Recommendations based on "Life's Work"

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the founder of The Isolation Journals and a subject of the Netflix documentary American Symphony ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review   “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

***The Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller*** ***The Global #1 Bestseller*** The extraordinary life of Cher can be told by only one person . . . Cher herself. After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center. She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship. With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century. Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar. It is a life too immense for only one book.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF 2022 • A PARADE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A MARIE CLAIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK“It’s clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all.”—USA Today“[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success….Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels.”—Los Angeles TimesIn my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** A breathtakingly candid memoir by Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, the chart-topping, multi-platinum recording artist behind hits like “Leave (Get Out),” “Too Little, Too Late”, and the Grammy Award-winning "Say So" Signed to a major recording deal at just 12 years old, JoJo catapulted to the top of the pop-and-R&B-infused charts in the mid 2000's. The relatability of her youth and the appeal of her cool-girl mystique earned her millions of fans around the world. JoJo was an undeniable superstar and pop culture fixture, spanning roles in major studio films, omnipresence on Top 40 radio, frequenting magazine covers, and appearing on national TV. Then, out of the blue, everything came to a halt and JoJo seemingly stepped out of the spotlight, leaving many fans to wonder: What happened to JoJo? In OVER THE INFLUENCE, JoJo holds nothing back as she brings her against-the-odds story of adversity and triumph to center stage. From being raised by parents who were both battling addiction and depression, to emerging victorious in a never-ending lawsuit with her record label, to putting the fragmented pieces of herself together after a maddening period of rebellion and self-betrayal, she takes the reader through the turbulent years that led her to where she is now: releasing new music under her own imprint, performing in shows and festivals around the world, headlining a Broadway show, and beyond.  In this raw, behind-the-scenes look at her life, both personal and professional, JoJo’s unflinching vulnerability allows readers to connect with her on a whole new level through stories of success, heartbreak, redemption, and resilience. More than a victory lap from an artist with over two decades in an ever-changing entertainment industry, OVER THE INFLUENCE is an unapologetic rallying cry to anyone who’s ever  been terrified to fail and still said, “Count me in.”

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.

A New York Times bestseller A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir of resilience and redemption by comedic genius Molly Shannon At age four, Molly Shannon’s world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress. From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly! spans Molly’s time on Saturday Night Live—where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother. Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly!, written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

With Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of the smash #1 bestseller Toxic Parents, offers a powerful look at the devastating impact unloving mothers have on their daughters—and provides clear, effective techniques for overcoming that painful legacy.In more than 35 years as a therapist, Forward has worked with large numbers of women struggling to escape the emotional damage inflicted by the women who raised them. Subjected to years of criticism, competition, role-reversal, smothering control, emotional neglect and abuse, these women are plagued by anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence, and difficulties with trust. They doubt their worth, and even their ability to love.Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse.Filled with compelling case histories, Mothers Who Can’t Love outlines the self-help techniques Forward has developed to transform the lives of her clients, showing women how to overcome the pain of childhood and how to act in their own best interests.Warm and compassionate, Mothers Who Can’t Love offers daughters the emotional support and tools they need to heal themselves and rebuild their confidence and self-respect.

“Rarely do memoirs of grief combine anguish, love, and fury with such elegance.” ― Entertainment Weekly In 2002, Ann Hood’s five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep throat. Stunned and devastated, the family searched for comfort in a time when none seemed possible. Hood―an accomplished novelist―was unable to read or write. She could only reflect on her lost daughter―“the way she looked splashing in the bathtub ... the way we sang ‘Eight Days a Week.’” One day, a friend suggested she learn to knit. Knitting soothed her and gave her something to do. Eventually, she began to read and write again. A semblance of normalcy returned, but grief, in ever new and different forms, still held the family. What they could not know was that comfort would come, and in surprising ways. Hood traces her descent into grief and reveals how she found comfort and hope again―a journey to recovery that culminates with a newly adopted daughter.

Constance's mother systematically abused her daughter throughout her childhood. Regularly beaten and starved, she tried to get herself taken into care without success and even drank bleach. When she was 13, her mother left her to fend for herself but Constance found the courage to survive and this is her story.

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.