How To Fall In Love With Anyone A Memoir In Essays

Download or read book How to Fall in Love with Anyone written by Mandy Len Catron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).

Download or read book How to Fall in Love with Anyone written by Mandy Len Catron and published by Nero. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deeply personal investigation into the meaning of love, from the author of the popular New York Times essay ‘To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This’ Why does love last? Does love ever work the way it does in films, books and social media? Or does our obsessing over love stories harm real relationships? These were questions Mandy Len Catron set out to answer when her parents’ 28-year marriage and her own 10-year relationship finished almost concurrently. In a series of candid, charming and wise essays, she explores what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world. She deconstructs her own personal canon of love stories, going back to when her grandparents first met in a coal mining town, and also her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver, drawing insights from her fascinating research into the psychology, biology, history and literature of love. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. And she tells the story of how she decided to test a psychology experiment – where the objective was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions – and ended up having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. ‘Personal musings and reminiscences paired with solid research provide an interesting stroll through an abstract topic.’ —Kirkus Reviews ‘In our age of total romantic confusion, Mandy Len Catron is a voice of good sense, warm humor and consoling wisdom. Through the lens of her own relationships, she teaches us—with a deft, convincing intelligence—some of the vital moves in the art of love.’ —Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Course of Love ‘This book is a well-written and down-to-earth exploration of love and it should help people navigate their own paths in relationships.’ —Natalie Salvo, AU Review ‘A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir.’ —Los Angeles Review of Books ‘Personal musings and reminiscences paired with solid research provide an interesting stroll through an abstract topic.’ —Kirkus Reviews ‘Honest and well-researched, the book will teach readers plenty about love, science, and themselves. Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us.’ —Booklist ‘Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation on the most universal topic.’ —Bookpage ‘It’s hard to imagine a more timely endeavour. Clear-eyed and full of heart, How to Fall in Love With Anyone is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship.’ —Toronto Star

Download or read book The Memoir Project written by Marion Roach Smith and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary "practical resource for beginners" looking to write their own memoir—​now new and revised (Kirkus Reviews)! The greatest story you could write is one you've experienced yourself. Knowing where to start is the hardest part, but it just got a little easier with this essential guidebook for anyone wanting to write a memoir. Did you know that the #1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book—about themselves? It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing a memoir—whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child—is the single greatest path to self-examination. Through the use of disarmingly frank, but wildly fun tactics that offer you simple and effective guidelines that work, you can stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind writer's block. Previously self-published under the title, Writing What You Know: Raelia, this book has found an enthusiastic audience that now writes with intent.

Download or read book Hard to Love written by Briallen Hopper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp and entertaining essay collection about the importance of multiple forms of love and friendship in a world designed for couples, from a laser-precise new voice. Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary--friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!). Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.

Download or read book The Art of Memoir written by Mary Karr and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

Download or read book Crazy Love written by Leslie Morgan Steiner and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller: “[A] brutally honest memoir of a brave, smart, fresh-faced young woman’s descent into domestic hell.” —Monica Holloway, author of Driving with Dead People At 22, Leslie Morgan Steiner seemed to have it all: a Harvard diploma, a glamorous job at Seventeen magazine, a downtown New York City apartment. Plus a handsome, funny, street-smart boyfriend who adored her. But behind her façade of success, this golden girl hid a dark secret. She’d made a mistake shared by millions: she fell in love with the wrong person. At first Leslie and Conor seemed as perfect together as their fairy-tale wedding. Then came the fights she tried to ignore: he pushed her down the stairs of the house they bought together, poured coffee grinds over her hair as she dressed for a critical job interview, choked her during an argument, and threatened her with a gun. Several times, he came close to making good on his threat to kill her. With each attack, Leslie lost another piece of herself. Gripping and utterly compelling, Crazy Love takes you inside the violent, devastating world of abusive love. Conor said he’d been abused since he was a young boy, and love and rage danced intimately together in his psyche. Why didn’t Leslie leave? She stayed because she loved him. Find out for yourself if she had fallen truly in love—or into a psychological trap. Crazy Love will draw you in—and never let go. “Compulsively readable.” —People “A must read for anyone in a consuming relationship.” —Iris Krasnow, New York Times–bestselling author

Download or read book Abandon Me written by Melissa Febos and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of the Best Books of the year by: Esquire, Refinery29, BookRiot, Medium, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Largehearted Boy, The Coil and The Cut. Winner of the Lambda Literary Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography Finalist, Publishing Triangle's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction An Indie Next Pick A fierce and dazzling personal narrative that explores the many ways identity and art are shaped by love and loss. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection -- with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession -- and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another. At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer's life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.