Cool can’t be taught. That’s the received wisdom, yet this wry, entertaining compendium by Thomas W. Hodgkinson (author of the indispensable How to Sound Cultured) shows that, on the contrary, anyone can increase their cool quotient by learning from the masters and the methods of the past. It’s never an easy journey. But to set yourself on the path to true cool, you’ll need this invaluable roadmap.
How can you be cool at work, or in bed, or in a bar, or in a restaurant? What is cool when it comes to dating? Calling? Not calling? Standing in their garden with a placard and a megaphone? Coolness is a dark art and takes years of practice. But help is at hand. How To Be Cool is your trusty handbook for ineffable coolness in every eventuality. Award-winning comedian Will Smith is your guide through a world where a nifty quip, a signature drink and an outright lie about how much you like Italian arthouse movies can make you feel like Johnny Depp, rather than John McCririck. Glaring social ineptitude will happily be a thing of the past.
'Damn, all my cheating secrets revealed. In book form' Stephen Fry Which philosopher had the maddest hairstyle? Which novelist drank 50 cups of black coffee every day? What on earth did Simone de Beauvoir see in Jean-Paul Sartre? How to Sound Cultured offers a wry and yet profoundly useful look inside the mirrored palaces of high culture. Covering such inscrutable characters as Heidegger, Montaigne, Kahlo and Lévi-Strauss (apparently not just a designer of jeans), inscrutable polymaths Thomas W. Hodgkinson and Hubert van den Bergh – the author of the acclaimed How to Sound Clever – have done the hard work of sorting the cultural wheat from the chaff. Read this book and you'll never again mistake Rimbaud for Rambo or Georg Lukacs for George Lucas, you'll know precisely when to drop Foucault's name into a conversation and how to pronounce 'Borgesian', and you'll learn many more essential pointers for the intellectual life.
Picking up where Quiet ended, How to Be Yourself is the best book you’ll ever read about how to conquer social anxiety. “This book is also a groundbreaking road map to finally being your true, authentic self.” —Susan Cain, New York Times, USA Today and nationally bestselling author of Quiet Up to 40% of people consider themselves shy. You might say you’re introverted or awkward, or that you're fine around friends but just can't speak up in a meeting or at a party. Maybe you're usually confident but have recently moved or started a new job, only to feel isolated and unsure. If you get nervous in social situations—meeting your partner's friends, public speaking, standing awkwardly in the elevator with your boss—you've probably been told, “Just be yourself!” But that's easier said than done—especially if you're prone to social anxiety. Weaving together cutting-edge science, concrete tips, and the compelling stories of real people who have risen above their social anxiety, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen proposes a groundbreaking idea: you already have everything you need to succeed in any unfamiliar social situation. As someone who lives with social anxiety, Dr. Hendriksen has devoted her career to helping her clients overcome the same obstacles she has. With familiarity, humor, and authority, Dr. Hendriksen takes the reader through the roots of social anxiety and why it endures, how we can rewire our brains through our behavior, and—at long last—exactly how to quiet your Inner Critic, the pesky voice that whispers, "Everyone will judge you." Using her techniques to develop confidence, think through the buzz of anxiety, and feel comfortable in any situation, you can finally be your true, authentic self.
Apparently I'm boring. A nobody. But that's all about to change. Because I am starting a project. Here. Now. For myself. And if you want to come along for the ride then you're very welcome. Bree is by no means popular. Most of the time, she hates her life, her school, her never-there parents. So she writes. But when Bree is told she needs to stop shutting the world out and start living a life worth writing about, The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting is born. A manifesto that will change everything... ...but the question is, at what cost?
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The “too-cool-for-school” third picture book from the #1 New York Times bestselling creators of The Bad Seed and The Good Egg, Jory John and Pete Oswald Everyone knows the cool beans. They’re sooooo cool. And then there’s the uncool has-bean . . . Always on the sidelines, one bean unsuccessfully tries everything he can to fit in with the crowd—until one day the cool beans show him how it’s done. With equal measures of humor, wit, and charm, the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Jory John and Pete Oswald craft another incredible picture book, reminding us that it’s cooler to be kind. Check out Jory John and Pete Oswald’s funny, bestselling books for kids 4-8 and anyone who wants a laugh: The Bad Seed The Good Egg The Cool Bean The Couch Potato The Good Egg Presents: The Great Eggscape! The Bad Seed Presents: The Good, the Bad, the Spooky! The Cool Bean Presents: As Cool as It Gets That’s What Dinosaurs Do
Bluebird, along with most everyone else at school, wants to flutter like the most popular bird in their class, Hummingbird. "You should go on a diet, and work out at the gym. You could flutter like me, if your body was thin." Bluebird takes this comment seriously and starts to develop unhealthy eating habits. Mom comes to the rescue by teaching Bluebird balance and by explaining that everyone needs to feel comfortable in their own feathers. With help from the Bird Doc and the Food Voice Counselor, Bluebird learns to control the Food Voice that is living inside. "I'm working on balance one day at a time. If I keep working hard, I should be just fine." How to be Comfortable in Your Own Feathers uses a creative approach to speak to children who may be currently struggling with body-image concerns. This story is written in a manner that gives children an opportunity to apply the characters' experiences to their own lives. It also demonstrates appropriate adult responses that encourage the development of healthy eating habits. Includes "Live It" Dos and Don'ts.
An inspiring visual guide to a richer life. “If there’s a thinker to steal from, it’s Jessica Hagy.”—Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist and Newspaper Blackout How to Be Interesting is passionate, positive, down-to-earth, and irrepressibly upbeat, combining fresh and pithy life lessons, often just a sentence or two, with deceptively simple diagrams and graphs. Each of the book's more than 100 spreads will nudge readers a little bit further out of their comfort zones and into a place where suddenly everything is possible. It’s about taking chance—but also about taking daily vacations. About being childlike, not childish. It’s about ideas, creativity, risk. It’s about trusting your talents and doing only what you want—but having the courage to get lost and see where the path leads. Because it’s what you don’t know that’s interesting.
In this "refreshingly relatable" (Outside) memoir, perfect for the self-isolating family, Slate editor Dan Kois sets out with his family on a journey around the world to change their lives together. What happens when one frustrated dad turns his kids' lives upside down in search of a new way to be a family? Dan Kois and his wife always did their best for their kids. Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family-Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters-could each be found searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together? In this eye-opening, heartwarming, and very funny family memoir, the fractious, loving Kois' go in search of other places on the map that might offer them the chance to live away from home-but closer together. Over a year the family lands in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas. The goal? To get out of their rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live outside the East Coast parenting bubble. HOW TO BE A FAMILY brings readers along as the Kois girls-witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper-like through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go? A journalistic memoir filled with heart, empathy, and lots of whining, HOW TO BE A FAMILY will make readers dream about the amazing adventures their own families might take.
