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Biography and Memoir June 2024
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| Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve KingstonGenevieve Kingston expands on her 2021 "Modern Love" essay in her affecting debut memoir about the milestone-themed letters and gifts her mother left behind after dying from cancer when the author was 11. For fans of: My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason B. Rosenthal. |
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| Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy by Ali VelshiJournalist and MSNBC correspondent Ali Velshi details over 100 years of his family's history in activism and resistance in this sweeping memoir that "provides a crash course in Indian diasporic history" (Kirkus Reviews). For fans of: An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice by Khizr Khan. |
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All things are too small : essays in praise of excess
by Becca Rothfeld
A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent. In her debut essay collection, "brilliant and stylish" (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation. Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance. Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.
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Becky Lynch: the man : not your average average girl
by Becky Lynch
"This compelling and deeply personal memoir from WWE superstar Rebecca Quin-a.k.a. The Man, a.k.a. Becky Lynch-delves into her earliest wrestling days, her scrappy beginnings, and her meteoric rise to fame. By age seven, Rebecca Quin, now known in the ring as Becky Lynch, was already defying what the world expected of her. Raised in Dublin, Ireland in a devoutly Catholic family, Rebecca constantly invented new ways to make her mother worry-roughhousing with the neighborhood kids, hosting secret parties while her parents were away, enrolling in a warehouse wrestling school, nearly breaking her neck and almost kneecapping a WWE star before her own wrestling career even began-and she was always in search of a thrilling escape from the ordinary. Rebecca's deep love of wrestling as a child set her on an unlikely path. With few female wrestlers to look to for guidance, Rebecca pursued a wrestling career hoping to change the culture and move away from the antiquated disrespect so often directed at the elite female athletes that grace the ring. Even as a teenager, she knew that she would stop at nothing to earn a space among the greatest wrestlers of our time, and to pave a new path for female fighters. Culled from decades of journal entries, Rebecca's memoir offers a raw, personal, and honest depiction of the complex woman behind the character Rebecca Quin plays on TV"
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I've Tried Being Nice : Essays
by Ann Leary
A recovering people pleaser, the New York Times best-selling author reflects on a life spent trying—and often failing—to be nice, from incidents and observations from the sidelines of fame with her actor husband to her more personal struggles with alcoholism, her love for her family and so much more.
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Walk Ride Paddle : A Life Outside
by Tim Kaine
To commemorate both his 60th birthday and his 25th year in public office, the Virginia senator and former Democratic vice-presidential candidate undertook a three-part journey across the Virginia landscape, reflecting on both the extraordinary events occurring across America and the events that have shaped both his life and the world around him.
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Animals I Want to See : A Memoir of Growing Up in the Projects and Defying the Odds
by Tom Seeman
- A luminous coming-of-age memoir that shimmers with countless marvels, Animals I Want To See tracks Tom Seemans journey from a child janitor with big ambitions to a teenage petty criminal to a student at Yale and Harvard. At once a meditation on finding wonder in unlikely places, an ode to a heroic mother who makes the seemingly impossible possible, and an exploration of what it means to create our own identities, this is a heartwarming, thought-provoking, ultimately uplifting book for all readers.
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Joyful recollections of trauma
by Paul Scheer
The award-winning comedian, actor, filmmaker and podcaster presents a hilarious and candid memoir-in-essays that confront his sometimes shocking and difficult childhood, journey towards self-acceptance and his own experiences as a father. .
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| Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis ChinAsian American Writers' Workshop cofounder Curtis Chin's nostalgic debut chronicles his coming-of-age in 1980s Detroit, where he worked at his family's beloved Chinese restaurant and navigated his growing attraction to other boys. Try this next: Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More by Fatima Ali. |
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| Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya HPseudonymous Lamya H's Stonewall Book Award-winning debut offers a moving account of the author's experiences as a queer Muslim woman who immigrated to the United States as a teen and found strength from stories in the Quran. Try this next: Love Is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar. |
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| In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life by Amy SchneiderJeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider, the show's most decorated woman champion, shares her unlikely path toward becoming a "Famous Celebrity Trans Person" in this funny and nonlinear memoir-in-essays featuring chapter titles styled like Jeopardy! questions. Try this next: Form of a Question by Andrew Rostan. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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