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A year of last things : poems / by Ondaatje, Michael,1943-author.;
"From one of the most influential writers of this generation, a gorgeous and most of all surprising collection of poems about memory, love, and longing, and the act of looking back. Following several of his internationally acclaimed, beloved novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. In pieces that are sometimes wittily funny, moving, and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and abandoned landscapes we hold onto to rediscover the influence of every border crossed. Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Moliere's chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to a California coast, and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges his past and present, in the way memory and the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence all that surrounds him. As in this startling passage from his poem "His Chair, A Narrow Bed, A Motel Room, The Fox": At the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles Sam Cooke was shot dead. 'See my shadow on the wall ... ' All those motels and hotels in literature and song, where X wrote this, where Y got drunk, where Z overdosed. The one Hank Williams was driven past, dead already in his car. The Slaviansky Bazaar Hotel in Lady with a Dog where Dmitri imagines their dark but hopeful future. The Hotel du Grand Miroir in Brussels where Baudelaire lived his last few months. (A decade later Verlaine shot Rimbaud there.) The Casa Verdi in Milan where retired opera singers were welcome along with the various heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa in their afterlife."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Poetry.; Canadian poetry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Design your next chapter : how to realize your dreams and reinvent your life / by Travis, Debbie,1960-author.;
"If you feel stuck, with no idea what you should do next, lifestyle celebrity and TV pioneer Debbie Travis's new book is for you. Drawing on the tough (sometimes hilarious) lessons Debbie learned in her own leap into a new way of living, and a multitude of stories, tips and ideas to jumpstart your dreams, she's created an inspiring roadmap for change. A few years ago, Debbie Travis realized that she just wasn't challenged any more by her wildly successful TV career and yet she was so busy she was missing out on the people and things that made her happy. She dared to dream about a whole new direction in life--a plan to turn a 13th-century farmhouse in Tuscany into a unique hotel and retreat for people who need a change as much as she did. And now, after a crazy amount of work, she is not only living that dream but sharing it with others. Her new book draws directly on her own experiences (when she started, Debbie could barely make a bed, let alone run a hotel in a foreign country) and the uplifting stories of personal u-turns shared by women who have come to her retreats. Debbie's "commandments" will inspire women (and men) who have lost track of who they are or what they want to be; who are going through the motions of a career that doesn't satisfy them anymore; who are wondering what to do with themselves now that their kids are gone or their marriage is over. On every page, Debbie shares the tools that helped her transform her life, and her example, her wit and her common sense advice will help motivate anyone who finds themselves standing at a crossroads wondering 'What's next for me?'"--
Subjects: Motivation (Psychology); Self-actualization (Psychology); Success.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How to sleep : the new science-based solutions for sleeping through the night / by Pelayo, Rafael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Sleep difficulties affect millions of people-and the problem is getting worse. The deluge of sleep advice out there, referred to collectively as "sleep hygiene" rules, consists mostly of isolated recommendations for things not to do, such as: Don't drink coffee close to bedtime. Don't watch TV in bed. Despite the popularity of these old rules, Dr. Rafael Pelayo tells us, sleep hygiene alone is rarely effective in helping people with serious sleep problems. We need new rules that reflect the growth of knowledge in sleep science and can effectively improve our health. Pelayo's approach is to first take a step back and teach us how sleep works. He explains that nobody sleeps through the night; that the need for sleep is biological, but the way we sleep is learned; how much sleep you actually need each night, and that you can't get by with less. Then, once readers understand sleep and why it's so essential to our health and well-being, he offers a clear path to better sleep, with a flexible approach that will work for anyone. He offers a strategy for combatting jet lag: use your circadian rhythms to your advantage by maximizing your exposure to daylight. He advises you to think of napping like snacking: snacks are fine to tide you over during long stretches between meals, but if snacking too much or too late keeps you from eating dinner, it's a problem-same goes for naps and a good night's sleep! And he cautions that alcohol is a double-edged sword: it may help you fall asleep, but it also disrupts your sleep cycle. The information in this friendly, accessible book will help readers sleep better, wake up refreshed, and have a healthier life"--
Subjects: Sleep disorders; Sleep.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The girl who smiled beads : a story of war and what comes after / by Wamariya, Clemantine,author.; Weil, Elizabeth,1969-author.;
"A riveting story of dislocation, survival and the power of the imagination to save us. Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were "thunder." It was 1994, and in 100 days, more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety--hiding under beds, foraging for food, surviving and fleeing refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing unimaginable cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were alive. At age twelve, Clemantine, along with Claire, was granted asylum in the United States--a chance to build a new life. Chicago was disorienting, filled with neon lights, antiseptic smells, endless concrete. Clemantine spoke five languages but almost no English, and had barely gone to school. Many people wanted to help--a family in the North Shore suburbs invited Clemantine to live with them as their daughter. Others saw her only as broken. They thought she needed, and wanted, to be saved. Meanwhile Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, found herself on a very different path, cleaning hotel rooms to support her three children. Raw, urgent, yet disarmingly beautiful, The Girl Who Smiled Beads captures the true costs and aftershocks of war: what is forever lost, what can be repaired, the fragility and importance of memory, the faith that one can learn, again, to love oneself, even with deep scars."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Wamariya, Clemantine.; Genocide; Genocide survivors; Genocide survivors; Refugees; Refugees;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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From Here to the Great Unknown: Oprah's Book Club A Memoir [electronic resource] : by Presley, Lisa Marie.aut; Keough, Riley.aut; cloudLibrary;
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.   In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and now grieved.   Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.   To make her mother known.   This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Personal Memoirs; Entertainment & Performing Arts; Death, Grief, Bereavement;
© 2024., Random House Publishing Group,
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From Here to the Great Unknown: Oprah's Book Club A Memoir [electronic resource] : by Presley, Lisa Marie.aut; Keough, Riley.aut; Keough, Riley.nrt; Roberts, Julia.nrt; cloudLibrary;
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.   In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and now grieved.   Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.   To make her mother known.   This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Personal Memoirs; Entertainment & Performing Arts; Death, Grief, Bereavement;
© 2024., Penguin Random House,
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And then all hell broke loose : two decades in the Middle East / by Engel, Richard,1973-;
"Based on two decades of reporting, NBC's chief foreign correspondent's riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up-close--sometimes dangerously so. When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab news sources and got a call that a busload of Italian tourists were massacred at a Cairo museum. This is his first view of the carnage these years would pile on. Over two decades Engel has been under fire, blown out of hotel beds, taken hostage. He has watched Mubarak and Morsi in Egypt arrested and condemned, reported from Jerusalem, been through the Lebanese war, covered the whole shooting match in Iraq, interviewed Libyan rebels who toppled Gaddafi, reported from Syria as Al-Qaeda stepped in, was kidnapped in the Syrian crosscurrents of fighting. He goes into Afghanistan with the Taliban and to Iraq with ISIS. In the page-turning And Then All Hell Broke Loose, he shares his adventure tale. Engel takes chances, though not reckless ones, keeps a level head and a sense of humor, as well as a grasp of history in the making. Reporting as NBC's Chief-Foreign Correspondent, he reveals his unparalleled access to the major figures, the gritty soldiers, and the helpless victims in the Middle East during this watershed time. We can experience the unforgettable suffering and despair of the local populations. Engel's vivid description is intimate and personal. Importantly, it is a succinct and authoritative account of the ever-changing currents in that dangerous land"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Engel, Richard, 1973-; Foreign correspondents;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The damage / by Wahrer, Caitlin,author.;
"When a small-town family is pushed to the brink, how far will they go to protect one of their own? A propulsive, gets-under-your-skin read about what we will do in the name of love and blood Tony has always looked out for his younger brother, Nick. So when he's called to a hospital bed where Nick is lying battered and bruised after a violent attack, his protective instincts flare, and a white-hot rage begins to build. Nick didn't ask for any of this. One moment he was partying at college; the next, he was at the center of an investigation threatening to tear not only him, but his entire family, apart. The real trouble? He can't remember a thing about what happened at the bar that night. And now his attacker, out on bail, is disputing Nick's version of what happened. Tony's wife, Julia, always knew that her husband's younger brother would be a huge part of their lives. As a a small-town New England lawyer, she works with kids like Nick all the time. She is determined to use her professional connections and keen intellect to make the best possible case for Nick. When Detective Rice gets assigned to the case, Julia feels they're in good hands. Especially because she senses that Rice, too, understands how things can quickly get complicated. Very complicated. As Julia tries to help her brother-in-law, she sees Tony's desire for revenge growing by the day. She wants justice for Nick, too, but Tony's preoccupation iss Julia tries to help her brother-in-law, she sees Tony's desire for revenge growing by the day. She wants justice for Nick, too, but Tony's preoccupation is scaring her. And before long, she finds herself asking: does she really know what her husband is capable of? Or of what she herself is?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Psychological fiction.; Amnesia; Families; Memory; Violence;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Do parents matter? : why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don't fight, and American families should just relax / by LeVine, Robert Alan,1932-author.; LeVine, Sarah,1940-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In some parts of northwestern Nigeria, mothers studiously avoid making eye contact with their babies. Some Chinese parents go out of their way to seek confrontation with their toddlers. Japanese parents almost universally co-sleep with their infants, sometimes continuing to share a bed with them until age ten. Yet all these parents are as likely as Americans to have loving relationships with happy children. If these practices seem bizarre, or their results seem counterintuitive, it's not necessarily because other cultures have discovered the keys to understanding children. It might be more appropriate to say there are no keys-but Americans are driving themselves crazy trying to find them. When we're immersed in news articles and scientific findings proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, we often miss the bigger picture: that parents can only affect their children so much. Robert and Sarah LeVine, married anthropologists at Harvard University, have spent their lives researching parenting across the globe-starting with a trip to visit the Hausa people of Nigeria as newlyweds in 1969. Their decades of original research provide a new window onto the challenges of parenting and the ways that it is shaped by economic, cultural, and familial traditions. Their ability to put our modern struggles into global and historical perspective should calm many a nervous mother or father's nerves. It has become a truism to say that American parents are exhausted and overstressed about the health, intelligence, happiness, and success of their children. But as Robert and Sarah LeVine show, this is all part of our culture. And a look around the world may be just the thing to remind us that there are plenty of other choices to make."--
Subjects: Child development; Child rearing; Ethnopsychology.; Families; Parenting;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The velvet rope economy : how inequality became big business / by Schwartz, Nelson,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope rising, separating Americans into two radically different experiences of life. On one side of the velvet rope is a friction-free existence where, for a price, needs are anticipated and catered to. Red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side of the rope, friction is practically the defining characteristic, with middle-and working-class Americans facing a Darwinian fight for an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, a hospital bed. We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to serve the privileged. New York Times business reporter Nelson Schwartz offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the velvet rope economy and those who created it: the ship-within-a-ship on Norwegian Cruise Lines that saves the best views for the wealthy, a special pager for donors that reaches San Francisco's top cardiologist, a $4,000-a-night maternity suite, firefighters who save one home but not the house next door. And he shows the toll of velvet rope innovation on the rest of us: long waits for an ambulance, packed highways, school athletics that are pay to play. What's more, as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the barriers everyone else must contend with"--
Subjects: Income distribution; Affluent consumers; Classism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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