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The Steps: A Memoir
by Sylvester Stallone
In the fifty years since Sylvester Stallone ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, he and those steps have become symbols of resilience and determination, and have inspired millions from all over the world to pursue their dreams. In The Steps, Stallone recounts how he pursued his own dreams. A culmination of decades of reflection, Stallone shares where he came from--a difficult birth, an even more difficult childhood, years of struggle in school being misunderstood--and he explains how the real story of a successful life is built by facing, embracing, and ultimately overcoming our challenges. It's found in the distances we are willing to go and the steps we must take to get from where we are to where we want to go. In a narrative framed between his arrival in New York City in 1969 and the triumph of Rocky at the 1977 Academy Awards, Stallone weaves a vivid and propulsive portrait of struggle, subsistence, and ultimately success. He writes of his early days and later years, too, and the persistence, creativity, and resilience that led not only to the creation of Rocky but to a career filled with remarkably iconic roles. The Steps is a testament to Stallone's extraordinary life and a profound meditation on the importance of vision and willpower and hard work.
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The Wilder Way: A Memoir of Adventure, Freedom, and an Uncharted Life
by Eva Zu Beck
Eva zu Beck, professional storyteller and avid adventurer believes our best life is available to each of us, in every moment. But we have to seize it. The comfort we crave can also be a silent killer of dreams. Whether your dream is to scale a foreign mountain, hike a local trail, or pick up a paint brush, Eva's message is clear: The world belongs to the brave. But it wasn't always this way: Seven years ago, Eva was a young, well-paid corporate executive living the high life in London, dressed in designer clothes with a handsome, equally successful fiance on her arm. But as she walked down the aisle on the day of her wedding, the tears she shed were not tears of joy as their guests thought, but of a deep, unnamed sadness. Nearly a year later, Eva quit her high-paying job, left her picture-perfect marriage, and bought a one-way ticket to Nepal. What she didn't know then was that she was embarking on a seven-year journey that would take her from Mongolia's wilderness to Yemen's remote islands to the Arctic Circle--and ultimately to a life of profound meaning and purpose. This extraordinary memoir chronicles one woman's transformation from someone living society's idea of a best life to a person discovering the truth of her own.
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One Helluva Ride
by Michael Douglas
Beginning with his fractured childhood and a complex relationship with his superstar father, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas finally gives the full and uncensored account of a remarkable life. One Helluva Ride reveals incredible behind-the-scenes stories featuring a Who's Who of Hollywood, many of them never revealed before and some outrageously funny, with an unflinching honesty about his sometimes bad-boy life. Initially dismissed as just the handsome son of a legendary movie star, at age thirty-one he shook up Hollywood when he won his first Oscar for producing the five-time Academy Award-winning classic film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Told he would never be more than a TV actor, he quit the hit series The Streets of San Francisco to become an international movie star, with a list of classic films that have grossed billions of dollars, winning a second Oscar for his riveting performance as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. I can't think about my life without thinking of my movies, Douglas says, and he recounts his career through twelve of his most iconic films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The China Syndrome, Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile, Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, The American President, Traffic and Behind the Candelabra. These movies not only captured the cultural zeitgeist but often defined it. Yet as Douglas's fame grew, so did his personal struggles. He recounts the full, unfiltered story of his turbulent first marriage; infidelity and affairs with some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood; his own serious struggle with alcohol, drugs and rehab; the heartbreaking fight to save his son from an addiction that sent him to prison; and his against-all-odds battle with stage IV cancer. Father, son, husband, actor, producer, brother and friend. This is the real, raw, deeply honest and vulnerable Michael Douglas you didn't know--until now.
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An American Girl: How a Billion-Dollar Doll and Its Unlikely Founder Changed Girlhood Forever
by Amanda Fitzsimons
A deeply researched, invigorating love letter to the beloved American Girl brand, its unforgettable female founder Pleasant Rowland, and her then radical, now iconic line of eighteen-inch dolls that surprised and transfixed a nation. Are you a Samantha? A Felicity? An Addy? Dive into the world of American Girl, the franchise that has captivated the world for generations. For four decades and counting, American Girl has been a defining force in the lives of young girls, shaping their understanding of history, identity, and selfhood. But the story of its creation--and the visionary woman behind it--has never been fully told...until now. An American Girl is the fascinating tale of Pleasant Rowland, the trailblazing founder who disrupted the toy industry with her line of dolls defined by their high-quality craftsmanship and rich, educational backstories--and how this iconic brand from America's heartland ended up shaping girlhood for generations. Author Amanda Fitzsimons takes readers inside Rowland's meticulous creative process and the far-reaching, almost incalculable legacy of her creation.
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Joyful, Anyway
by Kate Bowler
True joy--an unmistakable blend of gratitude, hope, and delight--will find you, even in the midst of sadness. Allowing yourself to receive this gift is what will get you through. We are overwhelmed. Frightening headlines, illness, uncertainty, grief, and email. We are left wondering why, if we're doing everything right, life still feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Joyful, Anway is bestselling author Kate Bowler's bracingly honest exploration of this dilemma. By sharing her personal experience and stories from some of our culture's preeminent historians, philosophers, and religious scholars, Bowler presents an original and inspiring understanding of joy. This is a type of joy that is different from happiness, and it does not depend on resolving the things that make life difficult. Drawing on a decade of living with serious illness and a lifetime, as a divinity professor, studying America's obsession with progress, she shows why the relentless pursuit of happiness may, in fact, keep us from experiencing true joy. Joy isn't something you can optimize or manufacture. It subverts our expectations, finding us when life rewrites our scripts. Joyful, Anyway offers language for the ache we all carry and practices--loosening control, introducing novelty, choosing charity--that will open us up to the surprising, technicolor moments that pull us back into life. Inspiring, funny, and soulful, Joyful, Anyway is a book you will turn to again and again. Joy reminds us that no matter what, life is still worth loving. For every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.
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Spotlight on Graphic Memoirs |
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Ephemera : a memoir
by Briana Loewinsohn
Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warm, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood.
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Gender Queer
by Maia Kobabe
Winner of the Alex Award and a Stonewall Honor Book, Maia Kobabe's candid graphic memoir chronicles eir fraught exploration of gender and sexual identity. A muted color palette reflects the calm and gentle tone of this much-lauded debut. Read-alike: Super Late Bloomer by Julia Kaye.
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Loved and lost : a relationship trilogy
by Jeffrey Brown
Twenty years ago, young painter Jeffrey Brown grew frustrated with the expectations of the art world and wanted desperately to make something real. In a single sketchbook, working directly in ink, he began recording his memories of a recent long-distance relationship, matching the emotional frailty of the young lovers with painfully honest writing and art. Chronicling the awkward mess of romantic relationships in unsparing and explicit detail, these works also reflect the fragmentary nature of memory, the risk of opening ourselves to pain, and the giggly rush of falling in love.
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The Secret to Superhuman Strength
by Alison Bechdel
Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s (Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!) to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author's own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others. A heartrendingly comic chronicle for our times.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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