Recommendations based on "Adele Soul Music's Magical Voice"

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address...What would happen if your memory of these began to fade?Is it possible to rebuild your life? Raise a family? Fall in love again?When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold on to the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?Original, heartwarming and uplifting, The Memory Book is perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes.

'Three in the bed. One not yet born, another dead, and I'm alive.' Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack on his morning run. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. Into a Star follows Puk and her young family for one year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she thought she would live, as she finds her way slowly through the enormous grief and, eventually, out the other side. With remarkable dignity, candour and attention to the domestic details that make us human, Puk Qvortrup invites us into the hardest moments of her life. And she reveals, amid the devastation, a powerful thread of hope.

An intimate, revealing memoir from one of the most important activists of our time.While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011, she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013, she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison.The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison.In README.txt, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. Manning details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence as a naive, computer-savvy kid, what drew her to the military, and the fierce pride she has about the work she does. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.

Jenna Bush Hager, the former first daughter and granddaughter, #1 New York Times bestselling author, and coanchor of the Today show, shares moving, funny stories about her beloved grandparents and the wisdom they passed on that has shaped her life.To the world, George and Barbara Bush were America’s powerful president and influential first lady. To Jenna Bush Hager, they were her beloved Gampy and Ganny, who taught her about respect, humility, kindness, and living a life of passion and meaning—timeless lessons that continue to guide her.In Midland, Texas, Jenna’s maternal grandparents, Harold and Jenna Welch—Pa and Grammee—a home builder and homemaker, lived a quieter life outside the national spotlight. Yet their influence was no less indelible to their granddaughter. Throughout Jenna’s childhood and adolescence, the Welches taught her the name of every star in the sky, the way a dove uses her voice—teaching her to appreciate the beauty in the smallest things.Now the mother of three young children, Jenna pays homage to her grandparents in this collection of heartwarming, intimate personal essays. Filled with love, laughter, and unforgettable stories, Everything Beautiful in Its Time captures the joyous and bittersweet nature of life itself. Jenna reflects on the single year in which she and her family lost Barbara and George H. W. Bush, and Jenna Welch. With the light, self-deprecating charm of the bestselling Sisters First—cowritten with her twin sister, Barbara—Jenna reveals how they navigated this difficult period with grace, faith, and nostalgic humor, uplifted by their grandparents’ sage advice and incomparable spirits.In this moving book, Jenna remembers the past, cherishes the present, and prepares for the future—providing a wealth of anecdotes and lessons for her own children and all of us. Poignant and humorous, intimate and sincere, Everything Beautiful in Its Time is a warm and wonderful celebration of the enduring power of family and an exploration of the things that truly matter most.“As long as I’m alive, my grandparents will not be forgotten. . . . I hear their voices in the letters they sent me and in my memories. They offer comfort, support, and guidance, and I will listen to them always.”

An Instant New York Times BestsellerA New York Times Notable BookOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyleA chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother's life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother's history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a "child of miscegenation" in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet's attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia - until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side - and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

I'm no Job - though I think we went to the same school....So says Jim Beaver in this memoir.In August 2003, Jim and his wife, Cecily, received what they thought was the worst news possible - their daughter, Maddie, was autistic. Then, six weeks later, the roof fell in - Cecily was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.Jim immediately began writing a nightly e-mail as a way to keep 125 family and friends up-to-date about Cecily's condition. Soon four thousand people around the world were reading it. Initially a cathartic exercise for Jim, the prose turned into an unforgettable journey for his readers. Life's That Way is a compilation of those e-mails; yet what started out as nightly missives makes for a unique and compelling, wholly original reading experience.Life's That Way is not an author looking back on his experience with the advantage of hindsight - there is an immediacy to this book that is singular. While highly personal, Beaver's experience is at the same time universal for anybody who has lost a loved one.But Life's That Way is not solely about loss. It is a day-by-day account of what it's like to discover the joy of a child, to be on the receiving end of unthinkable kindness, and to navigate life anew. As Beaver says, these are hard-won blessings. Then again, life's that way.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply powerful memoir about bipolar illness that has both transformed and saved lives—with a new preface by the author.  Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.

WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZEA BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'Truly heart-warming ... It's become my comfort book' JACQUELINE WILSON'Told from inside one of the UK's most overlooked professions, this home careworker's memoir is warm, raw, and unflinchingly honest. The sad moments are balanced with the funny, heartwarming ones' i paperA luminous, uplifting and deeply moving memoir by a care worker, told through her funny, heartbreaking, sometimes frustrating, and always eye-opening encounters with the often overlooked and marginalised people she cares for.Kate never expected to become a home care worker. But when she left her senior role in the NHS, burnt-out and disheartened, she thought caring for people in their own homes would be a simpler job. Despite being determined not to become too involved with her 'customers', she soon found herself developing firm friendships, forging deep connections and bearing witness to the extraordinary drama to be found in ordinary lives.With energy, compassion and clarity, her memoir gives an astonishing insight into this unsung - and often maligned - profession, and into the hidden lives of the housebound and infirm. From Beryl who screams like a banshee whenever Kate tries to wash her, but collapses in giggles when her toes are tickled, to bawdy Mr Radbert who 'promised to give me his car when he can remember where he left it'.Every Kind of People is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the NHS and the care system. But it is above all a celebration of humanity and of the life-changing impact of caring, on those who offer it and those who receive it.'Being as close as this to someone is a uniquely precious place to be. It is a place where secrets are revealed and fears are shared and outrageous jokes are made that could not be told to anyone else. It is a coal face of human experience'---'The work of a natural storyteller ... All kinds of brilliant' JON McGREGOR‘I am in love with Kate's storytelling, her ability to see the person and her fabulous, dry humour. This is a book about caring, and it's also a book about being in love with humanity’ KATHRYN MANNIX'An extraordinary account of what it is to care for others, both beautiful and painful to read. This book is a compassionate invitation to get up close to the human condition and those who attend to it' DR GWEN ADSHEAD, author of The Devil You Know'An extraordinary and important book that will make you laugh, cry, admire and despair in equal measure... A wonderful achievement' DAVID HASLAM

A memoir from singer-songwriter Madison Beer, chronicling the past decade of her life spent in the spotlight--the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that you won't see on social media. Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online. Over the past decade, she has navigated the spotlight as a child, through her teenage years, and now as a young woman in her twenties. In The Half of It, Madison pulls back the curtain to show the behind-the-scenes of her journey, from reckoning with mass hate online and the time her private pictures were leaked, to battling suicidal thoughts while making her highly acclaimed debut album, Life Support, and her recovery since then. This memoir is an honest and unflinching account of self-love, mental health, and advocacy from one of the fastest-rising musical voices and most influential social media presences of her generation. It hammers home the point, more striking and urgent than ever, that no matter how close the internet may make us feel to people, we truly don't know the half of it.