The Wreckage of My Presence


Book Description

"Magnificent." —People Magazine The instant New York Times bestseller: Laugh-out-loud, deeply insightful, and emotion-filled essays from multitalented actress, comedian, podcaster, and writer Casey Wilson. Casey Wilson has a lot on her mind and she isn’t afraid to share. In this dazzling collection, each essay skillfully constructed and brimming with emotion, she shares her thoughts on the joys and vagaries of modern-day womanhood and motherhood, introduces the not-quite-typical family that made her who she is, and persuasively argues that lowbrow pop culture is the perfect lens through which to examine human nature. Whether she’s extolling the virtues of eating in bed, processing the humiliation over her father’s late in life perm, mourning her mother's passing, or revealing her patented method for keeping the mystery alive in a marriage, Casey is witty, candid, and full of poignant and funny surprises. Humorous dives into her obsessions and areas of personal expertise—self-help, nice guys, cool girls (not her) and how to receive visitors in the bath—are matched by touching meditations on female friendship, anger, grief, motherhood, and identity. Reading The Wreckage of My Presence is like spending time with a close friend—a deeply passionate, full-tilt, joyous, excessive, compulsive, shameless, hungry-for-it-all, loyal, cheerleading friend. A friend who is ready for any big feelings that come her way—and isn’t afraid to embrace them.




How Do I Un-Remember This?


Book Description

Instant New York Times Bestseller From the host of Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino comes a collection of stories you'll be glad didn't happen to you. Think of the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you. Was it the time your high school cheer squad taunted you in front of the entire town? Was it the time your best friend's mom caught you streaking in all your naked, self-conscious glory? What about the time you accidentally threw a tooth at your dry cleaner or took an urn into Kohl's for some holiday shopping? For Danny Pellegrino, the answer is all of the above. Growing up as a closeted gay kid in small-town Ohio wasn't easy, and Danny has the stories to prove it. But coming of age in the 90s still meant something magical to Danny. The music, film, and celebrity moments of his youth were truly iconic, and his love for all things pop culture connected him to a world larger than the one he knew in the suburban Midwest. And through all the pains of growing up, Danny could always look to that world for hope—whether that meant bingeing The Nanny until he had the confidence of Fran Fine, belting out Brandy songs until his heartaches were healed, or watching semi-clothed Ryan Phillippe scenes until his cheeks burned from blushing. With refreshing honesty and jaw-dropping absurdity, Danny invites readers to experience his most formative moments in life—from his hometown in Ohio to his hit podcast and career in entertainment today. How Do I Un-Remember This? is an unfiltered and all-too-relatable glimpse into Danny's life and the heartfelt and hilarious moments that shaped it. Although he wouldn't change them for the world, these stories are—unfortunately—true.




You'll Grow Out of It


Book Description

From Emmy award-winning comedy writer Jessi Klein, You'll Grow Out of It hilariously and candidly explores the journey of the 21st-century woman. As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. In You'll Grow Out of It, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond. These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" ("miss sounds like you weigh 99 pounds"). Raw, relatable, and consistently hilarious, You'll Grow Out of It is a one-of-a-kind book by a singular and irresistible comic voice.




I'll Show Myself Out


Book Description

An instant New York Times bestseller, I'll Show Myself Out is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut You’ll Grow Out of It. Longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay “Sometimes I think about how much bad news there is to tell my kid, the endlessly long, looping CVS receipt scroll of truly terrible things that have happened, and I want to get under the bed and never come out. How do we tell them about all this? Can we just play Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire and then brace for questions? The first of which should be, how is this a song that played on the radio?” In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife. In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet,” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments, and bittersweetness. Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I'll Show Myself Out is an incisive, moving, and often uproarious collection.




Small Doses


Book Description

This “one-of-a-kind read” offers insightful essays, poignant life advice, and pithy pearls of wisdom from the comedian and star of HBO’s Insecure (Entertainment Weekly). Anyone who has seen Amanda Seales’s acclaimed stand-up special I Be Knowin, her long-running TV series Insecure, or her groundbreaking gameshow Smart Funny & Black, knows that this woman is a force of nature. In both life and career, she has fearlessly and passionately charted her own course. Now she’s bringing her life’s lessons and laughs to the page with her signature blend of academic intellectualism, Black American colloquialisms, and pop culture fanaticism. This volume of essays, axioms, original illustrations, and photos provides Seales’s trademark “self-help from the hip” style of commentary, fueled by ideology formed from her own victories, struggles, research, mistakes, risks, and pay-offs. Unapologetic, fiercely funny, and searingly honest, Small Doses engages, empowers, and enlightens readers on how to find their truths while still finding the funny!




Tacky


Book Description

An irreverent and charming collection of deeply personal essays about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring coming of age in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss—from the James Beard Award-nominated writer of the Catapult column "Store-Bought Is Fine” Tacky is about the power of pop culture—like any art—to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These fourteen essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love—snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu—into kinder and sharper perspective. Each essay revolves around a different maligned (and yet, Rax would argue, vital) cultural artifact, providing thoughtful, even romantic meditations on desire, love, and the power of nostalgia. An essay about the gym-tan-laundry exuberance of Jersey Shore morphs into an excavation of grief over the death of her father; in "You Wanna Be On Top," Rax writes about friendship and early aughts girlhood; in another, Guy Fieri helps her heal from an abusive relationship. The result is a collection that captures the personal and generational experience of finding joy in caring just a little too much with clarity, heartfelt honesty, and Rax King's trademark humor. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL




Wreckage of Us


Book Description

When her drug-dealing stepdad kicks Hazel out, squatting in an abandoned shed on Ian's grandpa's farm seems like as good a plan as any. Ian finds her and he insists she move into his spare room. They're nothing alike, but the spark between them is undeniable. When Hazel calls the cops on her stepdad, she unintentionally gets her pregnant mom arrested, and sacrifices her dreams to take care of her mom's baby. Meanwhile, Ian's band is taking off; his dreams are coming true. -- adapted from back cover




When the World Breaks Your Heart


Book Description

When United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, 112 people died, and 184 people survived. In this book Gregory S. Clapper, both a college professor and a chaplain in the National Guard, reflects on his ministry in the aftermath of this tragic event. Processing his chaplain experiences through the lens of his theological training, he reflects on six different resources from the Christian tradition that he saw transform people's lives during and after this tragedy.




Mind of an Outlaw


Book Description

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL Norman Mailer was one of the towering figures of twentieth-century American letters and an acknowledged master of the essay. Mind of an Outlaw, the first posthumous publication from this outsize literary icon, collects Mailer’s most important and representative work in the form that many rank as his most electrifying. As America’s foremost public intellectual, Norman Mailer was a ubiquitous presence in our national life—on the airwaves and in print—for more than sixty years. With his supple mind and pugnacious persona, he engaged society more than any other writer of his generation. The trademark Mailer swagger is much in evidence in these pages as he holds forth on culture, ideology, politics, sex, gender, and celebrity, among other topics. Here is Mailer on boxing, Mailer on Hemingway, Mailer on Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, Mailer on Mailer—the one subject that served as the beating heart of all of his nonfiction. From his early essay “A Credo for the Living,” published in 1948, when the author was twenty-five, to his final writings in the year before his death, Mailer wrestled with the big themes of his times. He was one of the most astute cultural commentators of the postwar era, a swashbuckling intellectual provocateur who never pulled a punch and was rarely anything less than interesting. Mind of an Outlaw spans the full arc of Mailer’s evolution as a writer, including such essential pieces as his acclaimed 1957 meditation on hipsters, “The White Negro”; multiple selections from his seminal collection Advertisements for Myself; and a never-before-published essay on Sigmund Freud. Incendiary, erudite, and unrepentantly outrageous, Norman Mailer was a dominating force on the battlefield of ideas. Featuring an incisive Introduction by Jonathan Lethem, Mind of an Outlaw forms a fascinating portrait of Mailer’s intellectual development across the span of his career as well as the preoccupations of a nation in the last half of the American century. Praise for Mind of an Outlaw “[Mailer’s] best and brightest.”—Esquire “The fifty essays collected in this retrospective volume span sixty-four years and show [Norman] Mailer (1923–2007) at his brawny, pugnacious, and egotistical best. . . . This provocative collection brims with insights and reflections that show why Mailer is regarded as a great literary mind of his generation.”—Publishers Weekly “The selections open a window onto the capacious mind and process of one of the most volatile intellects of the twentieth century.”—Library Journal “Vintage Mailer: brilliant, infuriating, witty and never, ever boring.”—Tampa Bay Times “As good an introduction to Mailer’s habits of mind as there’s ever been.”—Kirkus Reviews “There’s no arguing about Mailer the essayist—he was outstanding. . . . These insightful essays educate, argue and persuade on everything from politics and literature to film, philosophy and the human condition.”—Shelf Awareness




Can't Steal My Joy


Book Description

We are all broken. It's a unified human experience. And we all need a hope that doesn't disappoint, a love that anchors us, joy that survives in unthinkable conditions, and a perspective shift that goes beyond our circumstances. Some days we feel the perfection of sunshine and a light breeze. Other days hold wet, gray skies with drowning grief. In the wake, comes promise of new growth. Still other days a cold winter frost catches us by surprise, halting our journey toward fruitful blooms. We step back, reeling at the damage from this frost. We question the system and environment we grow in. We can exist in this garden dictated by the changing weather patterns. Or, we can see a different kind of brave living-that which exists beyond our fragile stems and dainty leaves, living instead deep in our roots. This book is for those sitting in the deep-down dark, traveling with grief as a constant companion, and anyone whose life path has taken an unexpected turn. Bekah shares the heart break of a fatal diagnosis for not just one, but both her children. As she journeyed through dark valleys of death, it was there she experienced Jesus in a whole new way-in deeply broken places. Her journey holding pain in one hand and joy in the other is vulnerably scribbled out on these pages as she tore open the wounds in her soul to share how Christ created beauty and goodness in it all. It was in this journey, she learned to see wholeness in cracks, courage in the broken-hearted, and bravery in the act of letting go. May you discover the Life-Giver of joy, see your beautiful bloom, and know that hope is always worth holding on to, because redemption is coming--and in fact--is already happening here and now. "Can't Steal My Joy is an honest, real-life account of a life storm that drops down right on top of you with no warning - and the unspeakable beauty that blooms from the wreckage. Bekah's heart beats in every page, every word. To read her story from start to not-yet-finished, it's only natural to wonder how anyone could survive something like this. But the truth is that Bekah and Danny have done much more than survive. They have thrived. And as for the how? Jesus - only Jesus. God's grace weaves seamlessly throughout each moment of confusion, devastation, hope, surrender, and triumph. You cannot read this book without seeing the Creator and longing for all things new." Anne Riley, author of Voyage to the Star Kingdom "I had the absolute pleasure of being able to read Bekah Bowman's book, Can't Steal My Joy, before it hit the bookshelves. I honestly have not read anything so moving and soul stirring since, The Shack. Whether you are in a season of mourning or grief, or in my case, struggling in the heaviness of life to find peace and joy within, this book helps lift the veil of sadness to reveal God's promise that He never leaves you. God makes his presence known everyday in little ways if you only stop to look for the joy outside the pain. Bekah is a gifted writer and I'm so excited to share this book with my friends and family." Melinda, founder of WhenLife Co