Little Astronaut: A Memoir in Essays

Little Astronaut: A Memoir in Essays PDF Author: Maryann Aita
Publisher: Elj Editions
ISBN: 9781942004424
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Maryann grows up alone within a family of six, shrouded by her sister's anorexia, her brother's cancer, and her mother's affair with alcohol. With her childhood consumed by her sister's eating disorder, she braces for a future fraught with loss. Sinking deep into depression as a teenager, she struggles to understand what it means to love those around her, and questions whether being loved is worth the cost. After her sister's recovery and her brother's remission, she's left to comb the depths of her loneliness and confront the darkest pall of her adolescence: her mother's drinking. In moving from her hometown in Montana to New York City, she finds a place where those who are alone are not always lonely, and begins to define love, loneliness, and intimacy for herself. Through experimentation with form, the book captures the perspectives of Maryann's adult and childhood selves, as well as her experience of mental illness. Flipping through its pages, readers will discover a tapestry of image and white space, scenes written in screenplay, faux news articles, a one-woman show, a Punnett square, a poetry-prose hybrid, a report card, sketches, and math problems. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is a literary kaleidoscope blending the cerebral and emotional, and humor with darkness. The book explores anxiety and depression next to the intricacies of Barbie sex and a failed driving test. These essays dig into the tiny, intimate moments that stitch us together: awaiting sunrise on Christmas mornings with a brother, the unexpected grief of finding a wounded bird, and the meaning of objects passed between sisters. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is, at its heart, the story of a woman redefining intimacy after a lifetime of self-imposed detachment. Literary Nonfiction.

Little Astronaut: A Memoir in Essays

Little Astronaut: A Memoir in Essays PDF Author: Maryann Aita
Publisher: Elj Editions
ISBN: 9781942004424
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Maryann grows up alone within a family of six, shrouded by her sister's anorexia, her brother's cancer, and her mother's affair with alcohol. With her childhood consumed by her sister's eating disorder, she braces for a future fraught with loss. Sinking deep into depression as a teenager, she struggles to understand what it means to love those around her, and questions whether being loved is worth the cost. After her sister's recovery and her brother's remission, she's left to comb the depths of her loneliness and confront the darkest pall of her adolescence: her mother's drinking. In moving from her hometown in Montana to New York City, she finds a place where those who are alone are not always lonely, and begins to define love, loneliness, and intimacy for herself. Through experimentation with form, the book captures the perspectives of Maryann's adult and childhood selves, as well as her experience of mental illness. Flipping through its pages, readers will discover a tapestry of image and white space, scenes written in screenplay, faux news articles, a one-woman show, a Punnett square, a poetry-prose hybrid, a report card, sketches, and math problems. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is a literary kaleidoscope blending the cerebral and emotional, and humor with darkness. The book explores anxiety and depression next to the intricacies of Barbie sex and a failed driving test. These essays dig into the tiny, intimate moments that stitch us together: awaiting sunrise on Christmas mornings with a brother, the unexpected grief of finding a wounded bird, and the meaning of objects passed between sisters. LITTLE ASTRONAUT is, at its heart, the story of a woman redefining intimacy after a lifetime of self-imposed detachment. Literary Nonfiction.

A Journal for Christa

A Journal for Christa PDF Author: Grace George Corrigan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803264113
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The biography of Christa McAuliffe--the eldest child of a close Catholic Massachusetts family and a dedicated Girl Scout who came of age in the turbulent sixties and early seventies and became a schoolteacher and a mother. She was little known beyond her personal circle until selected by NASA to be the first civilian sent on a space mission as the "Teacher in Space."

Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut

Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut PDF Author: Samantha Cristoforetti
Publisher: The Experiment, LLC
ISBN: 1615198431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti’s intimate account of her first journey to the International Space Station, to which she returns in 2022, as commander of Expedition 68a—only the fourth woman to command the ISS, praised by Scott Kelly for its “incredible detail and great writing.” Two hundred days orbiting Earth on the International Space Station. Five years working and training with the aerospace community across the world. A lifetime of choices leading to the stars. These are the components of Samantha Cristoforetti’s dream, a dream she invites us to share in this intimate account of an astronaut’s journey to space. She views the triumphs and disappointments of that journey with a poet’s eye and a philosopher’s mind—and an engineer’s gift for detail that brings each experience into sharp focus. With Cristoforetti as our guide, we’re called to become “apprentice astronauts” and experience the world anew through the visor of a space suit’s helmet. Bonding with crew members to tackle challenges as a team, lifting off from the launchpad in a roar of engines, discovering the strange wonders of weightlessness, seeing Earth with a fresh perspective after a bittersweet return to solid ground . . . all these moments and more reveal what it really takes to escape our planet’s gravity in pursuit of a goal.

In the Quick

In the Quick PDF Author: Kate Hope Day
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 052551127X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel “with echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre” (Observer). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND SHE READS • “The female astronaut novel we never knew we needed.”—Entertainment Weekly June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention who leaves home to begin grueling astronaut training at the National Space Program. Younger by two years than her classmates at Peter Reed, the school on campus named for her uncle, she flourishes in her classes but struggles to make friends and find true intellectual peers. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station—and a hard-won sense of belonging—but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten the crew, June alone has evidence that makes her believe they are still alive. She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégé, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the relationship that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create—and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive. A propulsive narrative of one woman’s persistence and journey to self-discovery, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship, and the costs of human ingenuity. This edition includes a bonus chapter.

Reaching for the Stars

Reaching for the Stars PDF Author: José M. Hernández
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 1455522813
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The book that inspired the new film A Million Miles Away. Born into a family of migrant workers, toiling in the fields by the age of six, Jose M. Hernàndez dreamed of traveling through the night skies on a rocket ship. Reaching for the Stars is the inspiring story of how he realized that dream, becoming the first Mexican-American astronaut. Hernàndez didn't speak English till he was 12, and his peers often joined gangs, or skipped school. And yet, by his twenties he was part of an elite team helping develop technology for the early detection of breast cancer. He was turned down by NASA eleven times on his long journey to donning that famous orange space suit. Hernàndez message of hard work, education, perseverance, of "reaching for the stars," makes this a classic American autobiography.

Endurance

Endurance PDF Author: Scott Kelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524731609
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
NATIONAL BEST SELLER A stunning, personal memoir from the astronaut and modern-day hero who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station—a message of hope for the future that will inspire for generations to come. The veteran of four spaceflights and the American record holder for consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few have. Now, he takes us inside a sphere utterly hostile to human life. He describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both life-threatening and mundane: the devastating effects on the body; the isolation from everyone he loves and the comforts of Earth; the catastrophic risks of colliding with space junk; and the still more haunting threat of being unable to help should tragedy strike at home--an agonizing situation Kelly faced when, on a previous mission, his twin brother's wife, American Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot while he still had two months in space. Kelly's humanity, compassion, humor, and determination resonate throughout, as he recalls his rough-and-tumble New Jersey childhood and the youthful inspiration that sparked his astounding career, and as he makes clear his belief that Mars will be the next, ultimately challenging, step in spaceflight. In Endurance, we see the triumph of the human imagination, the strength of the human will, and the infinite wonder of the galaxy.

Little Leonardo's Fascinating World of Astronomy

Little Leonardo's Fascinating World of Astronomy PDF Author: Sarafina Nance
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN: 1423658310
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Join author Sarafina Nance, a real-life astrophysicist and one of Forbes magazine "30 inspirational women," as she guides you through 22 fascinating pages of fun facts all about the universe. Get lost in captivating illustrations and text about that big wide-open space above us. Did you know that everything you can see, touch, taste, and smell is actually just a teeny tiny part of the Universe? Or that even though Earth has only 1 moon, Jupiter has 79 and Saturn has 82? Or did you know that there is a planet that’s made of diamond? Little Leonardo’s Fascinating World of Astronomy joins the Little Leonardo Fascinating World of series, illustrated by Greg Paprocki.

Signal Fires

Signal Fires PDF Author: Dani Shapiro
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0593534735
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the beloved author of Inheritance: "a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets” (Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings) Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever. A TIME Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year An ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn’t realize it but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny. Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers. A luminous meditation on family, memory, and the healing power of interconnectedness.

The Furies

The Furies PDF Author: Janet Hobhouse
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590170854
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A SELECTION OF THE LOST BOOKS CLUB An exhilarating, fiercely honest, ultimately devastating book, The Furies confronts the claims of family and the lure of desire, the difficulties of independence, and the approach of death. Janet Hobhouse's final testament is beautifully written, deeply felt, and above all utterly alive.

B-Side Books

B-Side Books PDF Author: John Plotz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553684
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
There are the acknowledged classics of world literature: the canonical works assigned in schools, topping every must-read list . . . and then there are the B-Sides. These are the books that slipped through the cracks, went unread, missed their rightful appointment with posterity. They were ahead of their times or behind their times or on a whole different schedule than the rest of the universe. What do you do when a book that you love has been neglected or dismissed by everyone else? In B-Side Books, leading writers, critics, and scholars show why their favorite forgotten books deserve a new audience. From dusty westerns and far-out science fiction to obscure Czech novelists and romance-novel precursors, the contributors advocate for the unsung virtues of overlooked books. They write about unheralded novels, poetry collections, memoirs, and more with understanding, respect, passion, and love. In these thoughtful, often personal essays, contributors—including Stephanie Burt, Caleb Crain, Merve Emre, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carlo Rotella, and Namwali Serpell—read books by writers such as Helen DeWitt, Shirley Jackson, Stanislaw Lem, Dambudzo Marechera, Paule Marshall, and Charles Portis.