Essays Life

This collection of humorous columns for a rural parish magazine reflects life all year round in a small English village in the beautiful Cotswolds countryside where the author has lived since 1991. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern rural community life and the real-life equivalent of the fictional village of Wendlebury Barrow, the parish that is the setting for Debbie Young's fiction books. It is the sequel to All Part of the Charm, a collection of nostalgic essays and parish magazine columns. Debbie Young also writes...

Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits, and creepy boyfriends - and that's before she even puts on a bra. For the past 10 years, Notaro has been entertaining Phoenix newspaper readers with her wildly amusing autobiographical exploits and unique life experiences.

Reporting from the potholes midway through life's journey, Allen addresses these and other more serious matters, like the rude awakenings of being single after 25 years, of mothering a teenager, and of living with a serious illness. She also discusses life's everyday trials, like the horrors of attempting a crafts project, the anxieties of being a houseguest, and the ever-changing rules of recycling.

This collection of humorous short essays combines affection for the timeless values of community life in an English village with a nostalgia for aspects that are quietly slipping away. Easy to dip into, this light-hearted volume provides entertaining reading for anyone interested in modern English rural community life, wherever they live. Written between 1991 and 2015, most of these essays first appeared in the Hawkesbury Parish News, the community newspaper for Hawkesbury Upton, the Cotswold village in which Debbie Young has lived for the last 25 years. Very active in village life, she is ...

In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.

This book contains a series of engaging yet controversial essays by Samuel Butler, the famous Luddite who argued back in the 1860s that machines would one day take over the world and should be destroyed lest civilization as we know it is annihilated. He was a contrarian thinker who claims to have not liked books (though he wrote many) and disdained many aspects of Darwinian evolution, even while he agreed with key points.

Best-selling author and human guinea pig A. J. Jacobs puts his life to the test and reports on the surprising and entertaining results. He goes undercover as a woman, lives by George Washington’s moral code, and impersonates a movie star. He practices "radical honesty", brushes his teeth with the world’s most rational toothpaste, and outsources every part of his life to India—including reading bedtime stories to his kids.

Hilty draws on timeless biblical wisdom and presents a refreshing perspective on happiness that is still relevant today. His writing is clear, concise, and thought-provoking, and he emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility, self-awareness, and cultivating a positive mindset. This audiobook reminds us that true happiness comes from within and is not dependent on external circumstances.

Ever wondered what happened to the cyclewala who exchanged old clothes for shiny new utensils? Or why steel dabbaswere once the true MVPs of our school days? From the joy of leftover achar masala parathas to the tragic decline of kirana stores, this book is a nostalgic, humorous, and thought-provoking ride through India’s past and present. With witty observations and heartfelt memories, the author dives into the quirks of everyday life—be it the art of recycling before it became "cool," the struggles of modern safety, or even the fate of penguins as they drift toward extinction. Packed ...

In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of a particle collider; she's presented news on the color of dinosaur eggs, ice worms that live on mountaintop glaciers, and signs of life on Venus. In this, her debut book, she delivers a wholly original collection of powerful, emotionally raw, and unforgettable personal essays that probe the places where science touches our lives most intimately.

One of the most valuable spaces for an artist is the inner life—the sacred place where, outside of the constraints of time and space, meaning is extracted from raw experience and fashioned into art. In this timely new essay, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo discusses the work writers do as they sift through experience and work to cultivate rich interior lives. For authors, this often involves performing triage, a constant assessment of events that helps determine what’s useful for a story and potentially enduring.

Fritjof Capra, scientist, educator, activist, and accomplished author, presents the evolution of his thought over five decades in Patterns of Connection. First introduced in the late 1950s to the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, Capra quickly intuited the connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy - resulting in his first book, the best-selling The Tao of Physics.

When Hurricane Helene roared ashore, it didn’t just take houses, cars, and power lines—it took normalcy, leaving an entire community to pick up the pieces. When Life Gives You Floods, Bring the Ham is a raw, heartfelt, and unexpectedly humorous account of surviving the storm, losing nearly everything, and discovering what truly matters in the aftermath. Through vivid storytelling, this book blends memoir, humor, and resilience, offering a deeply personal yet universally relatable journey of displacement, devastation, and the small moments of joy that keep us going. From evacuating at ...

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), 1st Viscount St Albans, Attorney General and then Lord Chancellor of England, was an immensely learned, clever and ambitious man, with considerable political influence. However, he was also a philosopher with a wide interest in science, medicine and the classification of knowledge. Throughout his life he wrote a series of essays - following the manner set particularly by Montaigne, though extending back to Aristotle and others - the first 10 of which appeared in 1597.

Water Views was a weekly column published in the Norwalk Hour newspaper in Connecticut for twelve years (2001-2012). The column proved to be very popular, and received three Certificates of Merit for Outstanding Submissions in the Sailing Columns Category for the John Southam Awards, one in 2005 and two in 2006. In Water Views, A Collection of Essays, Volume I, author Karen Jewell has compiled 60 of the over 500 short essays that she penned during those twelve years. From southern Connecticut to northern Maine, Jewell shares insights and experiences on topics such as beach combing, super ...

David Sedaris' collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. With every clever turn of a phrase, Sedaris brings a view and a voice like no other to every unforgettable encounter. You can also listen to Sedaris in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Nanjala Nyabola is constantly exploring the world, working with migrants and confronting complex realities challenging common assumptions - both hers and others’. From Nepal to Botswana, Sicily to Haiti, New York to Nairobi, her sharp, humane essays ask tough questions and offer surprising, deeply shocking, and sometimes funny answers. It is time we saw the world through her eyes.

“Giorgio’s compassion is memorable.” –KIRKUS REVIEW It wasn’t a typical response to depression. Reaching a new low in her life, Kathie Giorgio, a natural skeptic, decides to fight her sadness by publically posting one moment of happiness every day on Facebook. The response is overwhelming. People flock to her page to see each day’s new post. Soon, Kathie launches Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News as her blog. She vows to continue this daily Today’s Moment for a year. And what a year! Her husband loses his job not once, but twice. Her autistic daughter is so ...

After nearly drowning in Greece, Christine Stovell was determined never to get on a boat again. The sailing kind? Definitely not. Yet when she married a keen sailor and became joint owner of a vintage wooden yacht, she somehow managed to sail halfway round Britain, despite never finding her sea legs. Insightful, funny and raw, Christine’s story captures the joy, terror and wonder of a novice, seasick sailor out on the waves in a small wooden boat. Her adventures have taken her through sleepy backwaters and high seas, from Essex to west Wales and across to France. Along the way, she’s ...

From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico in a region where “my ancestors lived for centuries,” the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, where she could truly take root, has eluded her. With this collection—spanning three decades, and including never-before-published work—Cisneros has come home at last.