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The last days of Roger Federer : and other endings / by Dyer, Geoff,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? As our bodies decay, how do we keep on? In this beguiling meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who've mattered to him throughout his life. With a playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he recounts Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, J. M. W. Turner's paintings of abstracted light, John Coltrane's cosmic melodies, Bjorn Borg's defeats, and Beethoven's final quartets -and considers the intensifications and modifications of experience that come when an ending is within sight. Throughout, he stresses the accomplishments of uncouth geniuses who defied convention, and went on doing so even when their beautiful youths were over. Ranging from Burning Man and the Doors to the nineteenth-century Alps and back, Dyer's book on last things is also a book about how to go on living with art and beauty--and on the entrancing effect and sudden illumination that an Art Pepper solo or Annie Dillard reflection can engender in even the most jaded and ironic sensibilities"--
Subjects: Artists; Athletes; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.); Gifted older people.; Gifted persons.; Older artists.; Older athletes.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Judgment detox : release the beliefs that hold you back from living a better life / by Bernstein, Gabrielle,author.;
"From featured "next-generation thought leader" on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100 and #1 New York Times bestselling author Gabrielle Bernstein comes a clear, proactive, step-by-step program to rid yourself of the tendency to judge yourself and others, and find your way back to true healing and oneness. Judgment--both being judged and judging others--is the core of our discomfort. While it's powerful, judgment isn't complicated. It's simply the separation from oneness. The moment we see ourselves as separate we detour into a false belief system that is out of alignment with our true nature. That separation, often a reflection of our own insecurities projected onto others, keeps us feeling alienated and alone. The Judgment Detox is an interactive process that calls on spiritual principles from the text A Course in Miracles, Kundalini yoga, meditation, EFT, and metaphysical teachings, allowing us to release the beliefs that hold us back from living a better life. Gabby has demystified these principles to make them easy to apply and commit to. The six steps include: -Witness your judgment without judgment -Honor the wound -Put love on the alter -See for the first time -Cut the cords -Bring your shadows to light This step-by-step process offers a path to true healing, oneness, and a deeper connection to the universe and those around us"--
Subjects: Self-actualization (Psychology); Judgment.; Happiness.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Orbital. by Harvey, Samantha.;
"A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in twenty-four hours. A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots a day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space -- not toward the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts -- from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan -- have left their lives behind to travel at warp speed as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live. Profound, contemplative, and gorgeous, Orbital is a gift -- a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet"--Library Bound Incorporated
Subjects: Science fiction.; FICTION / Literary; FICTION / Nature & the Environment; FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Exploration;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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A history of my brief body : a memoir / by Belcourt, Billy-Ray,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A profound meditation on queerness and indigeneity from the youngest ever winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Billy-Ray Belcourt begins A History of My Brief Body with a letter to his nohkom, his grandmother. "In the world-to-come," he writes, "everyone is loved by an NDN woman like you whose soft voice reminds us that we can stop running now." What follows is a charting of the distance between the world he was born into and the world he wants--a book as beautiful as it is devastating. Reflecting on his personal history, Belcourt maps his "un-Canadian and otherworldly" desire to love at all costs. We're taken to his birthplace in Joussard, in northern Alberta, where he and his twin brother come to exemplify opposites: hard and soft, masculine and feminine. To his high school graduation, where a hug from his father teaches him how to hold and be held. To a hotel room in Edmonton, where destroying the photographic evidence of his adolescence is an act of self-abolition and of making himself anew. Blending memoir and essay, and with a poet's delight in language, A History of My Brief Body is both a grappling with a legacy of trauma and a record of the joy that flourishes in spite of it."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Essays.; Belcourt, Billy-Ray.; Belcourt, Billy-Ray; Gay men; Sexual minorities; Indigenous peoples; Poets, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Commonwealth : a novel / by Patchett, Ann,author.;
"The acclaimed, bestselling author--winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize--tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families' lives. One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them. When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another. Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Families; Family secrets;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 2
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Nishga / by Abel, Jordan,1985-author.;
"From Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel comes a groundbreaking and emotionally devastating autobiographical meditation on the complicated legacies that Canada's reservation school system has cast on his grandparents', his parents' and his own generation. NISHGA is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence. As a Nisga'a writer, Jordan Abel often finds himself in a position where he is asked to explain his relationship to Nisga'a language, Nisga'a community, and Nisga'a cultural knowledge. However, as an intergenerational survivor of residential school--both of his grandparents attended the same residential school in Chilliwack, British Columbia--his relationship to his own Indigenous identity is complicated to say the least. NISHGA explores those complications and is invested in understanding how the colonial violence originating at the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School impacted his grandparents' generation, then his father's generation, and ultimately his own. The project is rooted in a desire to illuminate the realities of intergenerational survivors of residential school, but sheds light on Indigenous experiences that may not seem to be immediately (or inherently) Indigenous. Drawing on autobiography, a series of interconnected documents (including pieces of memoir, transcriptions of talks, and photography), NISHGA is a book about confronting difficult truths and it is about how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples engage with a history of colonial violence that is quite often rendered invisible."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Abel, Jordan, 1985-; Indigenous authors; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous children; Indigenous children; Indigenous peoples;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Nowhere, exactly : on identity and belonging / by Vassanji, M. G.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.From one of Canada's most celebrated writers, two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, comes a thoughtful meditation on what it means to belong in the world. Home is never a single place, entirely and unequivocally. It is contingent. The abstract "nowhere," then, is the true home. M.G. Vassanji has been exploring the immigrant experience for over three decades, drawing deeply on his own transnational upbringing and intimate understanding of the unique challenges and perspectives born from leaving one's home to resettle in a new land. The question of identity, of how to configure and see oneself within this new land, is one such challenge faced. But Vassanji suggests that a more fundamental and slippery endeavour than establishing one's identity is how, if ever, we can establish a sense of belonging. Can we ever truly belong in this new home? Did we ever truly belong in the home we left? Where exactly do we belong? For many, the answer is nowhere exactly. Combining brilliant prose, thoughtful, candid observation, and a lifetime of exploring how we as individuals are shaped by the places and communities in which we live and the history that haunts them, 'Nowhere, Exactly' examines with exquisite sensitivity the space between identity and belonging, the immigrant experience of both loss and gain, and the weight of memory and nostalgia, guilt and hope felt by so many of those who leave their homes in search of new ones.
Subjects: Belonging (Social psychology); Emigration and immigration; Identity (Psychology); Immigrants;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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I'm afraid of men / by Shraya, Vivek,1981-author.;
"A powerful meditation on the damaging effects of masculinity from a trans girl--a writer with celebrated indie roots and a knack for dismantling assumptions and challenging the status quo. Toxic masculinity takes many insidious forms, from misogyny and sexual harassment to homophobia, transphobia, and bullying. Vivek Shraya has firsthand experience with nearly all of them. As a boy, Vivek exhibited "feminine" qualities. The men in her life immediately and violently disapproved. They taught her to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon used to hurt her. They taught her to hate her femininity, to destroy the best parts of herself. In order to survive, Vivek had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As a girl, she's still afraid. Having spent years undoing the damage and salvaging her lost girlhood, she is haunted by the violence of men, seldom dressing the way she wants in public. As a result she is often still perceived as male, stirring feelings of guilt and self-doubt: Am I not feminine enough? Is this my fault for striving to be the perfect man and excelling at it? I'm afraid of men is a culmination of the years Vivek spent observing men and creating her own version of manhood. Through deeply personal reflection, she offers a rare and multifaceted perspective on gender and a hopeful reimagining of masculinity at a time when it's needed more than ever"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Shraya, Vivek, 1981-; Transgender people; Gender expression; Gender identity; Sex differences.; Masculinity.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The secret life of John le Carré / by Sisman, Adam,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The extraordinary secret life of a great novelist, which his biographer could not publish while le Carré was alive. Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Adam Sisman's definitive biography, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man; yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over five decades. To these relationships he brought much of the tradecraft that he had learned as a spy--cover stories, cut-outs and dead letter boxes. These clandestine operations brought an element of danger to his life, but they also meant deceiving those closest to him. Small wonder that betrayal became a running theme in his work. In trying to manage his biography, the novelist engaged in a succession of skirmishes with his biographer. While he could control what Sisman wrote about him in his lifetime, he accepted that the truth would eventually become known. Following his death in 2020, what had been withheld can now be revealed. The Secret Life of John le Carré reveals a hitherto-hidden perspective on the life and work of the spy-turned-author and a fascinating meditation on the complex relationship between biographer and subject. "Now that he is dead," Sisman writes, "we can know him better.""--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Le Carré, John, 1931-2020.; Novelists, English;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Lost in the Valley of Death : a story of obsession and danger in the Himalayas / by Rustad, Harley,author.;
"In the vein of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, a riveting work of narrative nonfiction centering on the unsolved disappearance of an American backpacker in India -- one of at least two dozen tourists who have met a similar fate in the remote and storied Parvati Valley. For centuries, India has enthralled westerners looking for an exotic getaway, a brief immersion in yoga and meditation, or in rare cases, a true pilgrimage to find spiritual revelation. Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveler trained in wilderness survival, was one such seeker. In his early thirties Justin Alexander Shetler, quit his job at a tech startup and set out on a global journey: across the United States by motorcycle, then down to South America, and on to the Philippines, Thailand, and Nepal, in search of authentic experiences and meaningful encounters, while also documenting his travels on Instagram. His enigmatic character and magnetic personality gained him a devoted following who lived vicariously through his adventures. But the ever restless explorer was driven to pursue ever greater challenges, and greater risks, in what had become a personal quest -- his own hero's journey. In 2016, he made his way to the Parvati Valley, a remote and rugged corner of the Indian Himalayas steeped in mystical tradition yet shrouded in darkness and danger. There, he spent weeks studying under the guidance of a sadhu, an Indian holy man, living and meditating in a cave. At the end of August, accompanied by the sadhu, he set off on a "spiritual journey" to a holy lake -- a journey from which he would never return. Lost in the Valley of Death is about one man's search to find himself, in a country where for many westerners the path to spiritual enlightenment can prove fraught, even treacherous. But it is also a story about all of us and the ways, sometimes extreme, we seek fulfillment in life.
Subjects: Shetler, Justin.; Shetler, Justin; Adventure and adventurers; Adventure travel; Hikers; Missing persons; Travel; Wilderness areas;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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