Other books that might interest you

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  Writers and Their Notebooks

  Diana M. Raab

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  Personal reflections on the vital role of the notebook in creative writing, from Dorianne Laux, Sue Grafton, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, and more. 
   
  This collection of essays by established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshops—places to collect, to play, and to make new discoveries with language, passions, and curiosities. For these diverse writers, the journal also serves as an ideal forum to develop their writing voice, whether crafting fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.  
   
  Some include sample journal entries that have since developed into published pieces. Through their individual approaches to keeping a notebook, the contributors offer valuable advice, personal recollections, and a hearty endorsement of the value of using notebooks to document, develop, and nurture a writer’s creative spark.

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  On the Right Track - From...

  Marion Jones, Maggie...

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  For more than a decade, Marion Jones was hailed as the "the fastest woman on the planet." At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, she became the first woman ever to win five medals at one Olympics. That same year, the Associated Press and ESPN named her Athlete of the Year. She was on the cover of Vogue and Time. She seemed to have it all-fame, fortune, talent, and international acclaim. Now she is a convicted felon. The trouble started in 2003 when she lied to federal agents about her use of a performance-enhancing drug and her knowledge of a check fraud scam. In 2007, no longer able to live with the lies, she admitted the truth. In a sad end to what seemed like a storybook career, she was stripped of her medals, and her track-and-field records were wiped from the books. She was incarcerated at Carswell federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas-a prison known for its violence and abuse. While there, she kept herself in shape and her sanity intact by running on a dirt track and a treadmill in the prison's improvised weight room. But her imprisonment was not the end for Marion Jones. In fact, it marked a new beginning. She is now using her story to change the lives of people the world over and inspire others who, like her, face obstacles that seem insurmountable. On the Right Track is the candidly told story of how Marion came to grips with her lies and the consequences of her actions, and how she found meaning in all of it. What she tells her children and has now applied to her own life is that when you make a mistake, you admit it, you accept the consequences, you move on, you make the wrong a right. She teaches her children and others to take a break and pause before making impulsive and potentially harmful decisions. At the heart of this book are real issues that we all face: learning to grow through pain; making decisions that will help us far into the future; overcoming failure and discouragement; and applying practical principles that point the way to personal and spiritual breakthrough.

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  The Familia Grande - A Memoir

  Camille Kouchner

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  A stunning story about finding the courage to speak out against injustice, even when committed by those closest to us.Camille Kouchner's childhood was marked by sun-drenched summers in the south of France, where a vibrant cast of family and friends would gather at their Sanary-sur-Mer house. This familia grande, which included much of the country's elite, spent memorable days and nights laughing, debating, drinking, and dancing. But a long-held secret poisoned Camille's memories.In February 2017, Camille returned to Sanary at forty-one to bury her mother, who died with none of her five children present. Her passing would stir up old emotions, ultimately leading Camille to publicly confront the truth.The Familia Grande poignantly explores the dynamics of abuse, and the questions of guilt and shame surrounding it. Published in France in 2021, the book sparked an important conversation about incest, and the attitudes and laws that have so often allowed influential men to evade consequences for their crimes.

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  Stalky & Co

  Rudyard Kipling

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  Rudyard Kipling published Stalky & Co. in 1899. Set at an English boarding school in a seaside town on the North Devon coast. (The town, Westward Ho!, is not only unusual in having an exclamation mark, but also in being itself named after a novel, by Charles Kingsley.) The book is a collection of linked short stories, with some information about the eponymous Stalky's later life. Beetle, one of the main trio, is said to be based on Kipling himself, while Stalky may be based on Lionel Dunsterville. The stories have elements of the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from the childish or idealised world of the typical school story. Edmund Wilson, critic, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending. Adapted by Tim Bulkeley from the Wikipedia entry.

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  Out of Line - A Life of Playing...

  Barbara Lynch

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  Celebrated chef Barbara Lynch credits the defiant spirit of her upbringing in tough, poor "Southie," a neighborhood ruled by the notorious Whitey Bulger gang, with helping her bluff her way into her first professional cooking jobs; develop a distinct culinary style through instinct and sheer moxie; then dare to found an empire of restaurants ranging from a casual but elegant "clam shack" to Boston's epitome of modern haute cuisine.One of seven children born to an overworked single mother, Lynch was raised in a housing project. She earned a daredevil reputation for boosting vehicles (even a city bus), petty theft, drinking and doing drugs, and narrowly escaping arrest—haunted all the while by a painful buried trauma.Out of Line describes Lynch's remarkable process of self-invention, including her encounters with colorful characters of the food world, and vividly evokes the magic of creation in the kitchen. It is also a love letter to South Boston and its vanishing culture, governed by Irish Catholic mothers and its own code of honor. Through her story, Lynch explores how the past—both what we strive to escape from and what we remain true to—can strengthen and expand who we are.

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  My Secret Life Vol 6 Chapter 14

  Dominic Crawford Collins

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  My Secret Life is the longest erotic autobiography ever written. Penned anonymously during the 1800s by a wealthy English gentleman called Walter, it offers an eye and thigh opening account of life behind closed doors in the Victorian era. Banned from publication for its extreme and explicit content for nearly a century, My Secret Life has now come to life in the 21st century as an immersive audio book, narrated and scored by film composer Dominic Crawford Collins.Volume 6 Chapter 14At B**I*n. • A meet in a street. • A mysterious lady. • A long walk. • The carpet hung out. • "You are Englishman." • My reward. • To Scotland. • The G***c*w dye-works. • The bare legged fore-woman. • In search of a brothel. • My noble spout. • White flesh and red hair. • Private instructions in dyeing. • A horse collar cunt. • Unusual continence. • At D**d*e. • A mill- hand with naked feet. • "By the sodjers' barracks." • The old mon's hut. • Janet in bed, simple and indecent. • "The sodgers' Whures." • Sister Ruth in the fog. • A convenient wall. • An uprighter.

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