Books That Will Change Your Life:Continued
Discover transformative reads with our curated list of life-changing books. Continue your journey of growth, inspiration, and self-improvement with these powerful must-reads.
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ID: 0671024493
(Type: books)
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The Honk and Holler Opening Soon
by Billie Letts
Caney Paxton wanted his cafe to have the biggest and brightest sign in Eastern Oklahoma-the "opening soon" part was supposed to be just a removable, painted notice. But a fateful misunderstanding gave Vietnam vet Caney the flashiest joke in the entire state. Twelve years later, the once-busy highway is dead and the sign is as worn as Caney, who hasn't ventured outside the diner since it opened. Then one blustery December day, a thirtyish Crow woman blows in with a three-legged dog in her arms and a long-buried secret on her mind. Hiring on as a carhop, Vena Takes Horse is soon shaking up business, the locals, and Caney's heart...as she teaches them all about generosity of spirit, love, and the possibility of promise-just like the sign says.
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A Corner of the Universe
by Ann M. Martin
The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town.
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Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
by James Patterson
Katie Wilkinson has finally found the perfect man - but one day he suddenly disappears, leaving behind only a diary written by a new mother named Suzanne for her baby, Nicholas. In it she intimately reveals the romance between herself and the child's father, her hopes for their marriage, and her unparalleled joy in motherhood. As Katie reads on, she realizes that the man she loves is Suzanne's husband. Now, filled with terror and hope, Katie must struggle to understand what has happened - and find out if her new love has a prayer of surviving.
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ID: 1556525524
(Type: books)
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You Remind Me of Me
by Dan Chaon
With his critically acclaimed Among the Missing and Fitting Ends, award-winning author Dan Chaon proved himself a master of the short story form. He is a writer, observes the Chicago Tribune, who can “convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so.” Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of “ordinary” people.
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ID: 0812969006
(Type: books)
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Eliot's Banana
by Heather Swain
Things should be peachy. Junie isn't entirely sure what her problem is. She's just moved into a Brooklyn apartment with her cool longtime boyfriend Leon, a drummer who adores her. She flits through a string of temp jobs in funky thrift store clothes. But beneath her veneer of quirky humor there's a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction about her life. She's about to go bananas. When Junie meets Eliot, who is twice her age, and his cat, Alfie, at the vet's office, she's convinced she's found the zest missing in her life. A burnt-out sci-fi writer in search of a muse, Eliot is apples to Leon's oranges. It's not long before Junie's standing in his kitchen being offered a banana...and then some. Losing herself in the mayhem of a fling, Junie slowly realizes that kinky diversions are a poor distraction from what's really eating her. Only when she stops obsessing about Eliot and starts peeling away the layers of her family's past will she see that what she really wants has been waiting for her all along...and that her future's ripe with possibilities.
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Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
With more than 300,000 copies sold, Chuck Palahniuk's brilliant first novel and cult classic is being reissued with a new Introduction by the author An underground classic since its first publication in 1996, Fight Club is widely recognized as one of the most original and provocative novels of the last decade. Now the author adds his own voice to the critical debate he generated. In a new Introduction, he discusses the various interpretations in the popular media of Fight Club and the movie it inspired, as well as his personal reactions to the work's reception and the influence that the Fight Club phenomenon has already had on our culture. Chuck Palahniuk's darkly funny first novel tells the story of a disenfranchised young man frustrated with his bureacratic job and superficial relationships and disillusioned with the consumer culture's prepackaged pleasures. Relief for him and his peers comes in the form of Tyler Durden, the intensely charismatic inventor of Fight Club. Waiters, clerks, and middlemen seek out the visceral satisfaction of secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars, thinking they have found a way to live beyond their confining and stultifying lives. But in Tyler's world there are no rules, no limits, no brakes.
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Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.
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ID: 1401602428
(Type: books)
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About a Boy
by Nick Hornby
A wise, hilarious novel from the beloved, award-winning author of Dickens and Prince, Funny Girl and High Fidelity Will Freeman may have discovered the key to dating success: If the simple fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women – women who would not ordinarily look twice a Will – might not only be willing, but enthusiastic about dating him, then he was really onto something. Single mothers – bright, attractive, available women – thousands of them, were all over London. He just had to find them. SPAT: Single Parents – Alone Together. It was a brilliant plan. And Will wasn’t going to let the fact that he didn’t have a child himself hold him back. A fictional two-year-old named Ned wouldn’t be the first thing he’d invented. And it seems to go quite well at first, until he meets an actual twelve-year-old named Marcus, who is more than Will bargained for…
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ID: 0374516707
(Type: books)
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ID: 0684865386
(Type: books)
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Diary
by Chuck Palahniuk
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled. Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.
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ID: 0671001957
(Type: books)
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Stranger Than Fiction
by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction.At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk himself experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. With this new direction, Chuck Palahniuk has proven he can do anything.
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ID: 0743407865
(Type: books)
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Don't Sleep With Your Drummer
by Jen Sincero
At twenty-eight, Jenny Troanni has decided to become the rock goddess she was always meant to be. Items on her new to-do list include: 1) Quit going-somewhere copywriting job and get going-to-band-practice job. 2) Break up with Hootie and the Blowfish-lovin' boyfriend. 3) Hang out in skanky bars. Meet musicians. 4) Cash in pension and buy kickass guitar amp. 5) Team up with sex-crazed guitar genius/best friend Lucy Stover Hanover II. After auditioning every musician in the greater Los Angeles area---including the deluded, deranged, and underaged---Jenny finds the perfect lineup, and 60-Foot Queenie is born. But while reveling in free tequila shots, autograph hunters, and other perks of minor stardom, Jenny realizes with a shock that 60-Foot Queenie is poised to become even bigger than she imagined. Suddenly, she's learning the real lessons of Rock and Roll High School, including the danger of trusting a record company executive who ties a ponytail in his goatee, and the ten telltale signs your bass player is living in your practice space. Part diary, part crash course in rock stardom, Don't Sleep with Your Drummer is a hilarious, no-holds-barred guide through the pleasures and pitfalls of the music industry---from the beginning to the bitter end, and back again.