Stokes Valley Library Book Club Resilient Men and Women

September 2014

Rise / Ingrid Poulson Rise is not about the worst that can happen in life; it's about how to respond when the worst has already happened...In 2003, Ingrid Poulson's estranged husband killed their two young children and Ingrid's father. After time, Ingrid chose to start with survival and build from there. She recognised her resilience and chose to rise to the challenge of overcoming unimaginable tragedy. Few people have to suffer events such as those that Ingrid experienced. But everyone has to deal with challenges, hardships and grief in life. The ability to be resilient in the face of these can mean the difference between getting through troubled times and living life to the fullest, and succumbing to their pressures.

The secrets of the bulletproof spirit : how to bounce back from life's hardest hits / Azim Khamisa, Jillian Quinn The authors reveal the 30 keys to emotional resiliency and the corresponding strategies they themselves have used to transcend their own heart-wrenching personal losses. Some people seem emotionally thicker skinned, undeterred, and perhaps even empowered by setbacks. People with this kind of super-resiliency don't have better luck or better karma. They lose jobs, relationships, health, and money just like the rest of us. But they think differently: they understand what kinds of responses and behaviour contribute to spiritual fragility and which ones breed strength; they make life-affirming choices instead of defeatist ones; they look for and find purpose where most of us see meaningless loss. Fortunately, their valuable and powerful kind of thinking can be learned.

The sound of a wild snail eating / Elisabeth Tova Bailey ... Elisabeth Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her uncommon encounter with a "Neohelix albolabris" -a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this... creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. Intrigued ... Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this ...small animal. Told with wit and grace, "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.

A life worth riding / Sandi Simons with Felicity Wischer A Life Worth Riding details Sandi's tumultuous upbringing, the birth of her first child at age 14 and the years of physically and mentally abusive relationships that followed. Written in a down-to-earth and warm style, Sandi reveals how she found the strength within to force herself to become the type of person she knew she could be. This is an inspiring story and one that will appeal to readers of all ages, in the equestrian community or not, who are looking for ways to overcome their own internal battles. It is a story for anyone who ever wanted to know how to rise above life's big hits and overcome them.

Stokes Valley Library Book Club Resilient Men and Women

September 2014

The Sugar Girls / Duncan Barrett & Nuala Calvi During the Blitz and the years of rationing, the Sugar Girls kept Britain sweet. The work was back-breakingly hard, but the Tate & Lyle sugar companywas more than just a workplace - it was a community, a calling, a place of love and support and an uproarious, tribal part of the East End. From ambitious Ethel to irrepressible Gladys, lovelorn Lilian to fun-loving Joan - and Miss Smith, who tries to keep a workforce of flirtatious young men and women on the straight and narrow - this is an evocative, moving story of hunger, hardship and happiness.

The woman who changed her brain : unlocking the extraordinary

potential of the human mind / Barbara Arrowsmith-Young This is the incredible story and miraculous work of a remarkable woman... Barbara Arrowsmith Young was born with severe learning disabilities. Undaunted, she used her strengths to develop brain exercises to overcome her neurological deficits. She has gone on to change countless lives. In the past five years, the idea that self-improvement can happen in the brain has caught hold and inspired new hope...Young's work is one of the first examples of the extensive and practical application of neuroplasticity. ...Here her personal story is interwoven with fascinating accounts of the clinical mysteries and triumphant stories that Barbara has encountered during her career.

Salote: Queen of Paradise / Margaret Hixon Queen Salote ascended the throne of Tonga in 1918, at the age of 18, to lead this Pacific nation through the hazards of the 20th century until her death in 1965. She led this Pacific nation through the hazards of the twentieth century until her death in 1965. An outstanding figure of her time, she was dubbed 'Queen of Paradise' by the British press during her visit to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.Salote worked hard to establish Tonga as a debt-free nation, with moder education, health, and agriculture systems. At the same time, she encouraged the continuation of traditional arts, culture, and values. This biography paints an intimate portrait of Salote, from her childhood through her education and her years as queen, drawing on oral histories, personal papers, and newspaper

accounts.

My Story / Louise Nicholas with Philip Kitchin The hard-hitting and moving expose of a teenager whose abuse by police began when she was a 13-year-old and continued throughout her teens. Louise Nicholas' life has turned full circle since she was raped by policemen nearly 30 years ago - she now advises senior police how to support rape victims. She single-handedly rocked New Zealand's police and justice systems to their cores, her case sparking the 2007 Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct. Police accepted the Commission's findings in full, apologised unreservedly to victims, and embarked on a programme of systematic change. A must read for all New Zealanders.

Stokes Valley Library Book Club Resilient Men and Women

September 2014

Becoming Karl: A brain-injured baby’s journey to recovery /

Norma Delgarno Karl was born seriously damaged by toxoplasmosis. Barely alive at birth, he survived, but doctors said he would be ineducable. Today, forty-five-year-old Karl is articulate, talented, and living independently. In direct and flowing narrative, Norma Delgarno tells the story of her son: his traumatic birth and difficult neonatal months, his early learning struggles, and the cognitive therapy which enabled him to cope with mainstream education and enter the workforce, and finally, his development as an artist. Poignant and fascinating, this success story highlights the resilience and strength of the human spirit under stress

Stronger Now / Nicole McLean On 12 October 2002, the beautiful island of Bali was hit by the deadliest terrorist attack in its history. It claimed the lives of 202 people and left 240 others severely injured. Nicole McLean was one of those 240. That night she was critically injured and was left fighting for her life. Nicole was to lose her right arm and spend weeks hovering between life and death. This is her extraordinary story. Shown through Nicole's eyes and those closest to her as they watched the horror unfold before them, this is a gripping personal account of what happened that fateful night and Nicole's difficult yet incredible journey towards recovery, motherhood and marriage.

Fat, Forty and Fired / Nigel Marsh As a stressed husband and father of four small children under the age of eight, Nigel Marsh was enslaved to his mortgage, recuperating from an embarrassing surgery, and suddenly fired from his corporate career. Deciding to venture "off the treadmill" in search of a more meaningful and balanced existence, Marsh tackled the art of hands-on parenting while simultaneously training for an ocean swimming race and coming to terms with his alcoholism. Touching on topics ranging from dieting, and parenthood to work, love, football, religion, self-help books, and sharks this is a provocative and funny book

The 33 / Jonathan Franklin On 12 October 2010 the world's attention was fixed on a remote copper mine in the Atacama desert in Chile. Building on the exclusive access he was given by the rescue team, and dozens of hours of interviews with the miners themselves, Jonathan Franklin takes us deep into the collapsed mine with the men, and behind the scenes of the rescue effort to bring them back to life. For 17 days, hope slowly turned to desperation and then resignation as the miners prepared themselves for a slow agonising death. When a drill finally got through to the men, they still had over seven weeks to wait until they were freed. What those men experienced in the claustrophobic dark of the mine, how their families kept faith, and the unprecedented scale of the rescue make this an unforgettable story of how hope overcame fear,ingenuity triumphed over adversity and how 33 trapped men and the rescuers dedicated to saving them created a miracle in the desert.

Stokes Valley Library Book Club Resilient Men and Women

September 2014

A Three Dog Life / Abigail Thomas When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institu­tion. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.

A Long Walk Home / Judith Tebbut In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt and her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. In the early hours of 11 September, tragedy struck them. Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates, dragged over sea and land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia, and there held hostage in a squalid room, a ransom on her head. There, too, she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie. But though she was isolated, intimidated and near-starved, Judith resolved to survive - walking endless circuits of her nine-foot prison, trying to make her captors see her as a human being, keeping her faith at all times in Ollie. Powerful, moving and at times quite devastating, this is Judith Tebbutt's story in her own words.

Bend Not Break / Ping Fu Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner.To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. Ping Fu also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States. Bend, Not Break depicts a journey from imprisonment to freedom, and from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao’s China to the high-stakes, take-no-prisoners world of technology start-ups in the United States. It is a tribute to one woman’s courage in the face of cruelty and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.

Other books you may enjoy:

The Sanctuary of Outcasts / Neil White

The Dressmaker/ Posie Graeme-Evans

The Taliban Cricket Club / Timeri N. Murari

My Family is all I Have / Helen-Alice

When She Was White / Judith Stone

Good in a Crisis / Margaret Overton

Me and Mine / Anna May Mangan