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Biographies and autobiographies

  • Auteur:
    Oldford, Winston
    Sommaire:

    'Tis a Wonderful Time to Be Alive is Winston Oldford’s personal account of growing up in Burnside, Bonavista Bay, in the 1940s and 1950s.

    The tiny community underwent a baptism by fire—literally—in the early twentieth century. Following a devastating forest fire in the area in 1912, the settlements of Squid Tickle and Holletts Cove became known, collectively, as Burnside. Today, with a population close to 200, it is one of seven communities on the Eastport Peninsula.

    This book takes a look at the history of Burnside, as well as the day-to-day lives of those who have lived in the community over the last two centuries. Winston Oldford takes the reader on a guided tour of his hometown and the cultural foundations upon which Burnside was built.

  • Auteur:
    Clarke, Austin
    Sommaire:

    2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature — Longlisted 2016 RBC Taylor Prize — Longlisted The unforgettable memoir of Giller Prize–winning author and poet Austin Clarke, called “Canada’s first multicultural writer.” Austin Clarke is a distinguished and celebrated novelist and short-story writer. His works often centre around the immigrant experience, of which he writes with humour and compassion, happiness and sorrow. In ’Membering, Clarke shares his own experiences growing up in Barbados and moving to Toronto to attend university in 1955 before becoming a journalist. With vivid realism he describes Harlem of the ’60s, meeting and interviewing Malcolm X and writers Chinua Achebe and LeRoi Jones. Clarke went on to become a pioneering instructor of Afro-American Literature at Yale University and inspired a new generation of Afro-American writers. Clarke has been called Canada’s first multicultural writer. Here he eschews a traditional chronological order of events and takes the reader on a lyrical tour of his extraordinary life, interspersed with thought-provoking meditations on politics and race. Telling things as he ’members them.

  • Auteur:
    Ohno, Apolo
    Sommaire:

    "Zero regrets. It's a philosophy not just about sport but about life . There has to be a vision, a dream, a plan. Then you chase that with everything you've got." Over three consecutive Olympic games, Apolo Ohno has come to symbolize the very best of the competitive spirit. In Zero Regrets, he shares the inspiring personal story behind his remarkable success, as well as the hard won truths and strategies he has discovered in good times and bad. Raised by his single father, an immigrant from Japan who often worked twelve hour days, the young Apolo found it difficult to balance his enormous natural gifts as an athlete with an admittedly wild, rebellious streak. His career was almost over before it began when his lack of preparation caused him to finish last at the U.S. Olympic trials in 1998. At the age of fifteen, he recommitted himself to his training and at the 1999 World Junior Championships won first place overall-one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports history. From that moment on, the world of speed skating had a new champion and Apolo was on his way to legendary status. Zero Regrets is a compelling portrait of a father-and-son relationship that deepened over time and was based on respect, love, and unshakable faith in each other. For the first time, Apolo reveals what he knows about his long-absent mother; he makes us feel what it is like to face the best competitors on the planet with the eyes of millions of fans upon you; and he shares his secrets for achieving total focus and mental toughness. We learn the details of the intense workout and diet that he endured while training for the 2010 Winter Olympics, a regime that literally reshaped his body and led to some of his most thrilling victories. While Apolo's own journey may be unique, the insights he has gleaned along the way have the power to help us all feel like champions every day.

  • Auteur:
    Pirsig, Robert M.
    Sommaire:

    James Purefoy stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Robert M. Pirsig's multi-million bestselling philosophical novel. One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance® tells the iconic story of a father and son's motorcycle trip across America in the 1960s. Yet it also describes a personal and philosophical journey, asking questions along the way about how to live a meaningful life. Now dramatised for the first time by Peter Flannery (Our Friends in the North, George Gently, The Devil's Whore) and starring James Purefoy (Rome, Injustice, Ironclad), this full-cast drama adds a new and original dimension to a true modern classic.

  • Auteur:
    Pirsig, Robert M.
    Sommaire:

    Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

  • Auteur:
    Eggers, Dave
    Sommaire:

    When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun--a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four--chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the eerie days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and rescuing those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. His wife Kathy, a boisterous Southerner who converted to Islam, is left to make sense of the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible.

  • Auteur:
    Aslan, Reza
    Sommaire:

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer

    Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Within decades after his death, his followers would call him God.

    Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.

    Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus’ life and mission.

    Praise for Zealot

    “Riveting . . . Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account.”—The New Yorker

    “Fascinatingly and convincingly drawn . . . Aslan may come as close as one can to respecting those who revere Jesus as the peace-loving, turn-the-other-cheek, true son of God depicted in modern Christianity, even as he knocks down that image.”—The Seattle Times

    “[Aslan’s] literary talent is as essential to the effect of Zealot as are his scholarly and journalistic chops. . . . A vivid, persuasive portrait.”—Salon

    “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

    “Compulsively readable . . . This superb work is highly recommended.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  • Auteur:
    Elvira
    Sommaire:

    The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells, told by the bombshell herself.

  • Auteur:
    Cecchi-Azzolina, Michael
    Sommaire:

    This program is read by the author.A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d'hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants. From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen--or just to gawk--at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we'd never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O'Keefe's casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern to Nolita's Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don't), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that's somewhere between a George Orwell "down and out in...." dungeon and a sleek showman's smoke-and-mirrors palace.Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.

  • Auteur:
    Stark, Peter
    Sommaire:

    A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the history of American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naive and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War-a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution. With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. By weaving together Washington's harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.

  • Auteur:
    Wilson, Sharry
    Sommaire:

    Young Neil is a detailed chronological narrative of the early life of iconic Canadian musician Neil Young. Exploring a time in this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s life that has yet to be documented with such depth of research, Young Neil is an exhaustive document of his “Sugar Mountain” years, from 1945 to 1966. From his birth in Toronto through his school years in Florida, Ontario, and Manitoba, the book examines the development of Young’s unique talent against a backdrop of shifting postwar values, a turbulent family history, and a musical revolution in the making. Includes many previously unseen photos, memorabilia, and set lists.

  • Auteur:
    Hunter, Martin
    Sommaire:

    Taking inspiration from John Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse, Young Hunting is both a story of discovery and transformation. While Toronto changes around him, from a puritanical British colonial outpost to a mixing bowl filled with colourful cultural components, a young boy emerges from his middle class childhood to become a flamboyant adolescent, a questioning adult who refuses to accept conventional wisdom. The Toronto of the '40s and '50s is often painted as the epitome of dull convention--but this was clearly not Martin Hunter's experience. The child of eastern Ontario farmers, he was exposed to fundamentalist Presbyterian values; yet at the same time he was connecting with a number of remarkable artists who profoundly influenced the course of his young life. In Young Hunting, the dichotomy is personified by Hunter's two closest friends: Dick, who would become an Academy Award-winning animator; and Jimmy, who would go on to become the minister of Canada's largest Presbyterian church. The pull of each of these influences was strong, and each helped define both Hunter's youth and developing view of life. Along the way, he soaked up vast and varied experience: as an actor in a children's theatre company; a boarder at an evangelical summer camp; a messenger delivering samples on Queen Street; an officer cadet in the Royal Canadian Navy; a student at Oxbridge-inspired Trinity College; and as a labourer at both a mining camp in the Yukon and a paper mill in Quebec. And while, as Young Hunting explains, Martin Hunter 'thoroughly enjoyed the often ludicrous pretension of these various institutions,' it was not until he escaped to fulfill his 'dreams of high culture' that he gained true perspective on his life's journey--discovering that Europe's vaunted old world cultural superiority was just as hollow as the institutions of his homeland.

  • Auteur:
    Jackson, Matt
    Sommaire:

    A memoir co-written by The Young Bucks, the most electric and daring tag team in all of wrestling, highlighting their inspirational coming-of-age story as two undersized, ambitious amateur wrestlers in Southern California to becoming one of the most popular showcases in popular sports.

  • Auteur:
    McFarlane, Bonnie
    Sommaire:

    It took Bonnie McFarlane a lot of time, effort, and tequila to get to where she is today. In this memoir, Bonnie tells it like it is and lays bare all of her smart (and her not-so-smart) decisions along her way to finding her comedic voice.

  • Auteur:
    Klein, Jessi
    Sommaire:

    Both a tomboy and a late bloomer, Jessi Klein grew up feeling like an observer rather than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. This is a funny collection of real-life stories in which Klein explores the milestones of the twenty-first-century woman.

  • Auteur:
    Bryon, Dennis
    Sommaire:

    From behind the drumkit to the top of the charts: the backstage story of the Bee Gees

    With worldwide sales of over 220 million records, the Bee Gees are the sixth-best-selling music artists in history. Dennis Bryon’s story of how he became the Bee Gees’ drummer during their peak period offers many never-before-told tales about such infectious hits as “Stayin’ Alive,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” and “Night Fever.” From Dennis’s beginnings in a Welsh band to his crucial role in the superstar group, You Should Be Dancing reveals unforgettable stories of his encounters with many famous musicians, including the Bee Gees themselves, Andy Gibb, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, and Olivia Newton-John. Illustrated with Bee Gees photographs and ephemera, Bryon’s memoir takes Bee Gees fans and music enthusiasts alike on one of the wildest rides in pop history.

  • Auteur:
    Gurwitch, Annabelle
    Sommaire:

    Actress, producer, and acclaimed writer Annabelle Gurwitch--once fired from a play by Woody Allen--can find humor in any situation. Here she teams with her husband Jeff Kahn for a funny look at the ups and downs of marriage.

  • Auteur:
    Chocano, Carina
    Sommaire:

    In this smart, funny, impassioned call to arms, a pop culture critic merges memoir and commentary to explore how our culture shapes ideas about who women are, what they are meant to be, and where they belong. Who is "the girl"' Look to movies, TV shows, magazines, and ads and the message is both clear and not: she is a sexed up sidekick, a princess waiting to be saved, a morally infallible angel with no opinions of her own. She's whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. She's an abstraction, an ideal, a standard, a mercurial phantom. From the moment we're born, we're told stories about what girls are and they aren't, what girls want and what they don't, what girls can be and what they can't. "The girl" looms over us like a toxic cloud, permeating everything and confusing our sense of reality. In You Play the Girl, Carina Chocano shows how we metabolize the subtle, fragmented messages embedded in our everyday experience and how our identity is shaped by them. From Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive '70s through the backlash '80s, the glib '90s, and the pornified aughts-and at stops in between-Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. She explains how growing up in the shadow of "the girl" taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections. In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than we think, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.

  • Auteur:
    Hoolboom, Mike, Joynt, Chase
    Sommaire:

    With the discussion of the work of the experimental filmmaker Chris Marker as a starting point, Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolboom engage in a dialogue based on their own life stories, comparing experiences before and after life-altering events, their "first" and "second" lives

  • Auteur:
    Brown, Michelle Poirier
    Sommaire:

    This is a stunning debut, revealing how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. A poetic memoir that looks unflinchingly at childhood trauma (both incestuous rape and surviving exposure in extreme cold), it also tells the story of coming to terms with a hidden Indigenous identity when the poet discovered her Métis heritage at age 38. This collection is a journey of pain, belonging, hope, and resilience. The confessional poems are polished yet unpretentious, often edgy but humorous; they explore trauma yet prioritize the poet's story. Honouring the complexities of Indigenous identity and the raw experiences of womanhood, mental illness, and queer selfhood, these narratives carry weight. They tell us “You need / only be the simple / expression of the divine / intent / that is your life.” There is a lifetime in these poems.

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