13 Books For the Word Celebrate

I was surprised when I went looking for books to recommend for the Week 5 of the Year of Words Book Challenge word Celebrate. I found lots of cookbooks, and books about holidays. As much as I love to read cookbooks, I didn’t really think they were what I was going for here. 🙂

I ended up having to start thinking about celebrate in different ways… which is YAY because that’s what this challenge is all about. Getting us to think about things in a deeper way. So, I ended up finding books that celebrate different things, like humor, or second chances, or parenting, and that place called Celebration, in Florida. I often find myself undone by the rules I apply to myself, my work, my reading, hell just about anything I’m doing… so it felt really good to just change it up to make it work. I hope this helps you feel free to change up the challenge, and make it work for you in whatever way feels really good. I look forward to seeing what books you choose this week! Make sure you stop by and share them in the YOW Group!

So, onto the books!

Memoir: 

The Year of Yes

Description from Amazon:

The mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder chronicles how saying YES for one year changed her life?and how it can change yours, too.

With three hit shows on television and three children at home, the uber-talented Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say NO when an unexpected invitation arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No.

And there was the side-benefit of saying No for an introvert like Shonda: nothing new to fear.

Then Shonda’s sister laid down a challenge: just for one year, try to say YES to the unexpected invitations that come your way. Shonda reluctantly agreed?and the result was nothing short of transformative. In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying yes had on every aspect of her life?and how we can all change our lives with one little word. Yes.

 

 Wild

Description from Amazon:

In the wake of her mother’s death, with her family scattered, and in the ashes of a failed marriage, Cheryl Strayed made the impulsive decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Wild powerfully tells the story of her adventure, capturing the terrors and pleasures of a young woman forging ahead against all odds and the healing power of her trip.

 

Celebration, USA

Description from Amazon:

A prize-winning reporter, his wife, and their two kids describe life in Disney’s vision of the future.

In 1997, six months after the first residents had moved into Celebration, Florida-Disney’s town of the future with its distinctly retro link to a longed-for past-Doug and Cathy and their two kids closed on their new home and settled down to participate in (and observe) this new venture. Their report from the trenches will surprise both Disney haters and Disney fans.

What is it like to start a new community-not a suburb or subdivision, but a town, inted to be a self-supporting community with the best of the new technologies (including the very latest in teaching techniques) and the most cherished elements in American towns that existed before the automobile turned everything into a mall? For almost two years the family lived this experiment firsthand. Their report is vivid, funny, and painful-and it tells us as much about ourselves and our hopes and dreams as it does about the daily reality of building a community from the ground up.

 

Self Help:

Celebrate Your Creative Self: More than 25 exercises to unleash the artist within

Description from Amazon:

Your capacity to create is unlimited!

Celebrate Your Creative Self helps you act upon your artistic inspirations and joyfully appreciate the creative process. You’ll develop the skills you need to express yourself and explore your favorite mediums. Step-by-step demos show you how to:

• Capture and manipulate light in your work
• Experiment with new and unusual painting surfaces
• Break the “rules” of color composition that inhibit your creativity
• Create your own dynamic designs for paintings with more impact
• Add layers of meaning to your work with the symbolism inherent in both man-made objects and natural elements
• Imbue your work with a touch of fantasy and recapture the magic you remember from childhood
• Move beyond traditional 2-dimensional painting into 3-D reconstruction
• And much, much more!

Once you’ve built up such a repertoire of skills, you’ll be able to turn any idea into finished art by applying the techniques that best accommodate your inspiration. You’ll also learn how to tap the deepest recesses of your creative wellspring by taking risks, getting personal and making meaningful statements with your work.

No matter what your medium, no matter what your level of skill, Celebrate Your Creative Self can help make your artistic dreams a reality!

 

The Woman’s Way Celebrating Life After 40

Description from Amazon:

Once in a great while, a book resonates so deeply and speaks so truly that it casts a whole new light on the adventure of life, love, connection, and lifelong learning. The Woman’s Way is a book of short observations – some witty, some funny, and some deep and rich with love – that show real life as just that: not a fairy tale, not a nightmare, but a real-world adventure to be savored and shared. Author Regan Brown shows us that women have learned a great many life lessons by the time we reach 40. The right perspective helps us enjoy every minute of the journey – we find ourselves free to follow our dreams with more confidence, resilience, wisdom, and inner strength. The wisdom and personal reflections found in The Women’s Way help women discover and appreciate the joys of knowing their friends better, fully appreciating the freedoms they’ve discovered, and enjoying the magnificent opportunities that still lie ahead.

 

Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul

Description from Amazon:

Deep within each one of us lies the ability to step up and care for those in need, even though we often feel overwhelmed by a complex world. In fact, more than 200 million people throughout the world offer their time and love to volunteering

 

Fiction:

The Moonlit Garden

(Kindle Unlimited Book)

Description from Amazon:

Lilly Kaiser had come to terms with her solitary, uncomplicated life after becoming a young widow. So when a stranger delivers an old violin to her Berlin antiques shop and tells Lilly it belongs to her, she’s completely bewildered. Why should she be the one to inherit such an exquisite instrument?

Together with her best friend, Ellen, and handsome musicologist Gabriel Thornton, Lilly sets out to explore the violin’s legacy. From England to Italy to Indonesia, she follows its winding trail. Along the way, she learns of Rose Gallway, a beautiful woman of English and Sumatran descent who lived among Sumatra’s lush gardens more than a hundred years earlier. A celebrated and sought-after musician, Rose once owned Lilly’s violin and regularly played concerts for Sumatra’s colonial elite—until, one day, she simply disappeared.

As Lilly unravels the mystery behind Rose’s story—and uncovers other unexpected secrets—she’ll come to see her own life in an entirely new light. And as each shared discovery brings her closer to Gabriel, her heart might finally break its long-held silence.

My name is Lucy Barton 

Description from Amazon:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.

Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.

 

The Bette Davis Club 

Celebrating humor. Kindle Unlimited book

Description from Amazon:

The morning of her niece’s wedding, Margo Just drinks a double martini and contemplates the many mistakes she’s made in her fifty-odd years of life. Spending three decades in love with a wonderful but unattainable man is pretty high up on her list of missteps, as is a long line of unsuccessful love affairs accompanied by a seemingly endless supply of delicious cocktails.

When the young bride flees—taking with her a family heirloom and leaving behind six hundred bewildered guests—her mother offers Margo fifty grand to retrieve her spoiled brat of a daughter and the invaluable property she stole. So, together with the bride’s jilted and justifiably crabby fiancé, Margo sets out in a borrowed 1955 red MG on a cross-country chase. Along the way, none of what she discovers will be quite what she expected. But it might be exactly what she’s been seeking all along.

Foul Play at the Fair ~ Celebration Bay Series

Description from Amazon:

Every day is a holiday in Celebration Bay . . .
but unfortunately death doesn’t take a holiday.

As more and more tourists flock to Celebration Bay, New York, to enjoy their seasonal festivals, the town is in need of a professional coordinator. Enter Manhattan event planner Liv Montgomery, tired of big-city stress and looking for an idyllic spot where she and her Westie terrier, Whiskey, can put down roots. The Harvest by the Bay Festival is Liv’s first chance to prove herself, and everything from apple bobbing to pumpkin painting goes perfectly—until the body of an itinerant juggler is discovered stuffed into an antique apple press.

With a murderer on the loose, town leaders threaten to shut down the upcoming Halloween and Christmas festivals. But the town’s livelihood is at stake, and there is no way Liv is going to let that happen, even if she has to solve the murder herself. No matter how many balls she needs to keep in the air, Liv is determined to find a killer who’s rotten to the core . . .

 

Young Adult

Dumplin Go Big or Go Home

Celebrate yourself

Description from Amazon:

For fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell comes this powerful novel with the most fearless heroine—self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson—from Julie Murphy, the acclaimed author of Side Effects May Vary. With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine—Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.

Dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom, Willowdean has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American-beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . .  until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

 

Extraordinary Means

Celebrate emotional reads $1.99 on Kindle

Description from Amazon:

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars meets Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park in this darkly funny novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Beginning of Everything.

Up until his diagnosis, Lane lived a fairly predictable life. But when he finds himself at a tuberculosis sanatorium called Latham House, he discovers an insular world with paradoxical rules, med sensors, and an eccentric yet utterly compelling confidante named Sadie—and life as Lane knows it will never be the same.

Robyn Schneider’s Extraordinary Means is a heart-wrenching yet ultimately hopeful story about the miracles of first love and second chances.

 

I’m reading:

Last summer, my mom was given tons and tons of books by a friend who was moving. She immediately came here, and gave me tons and tons of books. 🙂 I’ve got so many books on my shelves, and yet each week I’ve been buying new books! eek. I recently came across the #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks challenge and thought I would participate. So… this week’s book for celebrate is from my own shelf.

Then She Found Me

Celebrating second chances

Description from Amazon:

April Epner teaches high school Latin, wears flannel jumpers, and is used to having her evenings free. Bernice Graverman brandishes designer labels, favors toad-sized earrings, and hosts her own tacky TV talk show: Bernice G!

But behind the glitz and glam, Bernice has followed the life of the daughter she gave up for adoption thirty-six years ago. Now that she’s got her act together, she’s aiming to be a mom like she always knew she could. And she’s hurtling straight for April’s quiet little life….

 

Those are my recommendations for this week’s word Celebrate. I can’t wait to see what you choose. Make sure you stop by and share your book selection with the Year of Words Book Challenge Group!