A Year of Doing Good

A Year of Doing Good
Author: Judith O'Reilly
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Helping behavior
ISBN: 9780670921133

Judith O'Reilly embarks on a year long social experiment in the witty 'A Year of Doing Good'. Fed up of New Year's resolutions involving diets and exercise abandoned on January 2nd, Judith is attempting to be good. For one whole year. She embarked on a mission to do one good deed every day. Some called it a social experiment. At times she called it madness. Juggling family, friends and a variety of neighbours in the small Northumberland village she calls home, she recounts the ups, downs, moments of doubt and sheer bloody hard work of doing good.

The Last Good Day of the Year

The Last Good Day of the Year
Author: Jessica Warman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0802736629

A power thriller from acclaimed author Jessica Warman explores how sometimes unspeakable things are hidden in memories . . .

Doing Good Better

Doing Good Better
Author: William MacAskill
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0698191102

Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately, we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, even our best intentions often lead to ineffective—and sometimes downright harmful—outcomes. How can we do better? While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it’s not enough to simply do good; we must do good better. At the core of this philosophy are five key questions that help guide our altruistic decisions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing I can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? By applying these questions to real-life scenarios, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about doing good are misguided. For instance, he argues one can potentially save more lives by becoming a plastic surgeon rather than a heart surgeon; measuring overhead costs is an inaccurate gauge of a charity’s effectiveness; and, it generally doesn’t make sense for individuals to donate to disaster relief. MacAskill urges us to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. When we do this—when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors—we find that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.

Operating Instructions

Operating Instructions
Author: Anne Lamott
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2005-03-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1400079098

With the same brilliant combination of humor and warmth she brought to bestseller Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott gives us a smart, funny, and comforting chronicle of single motherhood. It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At thirty-five. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all important first year. From finding out that her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out that her best friend and greatest supporter Pam will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but very little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events that make up a woman’s life. "Lamott has a conversational style that perfectly conveys her friendly, self-depricating humor." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "Lamott is a wonderfully lithe writer .... Anyone who has ever had a hard time facing a perfectly ordinary day will identify." -- Chicago Tribune

Wife in the North

Wife in the North
Author: Judith O'Reilly
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2009-06-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0786749482

When Judith O'Reilly, a successful journalist and mother of three, agreed to leave London for a remote northern outpost, she made a deal with her husband that the move was a test-run to weigh the benefits of country living. In the rugged landscape of Northumberland County, O'Reilly swapped her high heels for rubber boots and life-long friends for cows, sheep, and strange neighbors. In this tremendously funny and acutely observed memoir, O'Reilly must navigate the challenges and rewards of motherhood, marriage, and family as she searches for her own true north in an alien landscape. Her intrepid foray into the unknown is at once a hilarious, fish-out-of-water story and a poignant reflection on the modern woman's dilemma of striking the right balance between career and family.

Good to Great

Good to Great
Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2001-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0066620996

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

The Year of Living Awkwardly

The Year of Living Awkwardly
Author: Emma Chastain
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1481488791

Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Mean Girls as lovably flawed high school student Chloe Snow chronicles another year in her life while she navigates the highs and lows of family, friendship, school, and love in a diary that sparkles with humor and warmth. It’s Chloe Snow’s sophomore year of high school, and life has only grown more complicated. Last year, Chloe was the star of the musical. This year, after an audition so disastrous she runs off the stage in tears, she’s cast as a lowly member of the ensemble. Will she be able to make it through the show knowing everyone’s either pitying her or reveling in her downfall? Chloe’s best friend, Hannah, is no help: she’s been sucked into the orbit of Lex, the velvet-gloved, iron-fisted ruler of the sophomore class. Chloe’s dad is busy falling in love with Miss Murphy, and Chloe is no longer speaking to her mother, who is sending her increasingly desperate and unhinged emails from Mexico. As her parents’ divorce negotiations unravel, a custody battle looms. If only Chloe could talk to Grady about it: his parents are divorced, and he’s easy to talk to. Or he was, until he declared his love for Chloe, and she turned him down because despite all her rational brain cells she can’t seem to get over Mac, and then Grady promptly started going out with Lex. As the performance of the show approaches, Chloe must find a way to navigate all the messy elements of her life and make it through to the end of the year.

One Year to an Organized Life

One Year to an Organized Life
Author: Regina Leeds
Publisher: Hachette Go
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2022-12-06
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 0306829657

A comprehensive, week-by-week bible to completely streamline all aspects of your life—now revised & updated for a global pandemic world of working from home and learning to de-stress while you de-clutter. Who would you be if you felt at peace and had more time and money? An organized life enables you to have more freedom, less aggravation, better health, and to get more done. Regina Leeds has helped even the messiest turn their lives around. One Year to an Organized Life is a unique week-by-week approach that you can begin at any time of year. Regina helps you break down tasks and build routines over time so that life becomes simple, not overwhelming. Whether you're living in chaos or just looking for new ways to simplify, this essential book will help you get the whole household organized-and stay that way. Covid has shaken humanity to the core and forced us to slow down and reimagine the way we use our living spaces. In a flash, the space we knew simply as home was suddenly a classroom, our office and the gym. And, at a time when stress and anxiety is at an all-time high, it no longer seems odd to meditate. It feels life-saving. If life is to be re-imagined, shouldn’t we also do that with our living spaces? In this revised and updated edition of One Year to an Organized Life, Regina Leeds reveals how to optimize your space—for work, family and daily calmness (with plenty of new affirmations and reward systems built into her organizing tips).

Okay Fine Whatever

Okay Fine Whatever
Author: Courtenay Hameister
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316395692

The "hilarious and poignant" story of one chronically anxious woman's quest to become braver by seeking out the kinds of experiences she's spent her life avoiding (Cheryl Strayed). For most of her life (and even during her years as the host of a popular radio show), Courtenay Hameister lived in a state of near-constant dread and anxiety. She fretted about everything. Her age. Her size. Her romantic prospects. How likely it was that she would get hit by a bus on the way home. Until a couple years ago, when, in her mid-forties, she decided to fight back against her debilitating anxieties by spending a year doing little things that scared her -- things that the average person might consider doing for a half second before deciding: "nope." Things like: attending a fellatio class. She did that. She also spent an afternoon in a sensory deprivation tank, got (legally) high in the middle of a workday, had a session with a professional cuddler, braved twenty-eight first dates, and (perhaps scariest of all) actually met someone who might possibly appreciate her for who she is. Refreshing, relatable, and pee-your-pants funny, Okay Fine Whatever is Courtenay's hold-nothing-back account of her adventures on the front lines of Mere Human Woman vs. Fear, reminding us that even the tiniest amount of bravery is still bravery, and that no matter who you are, it's possible to fight complacency and become bold, or at least bold-ish, a little at a time.

The Year We Fell Apart

The Year We Fell Apart
Author: Emily Martin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1481438433

In the tradition of Sarah Dessen, this powerful debut novel is a compelling portrait of a young girl coping with her mother’s cancer as she figures out how to learn from—and fix—her past mistakes. Few things come as naturally to Harper as epic mistakes. In the past year she was kicked off the swim team, earned a reputation as Carson High’s easiest hook-up, and officially became the black sheep of her family. But her worst mistake was destroying her relationship with her best friend, Declan. Now, after two semesters of silence, Declan is home from boarding school for the summer. Everything about him is different—he’s taller, stronger…more handsome. Harper has changed, too, especially in the wake of her mom’s cancer diagnosis. While Declan wants nothing to do with Harper, he’s still Declan, her Declan, and the only person she wants to talk to about what’s really going on. But he’s also the one person she’s lost the right to seek comfort from. As their mutual friends and shared histories draw them together again, Harper and Declan must decide which parts of their past are still salvageable and which parts they’ll have to let go of once and for all. In this honest and affecting tale of friendship and first love, Emily Martin brings to vivid life the trials and struggles of high school and the ability to learn from past mistakes over the course of one steamy North Carolina summer.