Spring break
By Farah Amin
Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
In this book, Gretchen Rubin highlights the question of: How do we change? Her simple answer is: through habits. Whatever we want to achieve, is through setting a habit and despite that it is hard work to set a habit, but once its carved into our life,we can harness that energy of a habit in order to build a happier, stronger, more productive life.
Better than before answers the question of How do we change our habits and presents a practical, concrete framework for readers to understand their habits and change them.
The author uses herself as guinea pig, as she tests her theories on family and friends, and answers readers’ questions, such as,why do I find it tough to create a habit for something I love to do?Sometimes I can change a habit overnight, and sometimes I can’t change a habit, no matter how hard I try. Why?
Whether readers want to get more sleep, stop checking their devices, maintain a healthy weight, or finish an important project, habits make change possible.
What Alice Forgot
This book-soon-to-be-movie, from the director of The Devil Wears Prada, is a novel for anyone who’s ever asked herself, “How did I get myself there?”
The story is about Alice, a 29 year-old who is crazy about her husband, and pregnant with their first child. Alice goes to the gym one day(she hates the gym), where she finds herself waking up on the floor and taken to a hospital where she’s getting a divorce, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old.
Alice must make sense of the events of a lost decade and if it’s a possibility to reconstruct her life at the same time. She must figure out the reason her sister stopped talking to her and how she’s become a skinny mama with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over…
Last One Home
Cassie Carter and her sisters, Karen and Nichole, were incredibly close growing up, when one fateful event drove them apart. Cassie ran away from home to marry the wrong man, after high school, throwing away a college scholarship and breaking her parents’ hearts. Cassie had been their father’s favorite, which made her actions harder to bear.
At 31 years-old, now Cassie returned to Washington, with her daughter,living in Seattle and trying to leave her past behind. She ended her difficult marriage and now is back on her feet getting her life back together, slowly but surely. Despite the strides Cassie’s made, she hasn’t been able to make peace with her sisters.
One day she receives a letter from Karen, offering what Cassie thinks may be a chance to reconcile, as Cassie opens herself up to new possibilities, making amends with her sisters, finding love once more, she realizes the power of compassion, and the promise of a fresh start.
What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Millions of people visit xkcd.com weekly to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic, his stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a vast and loyal following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans’ strangest questions.
He receives a range from odd to downright diabolical questions:
• What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?
• Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?
• What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City?
• Are fire tornadoes possible?
He masterfully responds with of clarity and wit, delightedly and accurately explaining everything.
Hausfrau
Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno, a banker, and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich.
Despite leading a comfortable life, Anna is falling apart inside. Unable to connect with her emotionally unavailable husband, Anna tries to distract herself with new experiences, from German language classes, Jungian analysis, to a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.
She tries to end her affairs, but with great difficulty where tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Crossing a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
This novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices will stir debate and fury with readers.
With both honesty and beauty her story reveals, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.
