Central Skagit Library District

"Are you constantly striving to keep up with life's busy expectations? It's easy to feel consumed with the desire to "succeed" and "acquire" and miss the simple opportunities waiting for you to slow down: a walk in the forest, sharing laughter with family, a personal moment of gratitude...Slow provides practical advice and fascinating insights into: messiness to mindfulness, decluttering to de-owning, asking why to asking where to now? Slow is an...

"A pioneering neuroscientist argues that we are more than our brains To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment...

Offers a blunt and irreverent guide to achieving the money, relationships, career, and happiness that one desires through recognizing and doing away with self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors.

The Metamorphosis is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often, cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect. "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous...

""So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!"-Aimee Bender. Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and...

"A Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church"-- Lyle Hovde lives a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence, Shiloh has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the...

"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson "One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson "His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in...

Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Founder of the lifestyle website TheChicSite.com and CEO of her own media company, Rachel Hollis has created an online fan base by sharing tips for living a better life while fearlessly revealing the messiness of her own. Each chapter begins with a specific lie Hollis once believed that left her feeling overwhelmed, unworthy, or ready to give up. As a working mother, a former foster parent, and a woman who has dealt with insecurities about her body...