Our friends over at Penguin Random House put together this excellent list of 50 books to read before you turn 50. But don't worry, it's never to late to read! All ages welcome.
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The let them theory : a life-changing tool that millions of people can't stop talking about
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"If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words--Let Them--will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands--and this book will show you exactly how to do it. [Robbins] teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly matters: YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life. Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact"--
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Book
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158.1 Rob
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"Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means."--provided by the publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Smi
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"In 2016, author Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds flocking to the feeders in her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater--an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired. Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time--from before the pandemic to the days of quarantine--through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world"--
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Book
Call Number:
598.07234 Tan
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Book
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FIC Smi
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A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Jul
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Fleishman Is In Trouble : A Novel
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Dr. Toby Fleishman wakes up each morning surrounded by women. Women who are self-actualized and independent and know what they want--and, against all odds, what they want is Toby. Who knew what kind of life awaited him once he finally extracted himself from his nightmare of a marriage? Who knew that there were women out there who would actually look at him with softness and desire? But just as the winds of his optimism are beginning to pick up, they're quickly dampened, and then extinguished, when his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears. Toby thought he knew what to expect when he moved out: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, tense co-parenting negotiations. He never thought that one day Rachel would just drop their children off at his place and never come back. As Toby tries to figure out what happened and what it means, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to really understand where Rachel went and what really happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen it all that clearly in the first place. Fleishman Is In Trouble is an exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of both our great wariness and our great optimism"-- Provided by publisher.
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Book
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FIC Bro
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Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and from the worlds of theatre, history, and education, to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. He helps listeners become more understanding and considerate towards others, and find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way he offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is a profoundly creative act: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves?
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Audiobook
Call Number:
302 Bro
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Book
Call Number:
B Chi
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A companion to "A Field Guide for Getting Lost" explores the ways that people construct lives from stories and connect to each other through empathy, narrative, and imagination, sharing anecdotes about historical figures and members of the author's own family.
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Book
Call Number:
814 Sol
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"Born in 1800, Henry Whittaker's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. She falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction--into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist--but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life."--Provided by publisher.
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Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Gil
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Everything in its place : first loves and last tales
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This final volume of essays showcases Oliver Sacks's broad range of interests--from his passions for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Oliver Sacks, scientist and storyteller, is beloved by readers for his neurological case histories, his fascination and familiarity with human behavior at its most unexpected and unfamiliar. Everything In Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, all told with his characteristic compassion, erudition, and luminous prose.--
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Book
Call Number:
B Sac
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Walden ; and, Civil disobedience
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On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into the cabin he had built on the shore of Walden Pond. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is proud to publish an exceptional new edition of what is perhaps the most important book in our history as a publisher. Walden: An Annotated Edition features the definitive text of the book with extensive notes on Thoreau's life and times by the distinguished biographer and critic Walter Harding. In the third chapter, Thoreau writes, "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" For many readers, Walden is that book. Written a century and a half ago, it grows more meaningful every day, and whether you are reading it for the first time or the hundredth, Walter Harding's insightful comments will open your eyes to the true depths of this masterpiece.
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Book
Call Number:
818 Tho
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For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of? In this book. Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style--a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage--Coates provides readers an illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here--From statement provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
305.8 Coa
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James Clear reveals practical strategies that will teach you how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. He draws on proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.
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Book
Call Number:
155.24 Cle
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Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir's work is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of "woman," and an exploration of inequality and otherness. This new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was sixty years ago, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.
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Book
Call Number:
305.4 Bea 2011
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When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Nun
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The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations
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Toni Morrison releases a new non-fiction collection: a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
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Large Print
Call Number:
LP 814 Mor
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Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials and its triumphs through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other's faults with patience and affection.
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Audiobook
Call Number:
FIC Tyl
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Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.
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Book
Call Number:
LP FIC All
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Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day's outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Swi
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The story of a middle-aged woman's search for freedom, from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her four children have flown, her husband is otherwise occupied, and after twenty years of being a good wife and mother, Kate Brown is free for a summer of adventure. She plunges into an affair with a younger man, travelling abroad with him, and, on her return to England, meets an extraordinary young woman whose charm and freedom of spirit encourages Kate in her own liberation. Kate's new life has brought her a strange unhappiness, but as the summer months unfold, a darker, disquieting journey begins, devastating in its consequences. A novel of self-discovery that bears the hallmarks of Lessing's brilliance, honesty and power to move the reader, 'The Summer Before the Dark' has been hailed by some as Lessing's best book.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Les
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This book takes a look at an ordinary substance--salt, the only rock humans eat--and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning.
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Book
Call Number:
333.856 Kur
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A science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in a dingy backstreet room. Set in a multi-layered story of the death of a woman's sister and husband in the 1940's, with a novel-within-a novel as a background.
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Book
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FIC Atw
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"A survivor of Ireland's Great Famine and a recent immigrant to the United States, 17-year-old Thomas McNulty joins the U.S. Army in 1851 with his best friend and fellow orphan, John Cole. Sent first to the Great Plains to butcher the Sioux, and later, to the battlefields of the Civil War, the young carry out their orders despite their horror of the carnage. Meanwhile, they become lovers and must find a way to build a life together in a society that doesn't recognize or understand romantic relationships between men" --Novelist.com
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Bar
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"Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams--invasive images of blood and brutality--torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her but also from herself." -- jacket.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Han
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A bold new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros.--
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Book
Call Number:
811 Cis
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First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is an account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Lorde's testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.-- From statement provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
616.994 Lor
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The Life-changing Magic Of Tidying Up : The Japanese Art Of Decluttering And Organizing
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Book
Call Number:
648 Kon
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The omnivore's dilemma : [a natural history of four meals]
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The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
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Audiobook
Call Number:
394.12 Pol
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Dear Girls : Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice For Living Your Best Life
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Ali Wong offers sharp insights and humor are quite personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she's learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal singles life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong's letters are funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and disgusting) for all.-- From statement provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
B Won
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"When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days, decades years earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid's 13-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC Str
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Samantha Irby offers her fourth book after the success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had. Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, she goes to therapy and tries out Lexapro, gets healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.--
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Book
Call Number:
814 Irb
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Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.
Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.
Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.
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Book
Call Number:
910.01 De B
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Hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet
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Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.
Format:
Large Print
Call Number:
LP FIC For
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Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice On Love And Life From Dear Sugar
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"Tiny Beautiful Things" brings the best of Cheryl Strayed's published and never-before-published online columns in one place and includes a new introduction by Steve Almond.
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Book
Call Number:
070.444 Str
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Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle's memory. Edwin Black has come to find his true father. Thomas Frank has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Ora
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Before We Were Yours [Kit] : A Novel
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Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents--but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility's cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiance, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis,a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals--in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Kit
Call Number:
Book Club Kit Win
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
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"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people people of Chicken Hill must struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community" --
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Book
Call Number:
FIC McB
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Florentino is a poetry-writing telegraph operator who lives in a Central American city. He spots the graceful Fermina while making his rounds, and finds himself in love. While Florentino's mother encourages the courtship, Fermina's father absolutely forbids it. Years pass, and the well-born Dr. Urbino treats Fermina for a case of cholera. When Urbino proposes, Fermina accepts. A distraught Florentino decides to wait. With the help of his uncle, he amasses wealth of his own. All the while, he drifts from woman to woman, never really finding what he is looking for in a woman. After five decades of waiting, he gets a second chance to win Fermina's heart.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Gar
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How to love better : the path to deeper connection through growth, kindness, and compassion
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"Personal transformation, that is grounded in self-love and has greater inner peace as the goal, will naturally teach you how to love better. Seeing yourself clearly opens the door to compassion for yourself and other people." Love enters our lives in many forms: friends, family, intimate partners. But all of these relationships are defined by the love we have for ourselves. If we see our relationships as opportunities to be fully present in our healing and learn to love each other better, yung pueblo assures us that we can transform and meet each other with compassion instead of judgment. In How to Love Better, yung pueblo examines all aspects of a relationship, from the rose-colored first days when you may be hesitant to show your full self, to the challenges that can arise without clear communication, to dealing with heartbreak and healing as you close a chapter of your life. The power of looking inward remains at the core of all his teachings. Ego and attachment can become barriers in a relationship, so the more self-aware you become, the more you can support your partner and yourself. yung pueblo's understandings on embracing change, building a foundation of honesty, and learning to listen selflessly will resonate regardless of where you are in your healing journey. And his unique combination of poetry, personal experience, and thoughtful advice will help you grow and strengthen all your relationships"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
152.41 Yun
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Between Two Kingdoms : A Memoir Of A Life Interrupted
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Suleika Jaouad describes the harrowing years she spent in early adulthood fighting leukemia and how she learned to live again while forging connections with other survivors of profound illness and suffering.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.994 Jao
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When things don't go your way : Zen wisdom for difficult times
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"From renowned Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim, a guide to turning life's challenges into opportunities for self-discovery. Have you ever felt like life has thrown you a curveball? Are you struggling to overcome unexpected challenges and setbacks? While loss, heartbreak, and loneliness are all part of the human experience, in this warm guide, Haemin Sunim shows us that these moments can actually be rare opportunities for self-discovery, serving as stepping stones to greater things in life. Drawing on Zen Buddhist philosophy and Sunim's own experiences, When Things Don't Go Your Way helps you navigate life's challenges with resilience and grace. Whether you're dealing with rejection, uncertainty, loneliness, conflicts in relationships, or burnout--or simply seeking to improve your mental and emotional well-being--Sunim offers a new spiritual perspective, one that helps us face life's challenges with greater ease and understanding, and offers solace and courage when we need it the most"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
294.3 Hye
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The artist's way : a spiritual path to higher creativity
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The Artist's Way is a 12-week course that helps people unlock their capacity for creativity — whether in art, at work, or in life. At its core, it's a great practice to access more delight, curiosity, and creative inquiry within your daily life.
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Book
Call Number:
153.35 Cam 2016
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They were inseparable childhood friends. Some were lost to the war. The others' lives were unimaginably upended, and now, postwar, they've scattered: to Ceylon and India, France and Germany (and, inevitably, back to Britain)--each of them trying to answer the question that fuels this sweeping novel: "If you have been embroiled in a war... what were you supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over?" As the narrative unfolds in brief, dramatic chapters we follow the old friends as their paths re-cross or their ties fray, as they test loyalties and love, face survivor's grief and guilt, adjust in profound and quotidian ways to this newest modern world. And at their center: Daniel (an RAF flying ace) and Rosie (a war-time nurse), their marriage slowly revealed to be built on lies, Daniel finding solace--and, sometimes, family--with other women, Rosie drawing her religion around herself like a carapace. Here too are Rosie's sisters--a "bohemian," a minister's wife, and a spinster; Daniel's despairing brother; Rosie's "increasingly peculiar" mother and her genial, secretive father. And as peace once more gives way to war, we see it begin to reshape, yet again, the lives of these beautifully drawn women and men.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC De B
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The former lover of a German attorney refuses to defend herself when she is accused of a hideous crime. The attorney gradually realizes that the woman may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Sch
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This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Wha
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Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
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Description:
"Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career. Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years. Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
811.54 Oli
See Also:
Anna Karenina: A Novel In Eight Parts
Author(s):
Description:
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. While previous versions have softened the robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear and Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This award-winning team's authoritative edition also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this Anna Karenina will be the definitive text for generations to come.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Tol
See Also:
An artist of the floating world
Author(s):
Description:
In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world" -- the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink -- offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ish
See Also:
Author(s):
Description:
In Waiting, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Ha Jin draws on his intimate knowledge of contemporary China to create a novel of unexpected richness and feeling. This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.
For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young—a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different.
Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. Waiting charms and startles us with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves us with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young—a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different.
Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. Waiting charms and startles us with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves us with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC JinC