Showing results for "Friendship Day" in Biographies & Memoirs

Growing up, Elizabeth wanted to make everyone like her. Lacking friends at school, she grew up to believe that quantity equalled quality. Having lots of friends meant you were loved, popular and safe. She was determined to become a Good Friend. And, in many ways, she did. But in adulthood she slowly realised that it was often to the detriment of her own boundaries and mental health. Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of thousands of people forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them—with the crisis came a dawning realisation.

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was fighting. Believing that Britain was locked in an existential battle, Winston Churchill had already created a secret agency, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshoot­ing. Their job, he declared, was to 'set Europe ablaze'. But with most men on the front lines, the SOE was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

What was Elvis like in those early Army Days? The question I get most is 'what was he like?' It's hard to give a blanket answer because I knew the 22-year-old version of what everyone else sees in the media and those tell all books. We were kids, clowning around having fun, playing football, chasing girls. I didn't know him in his turbulent years or have exposure to any prescription pill use or so-called mood swings. I only knew the young, very funny, unvarnished version of him. Hopefully the stories in this book shed more light on what he was really like.

Eight years ago, Kathleen Hart was diagnosed with breast cancer. Further complications led to a protracted recovery and months spent in hospital, where Kathleen had to learn how to walk again. While recuperating, she came across a small whitewashed cottage for sale in Wigtown, Scotland. Driving hundreds of miles on nothing more than a few photographs and an inkling, she bought it that very same day and named it Devorgilla after the formidable 13th century Scottish princess.

For too long, women have been told that we are terrible at being friends, that we can't help being cruel or competitive, or that we inevitably abandon each other for romantic partners. But we are rejecting those stereotypes and reclaiming the power of female friendship. In Text Me When You Get Home, journalist Kayleen Schaefer interviews more than 100 women about their BFFs, soul mates, girl gangs, and queens while tracing this cultural shift through the lens of pop culture.

On average, around 350,000 U.S. students, and nearly one million students worldwide, study abroad every year. Yet since its inception in 1963, only about 73,000 total students from over 1500 colleges and universities have participated in Semester at Sea. It is a truly unique, exclusive, and intimate experience, where students and faculty study, work, and travel to the farthest reaches of the globe.

Long before she made her first trip to Afghanistan as an embedded reporter for The Globe and Mail, Christie Blatchford was already one of Canada’s most respected and eagerly followed journalists. Her vivid prose, her unmistakable voice, her ability to connect emotionally with her subjects and readers, her hard-won and hard-nosed skills as a reporter – these had already established her as a household name.

As Roseann Sdoia waited to watch her friend cross the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, she had no idea her life was about to change - that in a matter of minutes she would look up from the sidewalk, burned and deaf, staring at her detached foot, screaming for help amid the smoke and blood. In the chaos of the minutes that followed, three people would enter Roseann's life and change it forever.

Besides a happy memoir from an author who wrote this book at age 44 and 85, Dear Old Friends was originally a love letter to all the wonderful, much older friends the author said made his life so much more worthwhile. Full of loving advice for aging magnificently, you'll want to listen to it and want all your dear old friends—not just your parents—to listen, smile, learn, and think about how satisfying it is to make every day better. As the author reminds you, "Today is the oldest you've ever been—and the youngest you'll ever be—so let's make today great."