Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memior, Autobiography of a Face , she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth &... (more)

When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy (Plume)

When Food Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy (Plume)

by Geneen Roth

An examination of the link between eating disorders and the need for intimacy explains how eating disorders sabotage intimate relationships and why many people overeat to satisfy their emotional hunger. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Ha-Ha : A Novel

by Dave King

A novel of extraordinary emotional power, hailed as one of the most moving and remarkable literary debuts of the year. THE HA-HA is the story of Howard Kapostash, a mute war veteran who, in opening his home to a nine-year-old boy, is afforded a rare glimpse of life outside his shell-with all its exuberant joys and crushing sorrows.

How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale

How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale

by Jenna Jameson

When the stewardess brought me off the plane in a wheelchair, I lowered my head. I was too scared to even look at my father. I didn't want to see the disappointment and horror on his face. All that hate I had accumulated for him over the years, all the resentment against him for not understanding what I was going through, just released with the tears. "So, where are your parents?" the stewardess asked me after a... (more)

My Dark Places (Vintage)

by James Ellroy

"Astonishing . . . original, daring, brilliant." --Philadelphia Inquirer In 1958 Jean Ellroy was murdered, her body dumped on a roadway in a seedy L.A. suburb. Her killer was never found, and the police dismissed her as a casualty of a cheap Saturday night. James Ellroy was ten when his mother died, and he spent the next thirty-six years running from her ghost and attempting to exorcize it through crime... (more)

The Glass Castle

A Memoir

by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle , Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing... (more)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

by Ralph Steadman, Hunter S. Thompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. Now this cult classic of gonzo journalism is a major motion picture from Universal, directed by Terry Gilliam and... (more)

Possible Side Effects

by Augusten Burroughs

National Bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Augusten Burroughs's most provocative collection of true stories yet. From nicotine gum addiction to lesbian personal ads to incontinent dogs, Possible Side Effects mines Burroughs's life in a series of uproariously funny essays. These are stories that are uniquely Augusten, with all the over-the-top hilarity of... (more)

Faithfull

by Marianne Faithfull, David Dalton

Marianne Faithfull singer, dope addict and lover of Mick Jagger and other rich and famous people tells us her story, in a frank, revealing autobiography.

Girl, Interrupted (Vintage)

by Susanna Kaysen, Anna Hamilton Phelan, James Mangold, Lisa Loomer

In the late 1960s, the author spent nearly two years on the ward for teenage girls at McLean Hospital, a renowned psychiatric facility. Her memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perceptions, while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. "Searing . . . captures an exquisite range of self-awareness between madness and insight."--Boston Globe.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

by Melody Beattie

recovery has begun for millions of individuals with this straightforward guide. through personal examples and exercises, readers are shown how controlling others forces them to lose sight of their own needs and happiness.

Women, Sex and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power

Women, Sex and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power

by Charlotte Sophia Kasl

In our society, sex can easily become the price many women pay for love and the illusion of security. A woman who seeks a sense of personal power and an escape from pain may use sex and romance as a way to feel in control, just as an alcoholic uses alcohol; but sex never satisfies her longing for love and self-worth. In this wise and compassionate book, Charlotte Kasl shows women how they can learn to experience... (more)

Intervention

by Terri Blackstock

Barbara Covington has one more chance to save her daughter from a devastating addiction: staging an intervention. But when eighteen-year-old Emily disappears on the way to drug treatment—and her interventionist is found dead at the airport where she was last seen—Barbara enters her darkest nightmare of all.

unSweetined

by Jodie Sweetin

How Rude! Once Danny Tanner's bubbly daughter on America's favorite family sitcom, Jodie Sweetin takes readers behind the scenes of Full House and shares her terrifying -- and uplifting -- real-life story of addiction and recovery. Jodie Sweetin grew up in front of America, melting our hearts and making us laugh for eight years as the cherub-faced middle child on Full House. Her ups and downs seemed... (more)

American on Purpose

by Craig Ferguson

In American on Purpose , Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark—as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer. To numb the pain of failure,... (more)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

by Tucker Max

My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world. —from the Introduction ... (more)

My Booky Wook

A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up

by Russell Brand

Russell Brand learned early on to make a joke of fear and failure. From a troubled childhood in industrial Essex, England, to his descent into addictions to alcohol, drugs, and sex in the seamy underbelly of London, Brand has seen his share of both and miraculously lived to tell the tale. In My Booky Wook he leads readers on a rollicking journey through his disastrous school career, his infamous antics on MTV,... (more)

Blame: A Novel

by Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven, Richard Russo once wrote, is “a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent.” That talent explodes with her third book, Blame , a spellbinding novel of guilt and love, family and shame, sobriety and the lack of it, and the moral ambiguities that ensnare us all. The story: Patsy MacLemoore, a history professor in her late twenties with a brand-new Ph.D. from Berkeley and a wild streak, wakes... (more)

Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir

Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir

by James Salant

With his nickname, Dirty Jersey, tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, James Salant wanted everyone to know he was a tough guy. At the age of eighteen, after one too many run-ins with the cops for drug possession, he left his upper-middle-class home in Princeton, New Jersey, for a stint at a rehab facility in Riverside, California. Instead of getting clean, he spent his year there shooting crystal meth and... (more)

Sarah T--Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic

Sarah T--Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic

by Robin S. Wagner

Teen-age problem drinkers are not just young adults of legal age. Many are alcoholics at 12 and 13, and some even sooner. They're raiding their parents' liquor cabinets ... bribing older friends to buy it for them. Young girls are trading sex for it. Sarah T. -- Portrait Of A Teen-Age Alcoholic takes both a shocking and compassionate look at the growing problem of adolescent liquor abuse ... and the desperate need... (more)

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by Ann Patchett