Ocean State Libraries

"For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his attention-overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences. Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre,...

"Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-six-year-old Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has improbably emerged as one of the nation's most visionary politicians. First elected in 2011, Buttigieg left a successful business career to move back to his hometown, previously tagged by Newsweek as a "dying city," because the industrial Midwest beckoned as a challenge to...

"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood:...

Worshiped by moviegoers and beloved by his colleagues, Hudson appeared to have it all. He grew up poor in Winnetka, Illinois; was abandoned by his biological father, abused by an alcoholic stepfather, and controlled by his domineering mother. After signing with the powerful but predatory agent Henry Willson, Hudson was transformed, gaining a wholesome, straight arrow screen image was at odds with his closeted homosexuality. In 1985 the public learned...

"The definitive biography of America's best-known and least understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped. After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the...

"Social rights advocate and prominent LGBTQ+ voice on YouTube, Tyler Oakley brings you his first collection of personal essays. For someone who made a career out of over-sharing on the Internet, Tyler has a shocking number of personal mishaps and shenanigans to reveal in his first book: experiencing a legitimate rage blackout in a Cheesecake Factory; negotiating a tense stand-off with a White House official; crashing a car in front of his entire high...

"The newest essay collection from the New York Times-bestselling John Waters, reflecting on how to overcome newfound responsibility and rebel in the autumn of your years." --

"Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And thank God he's here to tell us. He's bothered that he has to play football in high school gym when he'd rather be in the guidance counselor's office, faking sick and dishing about the latest dramas on his beloved soap operas. He's annoyed when, as a kid growing up in Queens, New York, there's a serial killer loose in his neighborhood, but Carole Burnett is on tv and he really doesn't want to miss...

"Tells the story of Michael Ausiello, a TV columnist and founder and editor-in-chief of TVLine.com, and his relationship with his partner, Kit Cowan, as Kit battles a rare form of cancer, displaying the resilience and strength of true love rather than the sadness of loss."--

A longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist offers an account of his life from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his present-day involvement with the marriage equality battle. "Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s...