Books with category Life's Purpose
Displaying 6 books

Be Useful

Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is an inspirational guide that outlines the seven key rules for discovering and realizing one's true purpose in life. Schwarzenegger shares the tools he developed on his journey to becoming the world's greatest bodybuilder, highest-paid movie star, and a prominent political leader.

Arnold's father instilled in him the profound lesson to always be useful, a principle that Arnold has carried throughout his varied and successful career. In this book, Schwarzenegger speaks with a voice that is both earnest and powerful as he recounts personal stories of success and failure, some of which are being shared for the first time.

This book is not just about Arnold's achievements, but also about the mental tools he created to escape the confines of his rural Austrian upbringing. He emphasizes the importance of self-reliance and shares his wisdom, encouraging readers to apply these tools in pursuit of their own dreams and purposes. Arnold's message is clear: nobody will come to your rescue, but the good news is that you have all you need within yourself.

Translation State

2023

by Ann Leckie

Translation State is a powerful new novel by one of the masters of modern science fiction, Ann Leckie. It's a sweeping space adventure and a brilliant exploration of belonging and identity.

When Enae's grandmaman passes away, Enae inherits an unexpected diplomatic assignment to track down a fugitive missing for over 200 years. Although it seems to be an empty assignment meant to keep his occupied, Enae, who has never had a true purpose, is determined to succeed.

Reet, an adopted mechanic with a secret yearning to understand his identity, is approached by a political group claiming he has ties to a genetically mysterious, long-deceased family. Eager for answers, Reet is drawn into a deeper mystery.

Qven, a Presgr translator, has always known their path—learn human ways and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presgr and the human worlds. However, when Qven desires something different, a rebellion against their predetermined life begins.

As a Conclave of various species approaches and with a critical treaty at stake, the paths of Enae, Reet, and Qven collide, triggering a chain of events with far-reaching consequences across galaxies.

Life in Five Senses

2023

by Gretchen Rubin

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, and love: by tuning in to the five senses.

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.

Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.

White Cat, Black Dog

2023

by Kelly Link

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

In "The White Cat's Divorce," an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which child will become his heir. In "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In "Skinder's Veil," a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers—or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.

Twisting and turning in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable—these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the realm of short fiction.

Saving Time

2023

by Jenny Odell

In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the "attention economy" to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don't have time to spend? In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently.

Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism. This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries.

Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility. Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can "save" time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.

Georgie, All Along

2023

by Kate Clayborn

Georgie, All Along is a wise and witty novel that resonates with timely questions about love, career, reconciling with the past, and finding your path while knowing your true worth.

Longtime personal assistant Georgie Mulcahy has made a career out of putting others before herself. When an unexpected upheaval sends her away from her hectic job in L.A. and back to her hometown, Georgie must confront an uncomfortable truth: her own wants and needs have always been a disconcertingly blank page.

But then Georgie comes across a forgotten artifact—a 'friendfic' diary she wrote as a teenager, filled with possibilities she once imagined. To an overwhelmed Georgie, the diary's simple, small-scale ideas are a lifeline—a guidebook for getting started on a new path.

Georgie's plans hit a snag when she comes face to face with an unexpected roommate—Levi Fanning, onetime town troublemaker and current town hermit. But this quiet, grouchy man is more than just his reputation, and he offers to help Georgie with her quest. As the two make their way through her wishlist, Georgie begins to realize that what she truly wants might not be in the pages of her diary after all, but right by her side—if only they can both find a way to let go of the pasts that hold them back.

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