and slept with her “head-for-the-hills bag” in case the world ended. She salvaged in her father’s junkyard in the winter and boiled herbs for her mother, a midwife, and healer, in the summer.
Tara has never seen a doctor or nurse because her father forbids going to hospitals. Herbalism was used to heal burns from explosions as well as gashings and concussions at home. The family was so cut off from society that no one was there to make sure the kids went to school or to step in when Tara’s older brother started acting violently. After that, Tara started to educate herself despite having no official schooling. She taught herself the necessary algebra and language to get into Brigham Young University, where she studied history and discovered crucial global events like the Holocaust and the civil rights struggle for the first time. She had a transformation as a result of her desire for knowledge, which took her to Harvard and Cambridge and over oceans and continents. Only then would she start to doubt whether she had gone too far and whether there was still a way back.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell”
“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
Jesse Itzler, a businessman, is willing to try practically anything. Risk-taking and audacity are key to his life. Jesse hired a somewhat unusual trainer—a decorated Navy SEAL who is regarded as “the toughest guy on the planet”—to live with him for a month after feeling like he was drifting aimlessly.
Living With a Seal is comparable to a buddy film starring Rambo and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Jesse is as laid-back as they come. SEAL isn’t, really. The antics of Jesse and SEAL soon result in a wonderful friendship, and Jesse develops much more than just muscle. Living With a Seal ultimately demonstrates the advantages of venturing outside of your comfort zone while at times being amusing and motivational.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done. —SEAL”
“Most of my successes in life have come from learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
“I learned that by constantly doing things that are hard and making myself uncomfortable, I improve my ability to handle obstacles. I get comfortable being uncomfortable—and that’s real mental toughness.”
“If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can’t see yourself doing something, usually you can’t achieve it. —SEAL”
“I believe in life résumés. Do more. Create memories.”
The autobiography of one man’s coming-of-age is set in the final years of apartheid and the turbulent years that followed democracy. Trevor Noah’s improbable journey from South Africa under apartheid to the desk of The Daily Show began with a crime: his birth. In an era when such a union was illegal, Trevor was birthed to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother. Living proof of his parents’ immorality, Trevor spent most of his early years indoors due to his mother’s drastic and frequently nonsensical methods to protect him from a government that may at any time kidnap him.
Trevor and his mother embarked on a magnificent trip after being finally freed by the end of South Africa’s oppressive white rule, living openly and freely, and seizing the chances gained via a centuries-long struggle.
In ‘Born a Crime’, a mischievous young kid who strives to find himself in a world where he isn’t supposed to exist develops into a restless young man. This young guy’s teammate, a woman trying to free her son from the cycle of destitution, abuse, and violence that would finally endanger her own life, is also the subject of the novel, as is the bond between that young man and his brave, rebellious, and ardently devout mother.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
“If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.”
“Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.”
“We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.”
United States Navy SEAL Chris Kyle collaborated with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice to write the autobiographical creative nonfiction book American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History. Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy SEAL, had the most sniper kills in a career in American military history from 1999 to 2009. More than 150 of Kyle’s kills have been officially verified by the Pentagon (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to validate the astounding overall figure for this book. The Iraqi militants so despised Kyle that they dubbed him “the devil” and set a bounty on his head. From rooftops and covert locations, Kyle shielded his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army personnel, earning them legendary status in the process. One of the best combat memoirs ever written, Kyle’s superb description of his remarkable battlefield experiences is gripping and unforgettable.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.”
“Great way to fight a war – be prepared to defend yourself for winning.”
“The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes.”
“Marines—you beat them down and they come back for more.”
“But real life doesn’t travel in a perfect straight line; it doesn’t necessarily have that ‘all lived happily ever after’ bit. You have to work on where you’re going.”
Jordan Belfort’s memoir, The Wolf of Wall Street, was initially released in September 2007 by Bantam Books. It was later made into a 2013 movie with the same name. 2009’s Catching the Wolf of Wall Street resumed Belfort’s autobiographical narrative.
One of the most notorious figures in American finance during the 1990s was Jordan Belfort, the former boss of the infamous investment firm Stratton Oakmont. A brilliant and cunning stock-chopper, Belfort took his merry gang on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a sizable office on Long Island. Belfort now tells a story of greed, power, and excess that no one could have imagined in his astonishing and entertaining tell-all autobiography.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.”
“There’s no nobility in poverty.”
“I want you to back yourself into a corner. Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.”
“The easiest way to make money is -create something of such value that everybody wants and go out and give and create value, the money comes automatically.”
“They were drunk on youth, fueled by greed, and higher than kites.”
For the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight tell the inner story of the company’s beginnings as an adventurous start-up and how it developed into one of the most recognizable, game-changing, and successful brands in the world in this candid and compelling biography.
After graduating from business school in 1962, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and started a business with the straightforward goal of importing high-end, reasonably priced athletic shoes from Japan. Knight made $8,000 his first year by selling the shoes out of the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant. Nike now has annual sales of almost $30 billion. In an era of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all companies, and the swoosh has developed into a revolutionary, global icon, one of the most pervasive and well-known symbols in existence right now.
But Knight, the person responsible for the swoosh, has never been made public. Now, for the first time, he relates his narrative, starting with his crossroads experience, in a memoir that is open, humble, brave, and wry. After traveling the world on a backpack at the age of 24, he made the unorthodox choice to launch his own company, one that would be lively and distinctive.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.”
― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog
“The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.”
― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
― Phil Knight (original quote by George S Patton), Shoe Dog
“I’d tell men and women in their mid-twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”
― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
“Life is growth. You grow or you die.”
― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog
Hillbilly Elegy is an impassioned and intimate examination of a white working-class American culture in crisis. Although the dissolution of this group has been reported on increasingly frequently and with increasing worry over the past forty years, it has never previously been described as searingly from the inside. In his real account, J. D. Vance describes what it’s like to be born with a social, geographic, and class decline hanging over your head.
Hopefully, the Vance family’s journey starts in wartime America. The grandparents of J. D. relocated to Ohio from the Appalachian region of Kentucky because they were “dirt poor and in love” and wanted to get away from the abject poverty they were surrounded by. One of their grandchildren would later earn a Yale Law School degree, which is a traditional indicator of success in attaining generational upward mobility. They raised a middle-class family. But as the Hillbilly Elegy family saga unfolds, we discover that J.D.’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most importantly, his mother struggled greatly with the requirements of their new middle-class life, never truly escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma that is so typical of their region of America. Vance demonstrates with piercing honesty how he still battles the ghosts of his turbulent familial past.
Hillbilly Elegy is a profoundly affecting book with a healthy dose of comedy and brilliantly colored characters that tells the true story of what upward mobility is like. Additionally, it is an important and unsettling reflection on how a sizable portion of this nation no longer lives the American ideal.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasing: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.”
“Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”
“We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents. Our kids perform poorly in school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools—like peace and quiet at home—to succeed.”
“I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”
“People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”
Explore the enchanting, memorable world of James Herriot, the world’s greatest renowned veterinarian, and his menagerie of uplifting, hilarious, and heartbreaking animal patients. Generations of readers have been enthralled by Herriot’s fascinating tales, a profound passion for life, and remarkable storytelling powers for almost four decades. Herriot traveled the isolated, magnificent Yorkshire Dales for decades, treating every patient, from the smallest to the largest, and watching animals and humans equally with his sharp, caring eye.
We follow the young Herriot as he eats up his calling and realises that the facts of veterinary practise in rural Yorkshire are significantly different from the antiseptic atmosphere of veterinary school in All Creatures Great and Small. Some visits are heartbreakingly difficult, such as one to an elderly man in the village someone whose ill dog is his only friend and companion; others are lighthearted and amusing, such as Herriot’s ability to visit the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo, who throws parties and has his own stationery; and still, others are truly inspiring and insightful, such as Herriot’s remembrances of poor farmers who will scrape together their meager earnings to get the proper care.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
“I don’t think he ever gave a thought to other people’s opinions, which was just as well because they were often unkind”
“At times it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work; for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.”
“When all world goes one road, I go t’other.”
“If you decide to become a veterinary surgeon you will never grow rich but you will have a life of endless interest and variety.”
Kristin Newman spent a significant portion of her twenties and thirties shopping for dresses to wear to her friends’ weddings and baby showers. Kristin, who was not ready to settle down and needed a break from her fast-paced profession as a sitcom writer, instead traveled the world, often alone, for several weeks each year. Kristin fell hopelessly in love with the globe, but she also fell for many gorgeous locals, men who could provide the emotional connection she craved without limiting her independence.
Kristin introduces the reader to the Israeli bartenders, Finnish poker players, seductive Bedouins, and Argentinean priests who assisted her in becoming “Kristin-Adjacent” on the road—a slower, softer, and, yes, naughtier version of herself at home.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“To me, marriage was an ending, not a beginning. A stone on my chest. A giving-up, a decision to walk away from an interesting life for one just like everyone else’s. Much more “ever after” than “happily.”
“I wanted to love, but I also wanted freedom and adventure, and those two desires fought like angry obese sumo wrestlers in the dojo of my soul.”
“Everyone I knew, no matter what they chose, was at least a little in mourning for that other thing.”
“In Judaism, the way you learn to love someone is by giving to them,” she said. “The more you give to a person, the more you end up loving them. If love is just a feeling and that feeling changes, then what? Love has to be something you choose to build.”
“I always say that I need to travel to keep from dying of boredom from my own internal monologue. I think that, generally, most of us have a total of about twenty thoughts. And we just scroll through those thoughts, over and over again, in varying order, all day every day.”
Malcolm X rose to prominence as one of the twentieth century’s most important figures through a lifetime of passion and hardship. He describes his transformation from hoodlum to Muslim cleric in this captivating narrative of his voyage from a prison cell to Mecca. The guy dubbed “the angriest Black man in America” describes how his conversion to real Islam helped him confront his fury and recognize the oneness of all humans.
An acknowledged modern American classic, “The New York Times praised “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” as “extraordinary.” A wonderful, heartbreaking, and significant book.” This thrilling story changed Malcolm X’s life into his legacy, and it is still outstanding and significant. The power of his words, and the power of his beliefs, continue to ring true more than a generation later.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.”
“So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”
“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
“The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
“I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being–neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer has been educated as a botanist to use scientific methods to raise questions about nature. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she believes that plants and animals are our earliest teachers. Kimmerer weaves these knowledge lenses together in Braiding Sweetgrass to demonstrate how the awakening of a broader ecological consciousness necessitates the recognition and celebration of our reciprocal link with the rest of the living world. We can only grasp the earth’s generosity and learn to contribute our own gifts when we can understand the languages of other beings.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“In some Native languages, the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”
“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
“This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.”
Piper Kerman, with her work, live-in boyfriend, and loving family, bears little resemblance to the rebellious young woman who became involved with drug runners and sent a bag of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But her wild past catches up with her when she least expects it; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months in an infamous women’s jail in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424. She learns to navigate this bizarre world with its arbitrary rules and regulations, it’s unpredictable, even hazardous interactions, from her first strip search until her last release. She encounters women from many walks of life who surprise her with kind gestures, harsh realities, and simple acts of compassion.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Brave enough to be quiet when quiet was called for, brave enough to observe before flinging me into something, brave enough to not abandon my true self when someone else wanted to seduce or force me in a direction I didn’t want to go, brave enough to stand my ground quietly.”
“Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the word, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient—people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile, the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. In fact, there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system.”
“how important it is to stay true to yourself even in the midst of an adventure or experiment.”
“Maybe, because all these good people loved me enough to help me, maybe I wasn’t quite as bad as I felt. Maybe there was a part of me that was worthy of their love.”
“From a young age I had learned to get over–to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve.”
Burch was abandoned at an orphanage and never spent enough time in a single foster home to develop any friendships. This is the account of how he matured and developed the bravery to pursue love.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The table and chair legs were like bars of the cage around me. This time they weren’t keeping me in, they were keeping her out.”
“Education is the most important thing you can have,” he said.”
“She smiled a wonderful smile and pinched my cheek.”
“Tomorrow, or when you feel better, we’ll go to the store and buy you all the things you need.”
A beaten child named Brooke Nolan calls the police anonymously to report the increasing violence in her family. It’s a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that causes her to talk about the cruelty she’s been hiding when social services put her safety in danger and force her to preserve her father’s secret. Brooke faces a dysfunctional system that tries to maintain her father in the house in her pursuit of safety and justice. She risks losing the support of her family and learns that some people just do not want to be saved when the jury and a potential love interest gather to motivate her to fight. The book Spilled Milk features a stunning narrative, success, and tenacity.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Just remember, rain doesn’t seem all that threatening at first, but too much rain can turn into a flood.”
“Not everyone is abused by getting hit or slapped around, no child. Some people get put down by being called names, or the abuser makes them feel like they crazy and that the abuse ain’t happening.”
“We don’t have the luxury of fallin’ apart, for someone else to come picking up the pieces.”
“We were fifteen months apart in age which meant everything was a competition; who could read all the Disney books the fastest, ride their bike further or know all answers to the universe both large and small.”
“Abuse can mean so many things, like threatening someone, hitting them, or controlling them by making them feel worthless.”
Featuring all-new, never-before-published material, Chef Anthony Bourdain lays out his more than 25 years of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine in this gloriously amusing and delectably startling banquet of wild-but-true tales.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
“No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”
“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans … are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”
“Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.”
“Don’t lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don’t do it again. Ever”
Hi! Seth here! Here it is! I was asked to give a description of my book, Yearbook, for the inside flap (which is a disgusting phrase) and for websites and stuff like that. Yearbook is a collection of genuine stories that I fervently hope are at best merely hilarious and at worst wonderful enough to change your life. (I get that the former is a fancy “book” way of stating “the first one,” so it’s probably the former.)
I talk more about drug use than my mother would want, as well as about my grandparents, my stand-up comedy days as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp. I also share some of my Los Angeles escapades, and I undoubtedly say things about the other famous individuals that will make me feel really uncomfortable at a gathering one day. If you choose to purchase the book, I sincerely hope you will enjoy it; if not, I apologize. If you ever run into me on the street and let me know what happened, I’ll try my best to make it right.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Never quit, but sometimes do quit, ’cause you simply might not be that good at some shit.”
“They also have an amazing seafood tower. I love a seafood tower and think more food should be served in tower formation. Sometimes pizzas get a little platform, but they’re really not living up to their potential.”
“Maybe that’s why Jews are Jewish. It’s more vague and casts a wider net than other religions. “I’m a Hindu.” “I’m a Muslim.” “I’m Jew…ish.” Less commitment is involved when “ish” is in the mix.”
“Once I ate a weed lollipop at the Golden Globes and got so high, I had to leave early.”
“My dad is from Newark, New Jersey. He somehow manages to be simultaneously bald and always in dire need of a haircut.”
The son of a poorly educated boat owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam had an exceptional career as a defense scientist that culminated in receiving the highest civilian honor in India, the Bharat Ratna. In his role as director of the nation’s defense R&D program, Kalam showed the enormous potential for dynamism and creativity present in what appeared to be dormant research institutions. This is the tale of Kalam’s ascent from obscurity, his difficulties on the personal and professional fronts, and the development of the Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul, and Nag missiles, which have made India a missile power of note in the world stage. This is a story about internal and international politics as well as science, and it is also the story of independent India’s quest for scientific self-sufficiency and defense autonomy.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Be active! Take on responsibility! Work for the things you believe in. If you do not, you are surrendering your fate to others.”
“We are all born with a divine fire in us. Our efforts should be to give wings to this fire and fill the world with the glow of its goodness.”
“To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides.”
“If you want to leave your footprints On the sands of time Do not drag your feet.”
“Let not thy winged days be spent in vain. When once gone no gold can buy them back again.”
Childhood for David Goggins was a nightmare filled with deprivation, discrimination, and physical abuse. However, Goggins changed himself from a hopeless, obese young man into one of the best endurance athletes in the world via self-control, mental fortitude, and hard training. He was the only man in history to successfully complete the rigorous training required to become a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller. He then broke records in a number of endurance competitions, earning him the title of “The Fittest (Real) Man in America” from Outside magazine.
He discusses his incredible life experience in Can’t Hurt Me and demonstrates that most people only use 40% of their potential. This is what Goggins refers to as The 40% Rule, and his life narrative shows how anyone can use it to overcome sorrow, face fear, and realize their full potential.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”
― David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”
― David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
“It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim at what you are willing to earn!”
― David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
“In the military, we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training,”
― David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
“No one is going to come to help you. No one’s coming to save you.”
― David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds