Best Reads 2024 at BCIT Library: Memoirs & Biographies

"Part memoir, part support group, comedian Ian Karmel with help from his sister Alisa, a clinical psychologist, opens up about the daily humiliations of being fat and traces the way that fat-gaining it, losing it, worrying about it, trying to hide it-dictates the way so many of us live"--publisher description

"In 1999, Nancy Hopkins, a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against female scientists. The MIT sixteen were formidable in their respective fields: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their effort to highlight the inequity they observed would set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science that continues to this day. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story in 1999 for the Boston Globe, The exceptions is the intimate and unforgettable story of Nancy Hopkins--a surprisingly reluctant feminist who became a hero to two generations of women in science."

"A piercing account of the author's journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of domestic violence, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a memoir that embodies the transformative power of resilience"--Dust jacket flap.

"The story of a cancer diagnosis that tore apart a family and how those left behind put it back together, told one hazy memory at a time. Gonzalo is married to his high school sweetheart, Erica. With one child already and another on the way, they purchase their first home and the future looks rosy. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse when they discover Erica has terminal cancer during a routine ultrasound. What follows is a heart-rending journey that still manages to find moments of humour and joy as Gonzalo prepares his newborn for life while simultaneously saying goodbye to his wife. A memoir told in fragments, Never Better is about reconciling hope with tragedy and doing the best with the cards you've been dealt when you're a widower and father of two sons under two."