The Get-Over-Yourself Self-Help Book and Other Essays


Book Description

The Get-Over-Yourself Self-Help Book and Other Essays presents a collection of vignettes, narratives, and rants that detail the often absurd business of getting on with life. In an attempt to aspire to a so-called higher life, many of us fear both death and youth, reaching for perfection through the latest technical gadgets that encourage us to cling to preconceived notions of ourselves and to define ourselves through a text message. But is that really any way to truly live? Baby boomer columnist and curmudgeon Sylvia Shawcross believes that satirists have a purpose in this worldto help others to laugh at the absurdity of life. In her second compilation of humorous reflections, Shawcross begins with a hilarious recounting of the frustrating chain of events that occur when she attempts to replace a broken remote at the electronics store and continues with a series of lighthearted essays where she reveals the unconventional and often wacky behavior of those she encounters daily. From the reasons behind rampant consumerism to the forced reprogramming behind ten-digit dialing, Shawcross contemplates issues of global importance while encouraging all of us to wake up and smell the high-priced lattfor sadly, as she says, this is just how it is. The Get-Over-Yourself Self-Help Book and Other Essays provides an eye-opening, amusing glimpse into the mind of a curmudgeon in all her unabashed glory.




HELP!


Book Description

How do you solve the problem of human happiness? It’s a subject that has occupied some of the greatest philosophers of all time, from Aristotle to Paul McKenna – but how do we sort the good ideas from the terrible ones? Over the past few years, Oliver Burkeman has travelled to some of the strangest outposts of the ‘happiness industry’ in an attempt to find out. In Help!, the first collection of his popular Guardian columns, Burkeman presents his findings. It’s a witty and thought-provoking exploration that punctures many of self-help’s most common myths, while also offering clear-headed, practical and of ten counter-intuitive advice on a range of topics from stress, procrastination and insomnia to wealth, laughter, time management and creativity. It doesn’t claim to have solved the problem of human happiness. But it might just bring us one step closer.




Four Thousand Weeks


Book Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.




Why I Write


Book Description

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times




No More Bananas


Book Description

“Feel better, get done more and become a nicer person” In this age of social media, fake news, individualism and information overload, the certainties we relied on in the past are gone. In our quest for assurance and support, the only seemingly dependable pillar left is other people. So we look to them. But they are unsettled too. And by looking to them, we create and perpetuate our own vicious stress-cycle. As a result, we lose our sensible selves. And we go bananas. But there is good news. If we look around us, there are people who withstand the collective lunacy and stay grounded. They do something that most of us have a hard time doing: they stay themselves. And the best news is that what they can do, you can do too. It doesn’t require any special talents or supernatural powers. It only requires doing. In this amiable, open and accessible book, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink takes you on his personal journey out of Bananaland. Drawing from cognitive psychology, martial arts, Saint Benedict, personal experience, and a wide range of other sources, the book offers a nine-step approach with some remarkably practical advice for keeping a cool head in the collective lunacy. “Free yourself from the collective lunacy and reclaim your calm and sensible self”




Burnout


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This book is a gift! I’ve been practicing their strategies, and it’s a total game changer.”—Brené Brown, PhD, author of Dare to Lead “A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves, Burnout is essential reading [and] . . . excels in its intersectionality.”—Bustle This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a roadmap to minimizing stress, managing emotions, and living more joyfully. Burnout. You, like most American women, have probably experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to exist as a woman in today’s world are two different things—and we exhaust ourselves trying to close the gap. Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the all-too-familiar cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. They compassionately explain the obstacles and societal pressures we face—and how we can fight back. You’ll learn • what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle • how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration • how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it • why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering from and preventing burnout With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in Burnout—and will be empowered to create positive change. A BOOKRIOT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR




How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America


Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book A revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful” (NPR). Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential reading. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these thirteen insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language and his artful rendering of experience, trumpeting why he is “simply one of the most talented writers in America” (New York magazine).




Lost in the Cosmos


Book Description

“A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke . . . to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is National Book Award–winning author Walker Percy’s humorous take on a familiar genre—as well as an invitation to serious contemplation of life’s biggest questions. One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human existence, and an unrivaled spin on self-help manuals by one of modern America’s greatest literary masters.




A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself


Book Description

A beautifully presented and uplifting book of contemplative, wry, sometimes funny essays about living thoughtfully and with care amidst life's challenges. If you're struggling to maintain grace and good humour amidst daily potholes and pitfalls, Brigid Lowry may be just the warm, wise and witty companion you need. Informed by contemporary psychology and Zen Buddhism, Brigid's essays offer reflections on everything from friendship to grief, and from gratitude to self-care. Give this book to a friend or gift it to yourself, A Year of Loving Kindness to Myself is all the encouragement you'll need to nurture you and those around you.




I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying


Book Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life—as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist—through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy. A The Root Favorite Books of the Year • A Good Housekeeping Best 60 Books of the Year • A YNaija 10 Notable Books of the Year • A GOOP 10 New Favorite Books • A Cup of Jo 5 Big Books of Fall • A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Books of 2019 • A Bustle 21 New Memoirs That Will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You • A Publishers Weekly Spring Preview Selection • An Electric Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 • A Bookish Best Nonfiction of Summer Selection "We will not think or talk about mental health or normalcy the same after reading this momentous art object moonlighting as a colossal collection of essays.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived with a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression—sometimes within the course of a single day. By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO's Def Poetry Jam, channeling her life into art. But beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey's mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II. In I'm Telling the Truth, But I'm Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health by giving us intimate access to her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medication, and family in the process, Bassey looks at how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives—how we appear to others, and more importantly to ourselves—and challenges our preconception about what it means to be "normal." Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are—and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.