Fortune hunters, whacky traders and spies make up part of our list of unusual lives in this week’s booklist. The booklist provides readers with names of books recommended by the staff of the Western Counties Regional Library. The lists are posted at
www.westerncounties.ca under Recommended Reading with links to the library’s catalogue. These descriptions of some of the books on the list are provided by the library.
The Fortune Hunters: Dazzling Women and the Men They Married
by Charlotte Hays
There a rich history of women who have found glamour and wealth in the arms of a billionaire. But contrary to what you may think, fortune hunting is no idle pursuit. Like diving for treasure, it’s a real job. Some women strive to be CEOs; others prefer to wed them. You’ll meet today’s dazzling successes in this book. What kind of woman does it take to make the Midas marriage? Exploring the lives of the great fortune hunters of our day, reporter and former gossip columnist Charlotte Hays answers this tantalizing question.
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else
by Michael Gill
The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill grew up in privilege. A Yale education led to a prestigious job. But at 63, the younger Gill’s sweet life went sour. His own business collapsed and an ill-advised affair resulted in a new son and a divorce. At this low point, and in need of health insurance for a just diagnosed brain tumor, Gill filled out an application for Starbucks and was assigned to the store on 93rd and Broadway in New York City, staffed primarily by African-Americans. Working as a barista, Gill, who was white, got an education in race relations and the life of a working class Joe.
One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dreams with the Help of a Simple Office Supply
by Kyle MacDonald
MacDonald is just a regular, sharp-witted guy on a quest for the maximum potential for fun. He lives with his girlfriend. She pays the rent. Wanting to contribute financially to the relationship, he recalls a childhood game, Bigger and Better, and begins looking for something to trade. He’s drawn to the red paperclip holding together his résumé and cover letter. The rest of the book traces his exchanges from the red paperclip to a fish pen to a smiley-face door knob and culminates with a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan – all within a year.
The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad
by Michael Ross
In 1982 a young Michael Ross joins the legion of Canadian twenty-somethings backpacking in Europe. He winds up working on a Kibbutz in Israel, where he falls in love with the land, converts to Judaism, and adopts his new country’s struggle for survival as his own, joining the Israel Defence Force and eventually Mossad’s most elite and storied covert-operations unit, Caesaria. For seven-and-a-half years, Ross worked as an undercover agent – a classic spy. A gripping, fascination read. Many of the operations Ross describes have never before been revealed to the public.
Child of the Jungle: The True Story of a Girl Caught Between Two Worlds
by Sabine Kuegler
In 1980, when Kuegler was seven, she accompanied her German linguist parents into the Papuan (New Guinea) jungle to live with a Stone Age tribe of naked people with bones through their noses. She felt immediately at home and by her own account had an idyllic childhood till she was 17. Eventually Kuegler was sent to boarding school in Switzerland, had a baby shortly after she graduated, married, divorced, sank into depression and attempted suicide. Young readers, and anthropologists, too, will find this account of a most unusual childhood engrossing.
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