Life And Other Ways To Kill Time

A collection of humorous newspaper columns originally published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This is the most important book ever written about time management.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we can do things differently. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

I was led to write, "How to Kill The Giant In Your Life," because God know that our life is like that of David, facing the giant, (the enemy in our daily walk. We are heirs in the Kingdom of God, because we are His children. God has given us authority, but we refuse to use it, yet we pray for things or situations that God has given us the authority to handle or change ourselves. We live by faith and not by sight. If we have the faith to believe and move our faith out of "Neutral" and put it in "Drive," we can have the same victory God gave David. In Isaiah 54:17, "No weapon formed against you shall prosper and every tongue which rises against you in judgement, "you shall condemn." Did God say he will condemn or you shall condemn. Matthew 18:17, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Did God say, He will bind or loose or did He say whatever you bind or you loose? I think being a Teacher is one of the greatest gifts of all. In order to understand God, we first must know who God is and in order to know who God is, we first must take the time to study the Word. The Book of Genesis teaches about God's Royalty Family, His Creation & His Kindgom. We pray a simple prayer, because God deals with the heart and God still hear our prayers. We can pray with a sincere heart and cry out to God and He still rescues us and answers us. Jeremiah 33:3, "Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." As we grow spiritually, our prayer life changes the same way as we mature in our walk with Christ. We drank milk as babes and when the times comes, we are no longer drinking milk, but we began to eat meat. This is the same process for our spiritual growth, because we are no longer babes in Christ. When we become mature Christians, we began to pray scriptural prayers, which are more effective, but we have to abide in the Word of God. Sometimes we have to wait on our prayers to be answered, because God is a timely God. He is eternal and our time is not His time. Sometimes God moves swiftly and He hears the cry of the righteous. James 5:16, "The effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much." I remembered when I first come to Christ, I did not understand some of the Biblical terminology of the Word, or it's meaning, and I knew there was a lot to learn. Yet, in my learning there were times I became frustrated, because I did not understand the Bible. The course, English during my adolescent years in school seem to be the hardest Language to learn, because of conjunctions, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives and when I stated reading the Bible, I thought, "Oh my God, how do you pronounce the names and what do these parables mean?" I found out that if you ask God for understanding of His Word, He will give you understanding, because it is His will for us to know the will of God and not to walk in ignorance of His Word. This book is about learning how to fight the enemy, how to use God's weapon and knowing the weapons of God. It is also about learning as you grow spiritually. 2 Corinthians 10:4, "For the weapons (God's Word) of our warfare (war against the enemy -satan) are not carnal (worldly or earthly), but mightly through the pulling down of strongholds (strong defensive structure of protection). We are fighting against things that cannot be seen by the naked or natural eyes. Have you ever seen someone who, "Out of the blues" (happened suddenly), attack you mentally or physically and there was actually, no logical reason for this strange behavior? Well, it was not the person in the natural that attacked you, but the enemy that used this person. Read 2 Corinthians 10:4 again to find out who the enemy is. This is what needs to be taught in churches so that Christians can become Prayer Warriors. I pray that this book will inspire those who are seeking God to learn and know th

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

NOW WITH A NEW CHAPTER AND AN UPDATED RESOURCES SECTION Suicide has touched the lives of nearly half of all Americans, yet it is rarely talked about openly. In her highly acclaimed book, Susan Blauner—a survivor of multiple suicide attempts—offers guidance and hope for those contemplating ending their lives and for their loved ones. “Each word written with thoughtful intent; each story told with the deepest of honesty and humility, and in doing so Blauner puts forward a life-saving book."—Daniel J. Reidenberg, PsyD, Executive Director, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (www.save.org) “I continued to romanticize my death by suicide: who would find me; what I’d look like. I spent hundreds of hours planning my funeral, imagining the remorse of my family and friends. I wrote good-bye letters, composed wills, and disrupted the lives of everyone close to me. Then reality hit.”—Susan Rose Blauner The statistics on suicide are staggering. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 800,000 people die by suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds, and for each completed suicide there may be twenty or more attempts. In How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me, Susan Blauner is the perfect emissary for a message of hope and a program of action for these millions of people. A survivor of multiple suicide attempts, she explains the complex feelings and fantasies that surround suicidal thoughts. In a direct, nonjudgmental, and loving voice, she offers affirmations and suggestions for those experiencing life-ending thoughts, and for their friends and family. With an introduction by Bernie Siegel, M.D., this important, timely book has now been updated with a revised resources section, and a new chapter on the author’s experiences since the book’s initial publication.

FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION • ONE OF TIME'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S CRITICS' PICKS • ONE OF THE BOSTON GLOBE’S 55 BOOKS WE LOVED THIS YEAR • ONE OF KIRKUS’S BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR• An intimate, insightful, at times even humorous blend of memoir and philosophy that examines why the thought of death is so compulsive for some while demonstrating that there’s always another solution—from the acclaimed writer and philosophy professor, based on his viral essay, “I’m Still Here.” “A deep meditation that searches through Martin’s past looking for answers about why he is the way he is, while also examining the role suicide has played in our culture for centuries, how it has evolved, and how philosophers have examined it.” —Esquire “A rock for people who’ve been troubled by suicidal ideation, or have someone in their lives who is.” —The New York Times “If you’re going to write a book about suicide, you have to be willing to say the true things, the scary things, the humiliating things. Because everybody who is being honest with themselves knows at least a little bit about the subject. If you lie or if you fudge, the reader will know.” The last time Clancy Martin tried to kill himself was in his basement with a dog leash. It was one of over ten attempts throughout the course of his life. But he didn’t die, and like many who consider taking their own lives, he hid the attempt from his wife, family, coworkers, and students, slipping back into his daily life with a hoarse voice, a raw neck, and series of vague explanations. In How Not to Kill Yourself, Martin chronicles his multiple suicide attempts in an intimate depiction of the mindset of someone obsessed with self-destruction. He argues that, for the vast majority of suicides, an attempt does not just come out of the blue, nor is it merely a violent reaction to a particular crisis or failure, but is the culmination of a host of long-standing issues. He also looks at the thinking of a number of great writers who have attempted suicide and detailed their experiences (such as David Foster Wallace, Yiyun Li, Akutagawa, Nelly Arcan, and others), at what the history of philosophy has to say both for and against suicide, and at the experiences of those who have reached out to him across the years to share their own struggles. The result combines memoir with critical inquiry to powerfully give voice to what for many has long been incomprehensible, while showing those presently grappling with suicidal thoughts that they are not alone, and that the desire to kill oneself—like other self-destructive desires—is almost always temporary and avoidable.

The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year "A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."—The Washington Post The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book. Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.