Just By Looking At Him

"From the first line of Just by Looking at Him, you'll know this story is so much more than boy meets boy. First, there's the humor. Elliot is a writer who spends his days navigating the back stabbing, the pressure, and the day to day snark of writing aggressively average television. In laugh out loud detail, we're immediately with him on his journey to try to get his lines onto the screen. But there's a deeper, and more poignant, story beating at the heart of this would be rom com. Instead of the usual boy meets boy, the person you really fall in love, the one you're rooting for until the end, is the protagonist himself. As a gay man with cerebral palsy, Elliot has always searched for the one, and he thought he found that person in Gus, his doting boyfriend. And yet, he can't seem to stop cheating. Elliot falls into a rabbit hole of sex, drinking, and addiction, and ultimately learns that the person he truly needs to learn to accept is himself. As incisive commentary on gay life today, a heart centered, laugh out loud exploration of self and a rare insight into life as a person with disabilities who refuses to be a victim, critics and readers alike will fall in love with this story"--

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

NOW a NETFLIX series entitled Special from Executive Producer JIM PARSONS starring RYAN O‘CONNELL as himself. From the beloved blogger turned voice of an online generation, an unforgettable and hilarious memoir-meets-manifesto exploring what it means to be a millennial gay man living with cerebral palsy, which VICE calls “a younger, gay version of Mary Karr's Lit.” People are obsessed with Ryan O’Connell’s blogs. With tens of thousands reading his pieces on Thought Catalog and Vice, watching his videos on YouTube, and hanging on to each and every #dark tweet, Ryan has established himself as a unique young voice who’s not afraid to dole out some real talk. He’s that candid, snarky friend you consult when you fear you’re spending too much time falling down virtual k-holes stalking your ex on Facebook or when you’ve made the all-too-common mistake of befriending a psycho while wasted at last night’s party and need to find a way to get rid of them the next morning. But Ryan didn’t always have the answers to these modern-day dilemmas. Growing up gay and disabled with cerebral palsy, he constantly felt like he was one step behind everybody else. Then the rude curveball known as your twenties happened and things got even more confusing. Ryan spent years as a Millennial cliché: he had dead-end internships; dabbled in unemployment; worked in his pajamas as a blogger; communicated mostly via text; looked for love online; spent hundreds on “necessary” items, like candles, while claiming to have no money; and even descended into aimless pill-popping. But through extensive trial and error, Ryan eventually figured out how to take his life from bleak to chic and began limping towards adulthood. Sharp and entertaining, I’m Special will educate twentysomethings (or other adolescents-at-heart) on what NOT to do if they ever want to become happy fully functioning grown-ups with a 401k and a dog.

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility. 'A comic masterpiece.' The Times 'Winning . . . gorgeous . . . satisfying . . . Towles is a craftsman.' New York Times Book Review 'A work of great charm, intelligence and insight.' Sunday Times 'Everything a novel should be: charming, witty, poetic and generous. An absolute delight.' Mail on Sunday 'If we do a better book than this one on the book club this year we will be very very lucky.' Matt Williams, Radio 2 Book Club 'Abundant in humour, history and humanity' Sunday Telegraph 'Wistful, whimsical and wry.' Sunday Express On 21 June 1922 Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. But instead of being taken to his usual suite, he is led to an attic room with a window the size of a chessboard. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. While Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval, the Count, stripped of the trappings that defined his life, is forced to question what makes us who we are. And with the assistance of a glamorous actress, a cantankerous chef and a very serious child, Rostov unexpectedly discovers a new understanding of both pleasure and purpose.

In the game of love you can't afford to drop the ball... Zoe’s always been shy. At college, to try to help her, her friend dares her to do the craziest thing she can think of… kiss a random guy. She follows Dylan into a room she thinks is a classroom and ends up seeing a little too much of him. She can hardly kiss him now… not when after their embarrassing encounter and certainly not after he tells her he has a girlfriend. But when he finds out about the dare, the two make a pact… if they ever cross paths again – and they’re both single – they’ll kiss. Two years later, fate intervenes, and they end up as accidental roommates. Now Zoe’s seeing a lot more of Dylan than she bargained for and it’s even harder to resist peeking the second time round.

In 2014, 33-year- old Mandy Len Catron went on a date with an acquaintance. They decided to try an experiment: inspired by a study designed to create romantic feelings, Mandy and Mark spent the evening asking each other 36 increasingly intimate questions, wondering if it would lead to them falling in love. In How to Fall in Love with Anyone, this experiment is Catron’s starting point for investigating what it means to love someone and to be loved, and how we present our love to the world. What makes love last? Can love ever work the way it seems to in films, books and social media? Is there a “right” way to fall in love? In these candid, charming and wise essays, Catron blends memoir with cultural and social commentary on the psychology, biology, history and literature of love. How to Fall in Love with Anyone is a deeply personal, yet universal investigation into the one thing we all want—or think we want—more than anything. Includes “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This”, one of the most popular essays to appear in the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column “In our age of total romantic confusion, Mandy Len Catron is a voice of good sense, warm humor, and consoling wisdom. Through the lens of her own relationships, she teaches us—with a deft, convincing intelligence—some of the vital moves in the art of love.” —Alain de Botton, internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Course of Love MANDY LEN CATRON lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. She writes about love and love stories at The Love Story Project, and teaches English and creative writing at the University of British Columbia.