Diaries & Memoirs

'There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.' Hannah Gadsby, NanetteHannah Gadsby's unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear. Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby's growth as a queer person from Tasmania - where homosexuality was illegal until 1997 - to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette - the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny and the moral significance of truth-telling. Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby's tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

An intimate, revealing look at one artist's journey from self-censorship to full expression

'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.'

A funny, insightful memoir by much-loved documentary maker Louis Theroux, who takes us on a weird and wonderful journey through his life and two decades of groundbreaking television.

The story of the relationship between the most devastating heavyweight boxer in history and the mentor who made him.

A study of a life lived in an environment of wild music and endless wonder, Sonic Life is the long-awaited memoir of iconic American musician and Sonic Youth frontman, Thurston Moore. A music-obsessed retrospective, beginning with his childhood epiphany of rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s into an infatuation with the subversive world of 1970s punk and no wave blasting forth from New York City - where he eventually runs off to join a band in 1978. By 1981 Moore would form the legendary and notorious experimental rock group Sonic Youth, who proceeded to record and tour relentlessly for almost 30 years, always progressing, always exploring.Along the way we meet a constellation of artists and musicians who colluded and collided with Sonic Youth including Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith, Television, Sex Pistols, Clash, Nirvana, Hole, Beastie Boys, Neil Young and a cavalcade of other musical visionaries, as well as figures from the art world - Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Gerhard Richter.Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form. This is essential reading.

Framed by ten words and phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words reveals as never before the world's most populous yet often misunderstood nation.

Through his never-before-seen diaries - a twenty-five-year passion project - Alan Rickman invites readers backstage and into his life. He takes us behind the scenes on films and plays ranging from Sense & Sensibility, the Harry Potter series, Private Lives and many more. Detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary, he writes in a way that is anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid.

The international bestseller and recommended by medics, patients and the NHS, this is a brain scientist's personal experience of a stroke. It tells of her journey and gives rare insight into human consciousness and its possibilities for all of us

The COVID diaries of the alternative rock star and bestselling author of SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP

The Academy Award (R)-winning actor, father of three, and bestselling author of Greenlights distils more than three decades of journaling experience to help you reflect, seek clarity, and forge your own path with this life-changing practice.

Welcome to the book of you the sequel to the bestselling book The Burn After Writing. This is What My Soul Looks Like is an irresistible opportunity to continue your own personal journey of self-reflection. Hundreds of questions gently pry open the secrets of your psyche. Recognize your biases, tune in to your feelings and increase your self-awareness. Think of it as self-therapy.

The international literary sensation written on a mobile phone from immigration detention, a devastating true story of survival from illegally imprisoned refugee Behrouz Boochani,

A book for anyone who fishes, anyone who wants to fish, and the millions worldwide who watched RIVER MONSTERS

The follow-up to the number one Sunday Times bestseller Reasons to Stay Alive

A brilliant, beautifully written memoir from Suede founder and lead singer Brett Anderson.

Garry Kasparov gives his first public account of his landmark 1997 chess match with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, and explains why, twenty years later, he's become convinced that artificial intelligence is good for humans.

Back on the earth after three spaceflights, Chris Hadfield's captivating memoir An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth reveals extraordinary stories from his life as an astronaut, and shows how to make the impossible a reality.Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4,000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft, and become a YouTube sensation with his performance of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in space. The secret to Chris Hadfield's success - and survival - is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst - and enjoy every moment of it.In his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Chris Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement - and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counter-intuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Colonel Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights in this book will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth - especially your own.

A genre-bending memoir that offers fierce and fresh reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism. At the centre is a love-story, between Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is undergoing gender reassignment, while Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy. Personal, honest and wide-ranging, Nelson explores the challenges and complexities that make up a modern family.

From one of America's greatest and most iconic writers: an honest and courageous portrait of age and motherhood.Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion's only daughter, Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth anniversary of her daughter's death. 'Blue Nights' is a shatteringly honest examination of Joan Didion's life as a mother, a woman and a writer.Recently widowed, and becoming increasingly frail, 'Blue Nights' is Didion's attempt to understand our deepest fears, our inadequate adjustments to ageing and to put a name to what we refuse to see and as a consequence fail to face up to, 'this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of ageing, illness and death. This fear.' This fear is tied to what we cherish most and fight to conserve, protect, and refuse to let go, for, 'when we are talking about mortality we are talking about our children.' To face death is to let go of memory, to be bereft once more, 'I know what it is I am now experiencing. I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.'The fear is not for what is lost.The fear is for what is still to be lost.You may see nothing still to be lost.Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.A profound, poetic and powerful book about motherhood and the fierce way in which we continue to exalt and nurture our children, even if they only live on in memory.'Blue Nights' is an intensely personal, and yet, strangely universal account of how we love. It is both groundbreaking and a culmination of a stunning career.

Sunday Times Sports Book of the YearShortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year AwardWinner - Best New Writer at the British Sports Book AwardsAfter years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world's biggest races, from the Olympics to big city marathons, Runner's World contributor Adharanand Finn set out to discover just what it was that made them so fast - and to see if he could keep up. Packing up his family (and his running shoes), he moved from Devon to the small town of Iten, in Kenya, home to hundreds of the country's best athletes. Once there he laced up his shoes and ventured out onto the dirt tracks, running side by side with Olympic champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren. He ate their food, slept in their training camps, interviewed their coaches, and his children went to their schools. And at the end of it all, there was his dream, to join the best of the Kenyan athletes in his first marathon, an epic race through lion country across the Kenyan plains.

Tove Jansson's most personal book and a homage by two artists to the island they loved. In her late-forties, Tove Jansson, helped by a maverick seaman called Brunstrom, raced to build a cabin on an almost barren outcrop of rock in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, and for twenty-six summers Tove and her life partner, the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietila, retreated there to live, paint and write, energised by the solitude and shifting seascapes. Notes from an Island, published in English for the first time, is both a memoir and homage to the island the two women loved intensely and relinquished only when pressed by age. It is also a unique collaboration between two artists. Tove's spare, precise prose - diary entries, vignettes and extracts from Brunstrom's log - frame the subtle washes and aquatints created by Tuulikki. Together they form a work of meditative beauty.

TikTok sensation and beloved home cook Nadia Caterina Munno, a.k.a. The Pasta Queen, presents a cookbook featuring the signature pasta tips and tricks that are 100% authentic to Italian traditions-and just as gorgeous as you are.