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When You Are Engulfed in Flames
"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," ( The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book. Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" ( Seattle Times). Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames:"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." -- Kirkus ReviewsThis latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." -- BooklistTable of Contents:
It's Catching Keeping Up The Understudy This Old House Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? Road Trips What I Learned That's Amore The Monster Mash In the Waiting Room Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool Memento Mori All the Beauty You Will Ever Need Town and Country Aerial The Man in the Hut Of Mice and Men April in ParisCrybaby Old FaithfulThe Smoking Section .
Price: $11.75
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I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, this debut collection of literary essays is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory. From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions-or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a startlingly funny and revealing portrait of a complex and utterly recognizable character that's aiming for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she is. I Was Told There'd Be Cake introduces a strikingly original voice, chronicling the struggles and unexpected beauty of modern urban life..
Price: $6.99
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A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
Amazon Significant Seven, April 2008: When I started reading A Wolf at the Table, I thought I knew what to expect. Augusten Burroughs captures intense experience with an inexplicably cool remove, imparting a stillness and purity to emotions that would likely run amok in anyone else's hands. I love this quality of his writing, and it's present in full force in this memoir of a childhood spent in thrall to a predatory and deeply unpredictable father. What I wasn't prepared for was the suspense--the dread-filled, nearly sonorous waiting for the worst to happen. An artful sort of bait-and-switch happens in the telling: Burroughs brings you to the brink of a terrible catharsis more than once, but the break in tension never comes. It is profoundly sad, remarkably tender, and fueled by a sense of love and reverence that only a child knows. --Anne Bartholomew.
Price: $12.00
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Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp
With her signature acerbic wit and captivating insight, the author of the wildly popular Straight Up and Dirty offers a powerful and beautifully stark portrait of adolescence While she is pregnant with twins, one sentence uttered by her doctor sends Stephanie Klein reeling: "You need to gain fifty pounds." Instantly, an adolescence filled with insecurity and embarrassment comes flooding back. Though she is determined to gain the weight for the health of her babies--even if it means she'll "weigh more than a Honda"--she can only express her deep fear by telling her doctor simply, "I used to be fat." Klein was an eighth grader with a weight problem. It was a problem at school, where the boys called her "Moose," and it was a problem at home, where her father reminded her, "No one likes fat girls." After many frustrating sessions with a nutritionist known as the fat doctor of Roslyn Heights, Long Island, Klein's parents enrolled her for a summer at fat camp. Determined to return to school thin and popular, without her "lard arms" and "puckered ham," Stephanie embarked on a memorable journey that would shape more than just her body. It would shape her life. In the ever-shifting terrain between fat and thin, adulthood and childhood, cellulite and starvation, Klein shares the cutting details of what it truly feels like to be an overweight child, from the stinging taunts of classmates, to the off-color remarks of her own father, to her thin mother's compulsive dissatisfaction with her own body. Calling upon her childhood diary entries, Klein reveals her deepest thoughts and feelings from that turbulent, hopeful time, baring her soul and making her heartache palpable. Whether Klein is describing her life as a chubby adolescent camper--getting weighed on a meat scale, petting past curfew, and "chunky dunking" in the lake--or what it's like now as a fit mother, having one-sided conversations with her newborn twins about the therapy they'll one day need, this hilarious yet grippingly vulnerable book will remind you what it was like to feel like an outsider, to desperately seek the right outfit, the right slang, the best comeback, or whatever that unattainable something was that would finally make you fit in. Marie Claire, for Straight Up and Dirty "Stephanie Klein's raw account of divorce at age 29 is refreshingly honest and funny, without delving into cheesy chick-lit territory. You'll easily relate to Klein--even if you don't have a 'wasband.'" USA Today
"Klein is a talented writer who tells the story of her love life with boldness and irreverence." Publishers Weekly
"Klein's sense of humor is downright wicked . . . a great, fun read." New York Times
"Nothing, it seems, is too private not to share with . . . Ms. Klein's legions of followers. And that is exactly how they like it." People
"You could call her `a real-life Carrie Bradshaw,' but it wouldn't do Klein justice. With a fearless voice, the blogger weaves a memoir filled with heartbreak and humor . . . a compelling writer." Kirkus Reviews
"Candid . . . inspiring . . . With vivid characterizations, spot-on locale descriptions and sly jokes at her own expense, Klein offers an original and touching take on the all-too-common problem of childhood obesity." Elle, for Straight Up and Dirty
"Klein's appeal comes not just from her nocturnal wonderings, but from her relentless plumbing of what went wrong in her twenties and how those mistakes inform her present." Daily News, for Straight Up and Dirty
"[Stephanie Klein's] confessional, intimate writing style has a magnetic and often voyeuristic appeal that transcends the gloss of her Sex and the City-style escapades." Susan Shapiro, author of Lighting Up, for Straight Up and Dirty
"A kooky, heartfelt, and ultimately triumphant chronicle of young divorce and the importance of family, friends, and a good shrink." Marie Claire (UK), for Straight Up and Dirty
"Beneath the wisecracking tales of solo supermarket shopping, phone therapy and Hamptons houseshares, the raw emotion about her divorce and nightmare mother-in-law rings true." .
Price: $11.50
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How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls
Recent Yale graduate Megan Smith comes to Manhattan with big plans for a career in journalism and even bigger student loan debt: $75,000. When she flails at her trashy tabloid job, she's given an escape hatch: tutor seventeen-year-old identical twins Rose and Sage Baker--yes, the infamous Baker heiresses of Palm Beach, Florida, best known for their massive fortunes and their penchant for drunkenly flashing the paparazzi -- and get their SAT scores up enough to get into Duke. Impossible job -- yes. But if she succeeds, her student debts are history. Unfortunately for Megan, the Baker twins aren't about to curtail their busy social schedules for basic algebra. And they certainly aren't thrilled to have to sit down for a study session with dowdy Megan. Megan quickly discovers that if she's going to get her money, she'll have to learn her Pucci from her Prada. And if she can look the part, maybe, just maybe, she can teach the girls something along the way..
Price: $3.05
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The Mathematical Universe: An Alphabetical Journey Through the Great Proofs, Problems, and Personalities
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Trophies: A Novel
Marion Zane is the top Trophy—she has it all: a faithful husband, loyal fellow-Trophy girlfriends, queen-bee status over the Hollywood "name-above-the-title" charities, and—best of all—no prenup! She knows inside information is king, smiles hide jealousy, jackals lure husbands away (or, worse, steal personal assistants), housekeepers have the power to destroy, and that everyone has devastating secrets—including her! It's why she refuses to gossip yet remembers everything. So why is she so nervous? Maybe it's because, after years of unchallenged social position, Marion forgets that in L.A., even enemies embrace—especially ones disguised as girlfriends. When she impulsively champions building a much-needed trauma center hospital downtown, Marion breaks the unwritten code by stepping on another Trophy's charity turf. It's a fatal mistake. Her furious and jealously bitter "girlfriend" joins forces with a powerful mystery partner to destroy Marion. Drugged and framed as unfaithful and insane, she loses her dream life in one lurid, unforgivable humiliation. Abandoned by her husband, her deepest secrets exposed, Marion is left shattered and literally penniless in paradise. Determined to build the hospital and regain her love, lifestyle, and dermatologist, Marion goes to hilarious lengths to hide her newfound poverty from even her closest friends, living out of her luxury car and using Magic Marker for eyeliner as she raises hospital funding at five-star restaurants. Fortunately, Marion's loyal, lusty Trophy girlfriends discover her condition through her overwhelmed maid and come to her rescue, employing ferocious manipulation skills, ridiculous logic, and much-needed dermabrasion. Redirecting the same competitive hyperdrive that won the rocks on their fingers, the girls make Marion their new project even as they deal with their own crises. Still, all the Trophy support in the world might not be able to stop Marion from betraying one of them; then her mystery enemy is revealed and she's given the choice of re-enthronement or vilification. After all, she's a survivor and didn't become Marion Zane by fair play alone. .
Price: $11.50
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Rockabye: From Wild to Child
Rockabye is the lively memoir of a spontaneous young city-girl who becomes unexpectedly pregnant. That city-girl is Rebecca Woolf, who at 23, after the "holy shit, I'm pregnant" realization, decides to keep the baby, marry the boyfriend (in Vegas no less), and figure out how to wed her rock n' roll lifestyle and impending motherhood.
With humor, honesty, and renegade insight, Rebecca makes the transition from life as an odd-job doing commitment-phobic, chain-smoking, irresponsible party-girl to life as a work-at-home mother with a different kind of social life. Throughout, Rebecca doesn't relinquish the token qualities of her free-spirited, pre-baby self; rebelling against both the "soccer mom," and "young mother" stereotypes, challenging herself to grow up without outgrowing her dreams, and most importantly embracing motherhood without a map.
Rockabye explores the coming together of mother and son and their mutual coming of age. How does Rebecca adapt to motherhood? By acting on instinct and maintaining a strong sense of self, breaking rules (sometimes her own) in the process and building her own adventures out of legos and alphabet blocks. .
Price: $8.77
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An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books
Little did Wendy Werris imagine that when she began a temp job at a Hollywood bookstore in 1970 at age nineteen, she had embarked on a thirty-five year career that would stretch into a journey of self-discovery and literary enlightenment. In An Alphabetical Life, Werris reflects upon how she came to embrace the book culture as her singular way of being in the world. Her career began when the book business was conducted amid an atmosphere of civility and wry humor, and her memoir captures the essence of this time and the people she met along the way. The challenges she faced, in what was then a male-dominated industry, are also discussed — particularly in 1976 when she was one of only two women repping books in the entire country. In describing the hilarious, eccentric characters that were her colleagues, lovers, and partners in crime, the essence of retail bookselling comes alive. Among the figures she profiles are Henry Robbins, editor of The World According to Garp; Alan Kahn, then of Pickwick Bookshop in Los Angeles, now President of Barnes and Noble Publishing; and many great and memorable retail bookbuyers and authors. .
Price: $3.78
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