Before We Were Strangers

Before We Were Strangers
Author: Renée Carlino
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501105787

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Different Tunes

Different Tunes
Author: Radha Ramana
Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2014-06-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1482822830

Her Sainted Aunt', about an aunt teaching her niece the ropes of lfe, leaves us to choose the more surprising between the racy conversation and the unnamed narrator. 'The Subjugated' is about choices made by a rich woman and her maid and their lives. 'Demon in the darkness' is the story of a lonely man on a dark night facing the fear of paranormal. 'Ponts of View' is about two men with each considering the other to be the luckier one and wishing to have what the other has. 'When he became his wife' is the comical turn of events for a newly married couple when the husband has to play the role of being a woman. 'Behind the curtain' is about how our understanding of history can change if there are new and impartial participants. Of these stories, some might make you smile and some might make you sigh at the turn of events. They are based on the premise that each of us have innumerable experiences but remember only a few and acknowledge fewer still. But no experience is insignificant. What is mundane to one person can be paramount and life changing to another.

Going the Extra Smile

Going the Extra Smile
Author: George Foreman
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781404104198

Taking a lighthearted look at the astounding power of a positive attitude, puncher-turned-preacher Foreman shares inspiring insights and anecdotes about resilience, forgiveness, and achieving victory in the ring of life.

The Stability of Laughter

The Stability of Laughter
Author: James Nikopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2018-12-17
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 042963966X

A "sad and corrupt" age, a period of "crisis" and "upheaval"—what T.S. Eliot famously summed up as "the panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Modernism has always been characterized by its self-conscious sense of suffering. Why, then, was it so obsessed with laughter? From Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson and Freud to Pirandello, Beckett, Hughes, Barnes, and Joyce, no moment in cultural history has written about laughter this much. James Nikopoulos investigates modernity’s paradoxical relationship with mirth. Why was the gesture we conventionally associate with happiness deemed the only sensible way of responding to a world, as Max Weber wrote, that had been "disenchanted of its gods?" In answering these questions, Nikopoulos also delves into our ongoing relationship with laughter. He looks to contemporary research in emotion and evolutionary theory, as well as to the two-thousand-plus-year history of the philosophy of humor, in order to propose a novel way of understanding laughter, humor, and their complicated relationships with modern life. The Stability of Laughter explores how art unsettles the simplifications we revert to in our attempts to make sense of human history and social interaction.

Southern Lady Code

Southern Lady Code
Author: Helen Ellis
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0385543905

A collection of essays that are "like being seated beside the most entertaining guest at a dinner party" (Atlanta Journal Constitution)—from the New York Times bestselling author of American Housewives “Thank you Helen Ellis for writing down the Southern Lady Code so that others may learn.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of The Dutch House Helen Ellis has a mantra: “If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.” Say “weathered” instead of “she looks like a cake left out in the rain” and “I’m not in charge” instead of “they’re doing it wrong.” In these twenty-three raucous essays, Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a Burberry trench coat, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left Alabama for New York City, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

Saving June

Saving June
Author: Hannah Harrington
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2023-07-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 037321202X

Includes and excerpt from Speechless by Hannah Harrington.

Sketching Stuff

Sketching Stuff
Author: Charlie O'Shields
Publisher: Doodlewash Books
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0960021922

Charlie O'Shields is the creator of Doodlewash®, founder of World Watercolor Month in July, and host of the Sketching Stuff podcast. Every single day, for over three years, he created a watercolor illustration and wrote a short essay about whatever came to mind that day and posted it on his blog. These are some of the collected favorites along with some brand new musings. With over 180 illustrations, this book is part personal memoir and sometimes just a randomly fun romp through the sillier bits of this crazy world we all inhabit. Written to take on the impossible task of inspiring creativity, unleashing your inner child, and instilling hope, it will, at the very least, make you smile and touch your heart.

Musings on Minutiae

Musings on Minutiae
Author: Weston Locher
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2009-12-18
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 055722263X

Welcome to Weston Locher's Musings on Minutiae where the author offers up hilarious observations and insights on topics of great importance such as: Living in an urban apartment complex ( if I become an admitted pet owner, then I have to pay not only a several hundred dollar deposit to the apartment complex, but I'm pretty sure that they also reserve the right to harvest some of my bodily organs ), living with felines ( as I'm walking anywhere in my apartment. They scamper in front of my legs, causing me to fall and face plant into whatever furniture is closest. They especially like to play this game when I'm carrying piping hot coffee.), his childhood Memories (Our family was nearly torn apart on several occasions by arguments started when the refrigerator door was open for what my father deemed as 'too long.'), and much more. Chock full of humorous essays and personal anecdotes, Musings on Minutiae will keep you laughing for as long as you have a pulse.