A journal for appreciating the beautiful, the quirky, the surprising, and the overlooked.

In her delightful and moving memoir, Sissy Spacek writes about her idyllic, barefoot childhood in a small East Texas town, with the clarity and wisdom that comes from never losing sight of her roots. Descended from industrious Czech immigrants and threadbare southern gentility, she grew up a tomboy, tagging along with two older brothers and absorbing grace and grit from her remarkable parents, who taught her that she could do anything. She also learned fearlessness in the wake of a family tragedy, the grief propelling her "like rocket fuel" to follow her dreams of becoming a performer. With a keen sense of humor and a big-hearted voice, she describes how she arrived in New York City one star-struck summer as a seventeen-year-old carrying a suitcase and two guitars; and how she built a career that has spanned four decades with films such as Carrie, Coal Miner's Daughter, 3 Women, and The Help. She details working with some of the great directors of our time, including Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Brian De Palma-who thought of her as a no-talent set decorator until he cast her as the lead in Carrie. She also reveals why, at the height of her fame, she and her family moved away from Los Angeles to a farm in rural Virginia. Whether she's describing the terrors and joys of raising two talented, independent daughters, taking readers behind the scenes on Oscar night, or meditating on the thrill of watching a pair of otters frolicking in her pond, Sissy Spacek's memoir is poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, plainspoken and utterly honest. My Extraordinary Ordinary Life is about what matters most: the exquisite worth of ordinary things, the simple pleasures of home and family, and the honest job of being right with the world. "If I get hit by a truck tomorrow," she writes, "I want to know I've returned my neighbor's cake pan."

Too often men are portrayed by the media as weak or mean, violent or passive. But men are diverse and mostly, quite wonderful. (Sharon) gives us a rare glimpse into the heart and soul of what is best in men.--Jed Diamond, Ph.D., director of Men Alive and author of "Male Menopause" and "The Irritable Male Syndrome."

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth. Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?) Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.

From Eudora Welty's memoir of childhood to May Sarton's reflections on her seventieth year, writers' journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events—whether in daily life or on a global scale—that shape our lives. In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, best-selling mystery novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days in which her reading, writing, and thinking about issues in the wider world—from wars and economic recession to climate change—caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life. Albert's journal provides an engaging account of how the business of being a successful working writer blends with her rural life in the Texas Hill Country and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. As her eclectic daily reading ranges across topics from economics, food production, and oil and energy policy to poetry, place, and the writing life, Albert becomes increasingly concerned about the natural world and the threats facing it, especially climate change and resource depletion. Asking herself, "What does it mean? And what ought I do about it?", she determines practical steps to take, such as growing more food in her garden, and also helps us as readers make sense of these issues and consider what our own responses might be.

A personal defeat. Professional failure. The death of a loved one. The end of a marriage. The loss of a job. How can you manage to bounce back from such things, make the best of it and, in the end, live a happy life? Your first love. The gift of steadfast friendship. A deeply moving experience that borders on a miracle. How can you see the opportunity for personal development - and to actually use it for your own growth? A book emerged from these stories: an inspiring collection of biographies about ordinary people who rose to the occasion, experienced extraordinary moments and chose the path toward the light within themselves and all that life has to offer.

After the publication of Dan Millman's first two books, which have since become classics in the realm of spiritual literature, many readers responded with thanks and questions, saying: "I was inspired by your first two stories — but how do you apply all these lessons in daily life?" Millman's answer came in the form of his third book, aptly titled, No Ordinary Moments. Containing perspectives, principles and specific practices that formed the core of "the peaceful warrior's way" — too much information to convey in a narrative story format as he had done in his first books — so he wrote his first comprehensive "guide to daily life." Structured in five parts — The Peaceful Warrior's Way – Up the Mountain Path – Tools for Transformation – The Battle Within – and The Expanded Life — and containing chapters with titles like Heart of the Warrior's Way… In the Arena of Daily Life … When the Going Gets Tough … Getting Real … Universal Addictions … The Will to Change and many more, the book has guided hundreds of thousands of people. As Millman puts it: Our lives are like a journey up a mountain path. As we climb, we face challenges in relationships and sexuality, money, work and health. We can find abundant information and advice on these subjects. So many of us know what to do, but it remains for us to turn knowing into doing." Dan Millman presents a peaceful warrior's approach to turning intentions into action, challenges into strength, and life experience into wisdom. Based on the premise that by changing ourselves we can change our world, No Ordinary Moments offers simple, practical ways to balance the body, liberate the mind, accept our emotions and open our hearts.