Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
Author: Diane Williams
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2016-01-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1940450853

One of Elle's "Must-Read Titles for Your Book Club." Chosen by The Millions and Flavorwire as one of the most-anticipated books of 2016. The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called “folk tales that hammer like a nail gun,” and these 40 new ones are sharper than ever. They are unsettling, yes, frequently revelatory, and more often than not downright funny. Not a single moment here is what you might expect. While there is immense pleasure to be found in Williams’s spot-on observations about how we behave in our highest and lowest moments, the heart of the drama beats in the language of American short fiction’s grand master, whose originality, precision, and power bring the familiar into startling and enchanted relief.

A Fine, Fine School

A Fine, Fine School
Author: Sharon Creech
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2003-12-23
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0060007281

One day, Mr. Keene called all the students and teachers together and said, "This is a fine, fine school! From now on, let's have school on Saturdays too." And then there was more. School all weekend. School on the holidays. School in the SUMMER! What was next . . . SCHOOL AT NIGHT? So it's up to Tillie to show her well-intentioned principal, Mr. Keene, that even though his fine, fine school is a wonderful place, it's not fine, fine to be there all the time.

I Can See Just Fine

I Can See Just Fine
Author: Eric Barclay
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2013-08-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1613126174

Paige is just like every other kid. She goes to school. She practices her violin. She plays outside. The only problem is, she cannot quite see the chalkboard, her sheet music, or anything else! Despite Paige’s repeated refrain of “I can see just fine,” the comical illustrations portray a different story. Paige’s parents decide it’s time for her to visit the eye doctor, despite her protests. But Paige’s stubbornness quickly dissolves as she braves an enthralling eye checkup, enjoys a playful frame selection, and, most importantly, ends up with perfect eyesight! Barclay successfully depicts a very real and relevant issue with lightheartedness and gentle humor. Young readers will relate to Paige’s journey and celebrate her triumph of seeing clearly in the end. Praise for I Can See Just Fine "It’s a useful, non-didactic story for kids in Paige’s situation—and utterly fun, too.” --Publishers Weekly "A gentle way to introduce the topic of eyeglasses with a resistant child and what to expect in finding a solution." --Shelf Awareness for Readers "With an attractive, clean layout and big speech bubbles, this story is one that young readers will easily follow as Paige ultimately triumphs with her new glasses." --School Library Journal "This is an easy picture book for beginning readers with full-color illustrations. The stylized, pleasing illustrations are done well and a lot of children can relate to the situation." --Library Media Connection

Fine Beauty

Fine Beauty
Author: Sam Fine
Publisher: Riverhead Books (Hardcover)
Total Pages: 170
Release: 1998
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN:

This book, designed to empower African-American women, tells how to select foundations, choose the right powders, find the perfect lipstick, and has special pro tips and cosmetic secrets.

Anything But Fine

Anything But Fine
Author: Tobias Madden
Publisher: Page Street YA
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1645674398

All it takes is one missed step for your life to change forever. Luca Mason knows exactly who he is and what he wants: In six months, he’s going to be accepted into the Australian Ballet School, leave his fancy private high school, and live his life as a star of the stage—at least that’s the plan until he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his foot in a way he can never recover from. With his dancing dreams dead on their feet, Luca loses his performing arts scholarship and transfers to the local public school, leaving behind all his ballet friends and his whole future on stage. The only bright side is that he strikes up unlikely friendships with the nicest (and nerdiest) girl at his new school, Amina, and the gorgeous, popular, and (reportedly) straight school captain, Jordan Tanaka-Jones. As Luca’s bond with Jordan grows stronger, he starts to wonder: who is he without ballet? And is he setting himself up for another heartbreak?

Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty

Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty
Author: Diane Williams
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1938073088

In Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, Diane Williams lays bare the urgency and weariness that shape our lives in stories honed sharper than ever. With sentences auguring revelation and explosion, Williams's unsettling stories—a cryptic meeting between neighbors, a woman's sexual worries, a graveside discussion, a chimney on fire—are narrated with razor-sharp tongues and naked, uproarious irreverence. These fifty stories hum with tension, each one so taut that it threatens to snap and send the whole thing sprawling—the mess and desire, the absurdity and hilarity, the bruises and bleeding, the blushes and disappointments and secrets. An audacious, unruly tour de force, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty cements Diane Williams' position as one of the best practitioners of the short form in literature today.

A Fine Romance

A Fine Romance
Author: David Lehman
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0805242716

In A Fine Romance, David Lehman looks at the formation of the American songbook—the timeless numbers that became jazz standards, iconic love songs, and sound tracks to famous movies—and explores the extraordinary fact that this songbook was written almost exclusively by Jews. An acclaimed poet, editor, and cultural critic, David Lehman hears America singing—with a Yiddish accent. He guides us through America in the golden age of song, when “Embraceable You,” “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “My Romance,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Stormy Weather,” and countless others became nothing less than the American sound track. The stories behind these songs, the shows from which many of them came, and the shows from which many of them came, and the composers and lyricists who wrote them give voice to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation. Lehman’s analytical skills, wit, and exuberance infuse this book with an energy and a tone like no other: at once sharply observant, personally searching, and attuned to the songs that all of us love. He helps us understand how natural it should be that Wizard of Oz composer Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor who incorporated “Over the Rainbow” into his Sabbath liturgy, and why Cole Porter—the rare non-Jew in this pantheon of musicians who wrote these classic songs shaped America even as America was shaping them. (Part of the Jewish Encounter series)

Stop Saying You're Fine

Stop Saying You're Fine
Author: Mel Robbins
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012-06-12
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0307716732

This hands-on guide from Mel Robbins, one of America’s top relationship experts and radio/tv personalities, addresses why over 100 million Americans secretly feel frustrated and bored with their lives and reveals what you can do about it. Mel Robbins has spent her career teaching people how to push past their self-imposed limits to get what they truly desire. She has an in-depth understanding of the psychological and social factors that repeatedly hold you back, and more important, a unique set of tools for getting you where you want to be. In Stop Saying You’re Fine, she draws on neuroscientific research, interviews with countless everyday people, and ideas she’s tested in her own life to show what works and what doesn’t. The key, she explains, is understanding how your own brain works against you. Because evolution has biased your mental gears against taking action, what you need are techniques to outsmart yourself. That may sound impossible, but Mel has created a remarkably effective method to help you do just that--and some of her discoveries will astonish you. By ignoring how you feel and seizing small moments of rich possibility--a process she calls “leaning in”--you can make tiny course directions add up to huge change. Among this book’s other topics: how everything can depend on not hitting the “snooze” button; the science of connecting with other people, what children can teach us about getting things done; and why five seconds is the maximum time you should wait before acting on a great idea. Blending warmth, humor and unflinching honesty with up-to-the-minute science and hard-earned wisdom, Stop Saying You’re Fine moves beyond the platitudes and easy fixes offered in many self-help books. Mel’s insights will actually help vault you to a better life, ensuring that the next time someone asks how you’re doing, you can truthfully answer, “Absolutely great.”

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking
Author: Leyna Krow
Publisher: featherproof books
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1943888124

In I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I’m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it’s the setting that’s fantastical, but the characters’ reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he’s safe at home. Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.

It’s Fine, It’s Fine, It’s Fine: It’s Not

It’s Fine, It’s Fine, It’s Fine: It’s Not
Author: Taz Alam
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-10-28
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0008501394

A raw, honest and heartfelt poetry collection from Taz Alam – for the tough times, the great times, and everything in between.