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Giving Up On Ordinary

Author: Isla Dewar

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 031256161X

"Isla is the best, the funniest, the cleverest, the most enjoyable writer in Scotland today. . . . you would enrich your life beyond all measure by discovering Isla Dewar." ---Robin Pilcher, New York Times bestselling author In this funny and charming novel, Megs is a woman whose ordinary life is about to become absolutely extraordinary. . . . When Megs became a house cleaner to make ends meet as a single mother of three, she didn't realize that people would be so blinded by the cleansers and mops, they would fail to see her as an actual human being. As "the housekeeper" she's become invisible to them all. Little do these upper-crust clients realize that her life is just as full as theirs, although perhaps a bit less high end. Megs sings the sultry blues at a club each weekend, begins a secret affair, and drinks her troubles away with her saucy best friend, Lorraine---all while trying to keep her children happy and her head above water. But with help from an eccentric professor whose house she cleans, her life is about to get a shot in the arm. Megs begins to speak her mind, stand up for herself, and live her life in color. Poignant and incredibly witty, Giving Up On Ordinary is a heartwarming story with laughter and surprises on every page. Following in the incredible footsteps of Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, Isla Dewar has established herself as one of the greatest voices in women's fiction today.

The Other Side of Impossible

Author: Susannah Meadows

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 081299647X

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"True stories about people who triumphed over seemingly impossible medical diagnoses using untraditional, inventive therapies and perseverance--and about what scientists are discovering on the psychology of healing and the mind-body connection--from the author of the New York Times Magazine article about her own son, 'The Boy with the Thorn in his Joints,' which led to this book about other families"

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

Author: Katrina Kenison

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2009-09-07

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0446558095

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The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition, with boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, and an attempt to find a deeper sense of place—and a slower pace—in a small New England town. This is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers—holding on, letting go. Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without noticing at all. The relationships, hopes, and dreams that Kenison illuminates will touch women's hearts, and her words will inspire mothers everywhere as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store.

The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary

Author: Catherine Gray

Publisher: Aster

Published: 2019-12-26

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1783253649

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**From the Sunday Times Bestselling Author** Life-affirming - THE TELEGRAPH Wonderful - INDEPENDENT She made it her mission to learn how to be default happy rather than default disgruntled - RADIO 4 - WOMAN'S HOUR Take a leaf out of Gray's book and be kinder to yourself by appreciating life just as it is - IRISH TIMES This book came to me in an hour of need - during lockdown when I had to focus on the positive, appreciate simple things, not lose my shit, and value each day. It was a pure joy for me and held my hand - SADIE FROST Interesting and joyful. Lights a path that could help us to build resilience against society's urging to compare life milestones with peers - LANCET PSYCHIATRY Underwhelmed by your ordinary existence? Disillusioned with your middlin' wage, average body, 'bijou' living situation and imperfect loved ones? Welcome to the club. There are billions of us. The 'default disenchanted'. But, it's not us being brats. Two deeply inconvenient psychological phenomenons conspire against our satisfaction. We have negatively-biased brains, which zoom like doom-drones in on what's wrong with our day, rather than what's right. (Back in the mists of time, this negative bias saved our skins, but now it just makes us anxious). Also, something called the 'hedonic treadmill' means we eternally quest for better, faster, more, like someone stuck on a dystopian, never-ending treadmill. Thankfully, there are scientifically-proven ways in which we can train our brains to be more positive-seeking. And to take a rest from this tireless pursuit. Whew. Catherine Gray knits together illuminating science and hilarious storytelling, unveiling captivating research showing that big bucks don't mean big happiness, extraordinary experiences have a 'comedown' and budget weddings predict a lower chance of divorce. She reminds us what an average body actually is, reveals that exercising for weight loss means we do less exercise, and explores the modern tendency to not just try to keep up with the Murphys, but keep up with the Mega-Murphies (see: the social media elite). Come on in to this soulful and life-affirming read, to discover why an ordinary life may well be the most satisfying one of all.

Out of the Ordinary

Author: Marc Stears

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-01-12

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0674743873

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From a major British political thinker and activist, a passionate case that both the left and right have lost their faith in ordinary people and must learn to find it again. This is an age of polarization. It’s us vs. them. The battle lines are clear, and compromise is surrender. As Out of the Ordinary reminds us, we have been here before. From the 1920s to the 1950s, in a world transformed by revolution and war, extreme ideologies of left and right fueled utopian hopes and dystopian fears. In response, Marc Stears writes, a group of British writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers showed a way out. These men and women, including J. B. Priestley, George Orwell, Barbara Jones, Dylan Thomas, Laurie Lee, and Bill Brandt, had no formal connection to one another. But they each worked to forge a politics that resisted the empty idealisms and totalizing abstractions of their time. Instead they were convinced that people going about their daily lives possess all the insight, virtue, and determination required to build a good society. In poems, novels, essays, films, paintings, and photographs, they gave witness to everyday people’s ability to overcome the supposedly insoluble contradictions between tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, rights and duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservatism and radicalism. It was this humble vision that animated the great Festival of Britain in 1951 and put everyday citizens at the heart of a new vision of national regeneration. A leading political theorist and a veteran of British politics, Stears writes with unusual passion and clarity about the achievements of these apostles of the ordinary. They helped Britain through an age of crisis. Their ideas might do so again, in the United Kingdom and beyond.

An Ordinary Wonder

Author: Buki Papillon

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1643137824

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An extraordinary literary debut about a Nigerian boy's secret intersex identity and his desire to live as a girl. Oto leaves for boarding school with one plan: excel and escape his cruel home. Falling in love with his roommate was certainly not on the agenda, but fear and shame force him to hide his love and true self. Back home, weighed down by the expectations of their wealthy and powerful family, the love of Oto's twin sister wavers and, as their world begins to crumble around them, Oto must make drastic choices that will alter the family's lives for ever. Richly imagined with art, proverbs and folk tales, this moving and modern novel follows Oto through life at home and at boarding school in Nigeria, through the heartbreak of living as a boy despite their profound belief they are a girl, and through a hunger for freedom that only a new life in the United States can offer. An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming-of-age story that explores complex desires as well as challenges of family, identity, gender, and culture, and what it means to feel whole.

Ordinary Hazards

Author: Nikki Grimes

Publisher: Astra Publishing House

Published: 2022-03-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1635925622

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Michael L. Printz Honor Book Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for Teens Six Starred Reviews—★Booklist ★BCCB ★The Horn Book ★Publishers Weekly ★School Library Connection ★Shelf Awareness A Booklist Best Book for Youth * A BCCB Blue Ribbon * A Horn Book Fanfare Book * A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book * Recommended on NPR's "Morning Edition" by Kwame Alexander "This powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow."–Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak and Shout "[A] testimony and a triumph."–Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

Giving Up

Author: Mike Steeves

Publisher: Book*hug Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781771660914

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Fiction. In grappling with the line between what happened and what might have happened, Steeves gives voice to the anguish of a generation of people who grew up with great expectations, and are now settling into their own personal failures and compromises: James is obsessed with completing his life's work. Mary is worried about their problems starting a family, and is scared that their future might not turn out as she'd planned. In the span of a few hours on an ordinary night in a non-descript city, two relatively small events will have enormous consequences on James' and Mary's lives, both together and apart. With an unrelenting prose style and pitch-black humour, GIVING UP addresses difficult topics--James's ruinous ambition, and Mary's quiet anguish--in a funny and relatable way. This experimental work will appeal to readers of contemporary European fiction who enjoy fast-paced stories that focus on voice and ideas. "Few first novels in recent memory are as consistently charming, smart, entertaining and incisive as GIVING UP. Somehow Mike Steeves has written a page- turner about stray cats and trips to the bank, and a story that treads through the banalities of everyday life with such precision to cast each detail, every gesture and object and silence, with great meaning."--Pasha Malla

A Life of Miracles

Author: Don Schulze

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1414383215

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Follows the spiritual odyssey of one ordinary family as they witness just how closely God sticks by us, even in our most uncomfortable moments.

Beyond Ordinary

Author: Justin Davis

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2012-12-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1414382642

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How safe is your marriage? The answer may surprise you. The biggest threat to any marriage isn’t infidelity or miscommunication. The greatest enemy is ordinary. Ordinary marriages lose hope. Ordinary marriages lack vision. Ordinary marriages give in to compromise. Ordinary is the belief that this is as good as it will ever get. And when we begin to settle for ordinary, it’s easy to move from “I do” to “I’m done.” Justin and Trisha Davis know just how dangerous ordinary can be. In this beautifully written book, Justin and Trisha take us inside the slow fade that occurred in their own marriage—each telling the story from their own perspective. Together, they reveal the mistakes they made, the work they avoided, the thoughts and feelings that led to an affair and near divorce, and finally, the heart-change that had to occur in both of them before they could experience the hope, healing, and restoration of a truly extraordinary marriage.