All Our Happy Days Are Stupid

All Our Happy Days Are Stupid
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1940450802

Two couples, each with a twelve-year-old child, travel to Paris; within a few moments of discovering each other in a crowd, one of their children disappears. A day later, one of the mothers disappears, too. The story that follows is a wonderfully strange, beautifully composed examination of happiness and desperation, complete with a man in a bear suit, a teen pop star, and eight really excellent songs. Sheila Heti’s debut play was first commissioned in 2001, for a feminist theater company that never ended up staging it. Its turbulent creation became the backdrop of Heti’s last novel, How Should a Person Be?, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and the New Yorker—and now the play itself can be revealed at last. With new introductions by Sheila Heti and director Jordan Tannahill, All Our Happy Days Are Stupid offers a novel’s worth of wisdom and humor, of wild hope and dreamlike confrontations, and page after page of unforgettable lines. Seen until now only by a lucky few, its publication is a cause for celebration.

Motherhood

Motherhood
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627790780

From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Women in Clothes

Women in Clothes
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 804
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0698189825

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

A Garden of Creatures

A Garden of Creatures
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Tundra Books
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0735268819

A tender and deeply moving picture book about loss and the big questions it leaves behind from New York Times bestselling author Sheila Heti and acclaimed illustrator Esmé Shapiro. Two bunnies and a cat live happily together in a beautiful garden. But when the big bunny passes away, the little bunny is unsure how to fill the void she left behind. A strange dream prompts her to begin asking questions: Why do the creatures we love have to die, and where do we go when we die? How come life works this way? With the wisdom of the cat to guide her, the little bunny learns that missing someone is a way of keeping them close. And together they discover that the big bunny is a part of everything around them -- the grass, the air, the leaves -- for the world is a garden of creatures. With its meditative text, endearing illustrations and life-affirming message, A Garden of Creatures reveals how the interconnectedness of nature and the sweetness of friendship can be a warm embrace even in the darkest times.

The Chairs Are Where the People Go

The Chairs Are Where the People Go
Author: Misha Glouberman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1429968648

Should neighborhoods change? Is wearing a suit a good way to quit smoking? Why do people think that if you do one thing, you're against something else? Is monogamy a trick? Why isn't making the city more fun for you and your friends a super-noble political goal? Why does a computer last only three years? How often should you see your parents? How should we behave at parties? Is marriage getting easier? What can spam tell us about the world? Misha Glouberman's friend and collaborator, Sheila Heti, wanted her next book to be a compilation of everything Misha knew. Together, they made a list of subjects. As Misha talked, Sheila typed. He talked about games, relationships, cities, negotiation, improvisation, Casablanca, conferences, and making friends. His subjects ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. But sometimes what had seemed trivial began to seem important—and what had seemed important began to seem less so. The Chairs Are Where the People Go is refreshing, appealing, and kind of profound. It's a self-help book for people who don't feel they need help, and a how-to book that urges you to do things you don't really need to do.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Author: Hank Green
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524743453

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Sparkling with mystery, humor and the uncanny, this is a fun read. But beneath its effervescent tone, more complex themes are at play.” —San Francisco Chronicle In his wildly entertaining debut novel, Hank Green—cocreator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow—spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined. The Carls just appeared. Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight. Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us. Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring for the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye. The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now.

The Middle Stories

The Middle Stories
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2012-04-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1938073096

Wildly acclaimed in Canada, this book marks the debut of a remarkable young writer first published by McSweeney's when she was twenty-three and living at home with her dad and brother. The Middle Stories is a strikingly original collection of stories, fables, and short brutalities that are alternately heartwarming, cruel, and hilarious. This edition, marking the 10th anniversary of The Middle Stories, will be designed in the newly iconic McSweeney's paperback style, and will be published shortly before Heti's newest novel, How Should A Person Be?, emigrates from Canada via Henry Holt & Co.

Pure Colour

Pure Colour
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374603960

Winner of the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award in Fiction Shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize in Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vulture, The Times Literary Supplement, and more Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold. Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart. In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.

Stupid Fast

Stupid Fast
Author: Geoff Herbach
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1402256302

Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and current problems.

These Precious Days

These Precious Days
Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0063092808

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.