Nowhere For Very Long- The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life by Brianna Madia

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Product Details

Web ID: 17686795

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • USA TODAY! BESTSELLER In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life. A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband. Nowhere for Very Long is her deeply felt, immaculately told story of exploration—of the world outside and the spirit within. However, pursuing a life of intention isn’t always what it seems. In fact, at times it was downright boring, exhausting, and even desperate—when Bertha overheated and she was forced to pull over on a lonely stretch of South Dakota highway, when the weather was bitterly cold and her water jugs froze beneath her as she slept in the parking lot of her office, when she worried about money, her marriage, and the looming question mark of her future. But Brianna was committed to living a life true to herself, come what may, and that made all the difference. Nowhere for Very Long is the true story of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, from married to solo, and finally, from lost to found to lost again . . . this time, on.

  • Product Features

    • Format- Hardcover
    • Dimension- 6.2" W x 9.1" H x 1.3" D
    • Genre- Biography
    • Publisher- HarperCollins Publishers, Publication date- 04-05-2022
    • Page Count- 272
    • Brianna Madia (Author)
    • ISBN- 9780063047983
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Ratings & Reviews

4.2/5

50 star ratings & reviews

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2 years ago

LOVE IT! If you love travel stories this is it!

Great story telling with a realistic view of travel. Inspires you to live your authentic life. Can't wait for the next book.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago

GREAT BOOK! EASY READ!

Love this book! It is Brianna’s story of growing up and finding “her” place. It’s an inspiration for young women to be free to be who they want to be and not what society expect you to be! It’s an inspiration to be brave and try new things! Above all it’s a love story about her relationship with her dogs!

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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago

Please read!

I've never understood words as art. Yes, there is poetry and spoken word and plays that are first written and then turned into art, but art is individual. It is up to each and every person who sees it to find their own beauty in it, even as its creator dictated the beauty when forming it. Words, on the other hand, have meaning, as is their essence, so words cannot be art because there is no interpretation, generalization, or specification beyond what they are. Black and White. Well, brianna madia writes in shades of orange. While dictating her own story, she picks and strums to the tune of the everyman. She strokes and chisels her own feelings while leaving the reader space for their own. There are lines so deep and profound which left my heart clinched, needing a water break and a good stretch before diving back in, and others spurring me on towards a life well-lived. I found myself cheering for her to keep being her own inspiration, all the while thanking her for being brave enough to write these words and by doing so becoming other's. I found my soul heavy when it ended, wishing I had an empty field, slot canyon, or red dirt road illuminated only by the stars to settle into for the night "to step inside a story already being told", to feel the vastness, the freedom, the safety that she delicately captured between these pages. Enthralled in her memories, I unraveled. Not at dagwoods accident, which I had prepared my heart for and repeatedly reminded myself of the most recent Instagram picture of him, living his best life. Not at the (even personally well known) tragedy of "weighing down the people we love most when we're trying to learn to carry ourselves". I unraveled on an airplane full of strangers over the wild places I had just driven through two weeks before on my own journey to not be an adult who "pack their crazy dreams away, perhaps forever, or perhaps to push upon the next generation, who, for some unknown reason, might have a better shot at them than they did. Then they put on their ties and pay their mortgages because, at some point, someone told them their dreams were no longer feasible. And they believed them." I unraveled to words that could have sprung from the deepest places within myself, words I never would have the strength to write, but now have the desire to prove they will not be true for my life any longer. "The women I looked up to growing up were glamorous and beautiful and well dressed. They certainly weren't connoisseurs of camping and I cannot imagine a single one of them had ever sh** in a hole." Thank you Bri, for being both.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago

Not for me

My friend told me I had to read this. She’s a big fan of the author’s long-standing Instagram account. I gave up IG years ago, so I wasn’t familiar with Brianna Madia except through my friend. Honestly, it was a bunch of drivel. I a Midwest transplant who lives in Colorado. Her ‘unconventional’ exploits were very much conventional in our friend group when we were in our 20s. This book felt like a young person without much life experience trying too hard to be deep and quirky and cool. I think it must appeal to other white cis women in her age range who follow her as an influencer, but if even one of these does not apply to you, I’d save your time and money and read something with more substance.

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago
from Wadsworth,Oh

Raw, real, and pure

I preordered this book. The first one ever. Briana Madia tells her story in the most honest narrative I’ve read in a very long time. I think deep down in all of us is a little bit of an adventurous spirit and her story shows us a peek into that life if you let those dreams come to fruition. Her humor, gut wrenching honesty, and obviously… her dogs, made this read IMPOSSIBLE for me to put down. Buy this book! You will not regret it

Recommends this product

  • Photo from Kristimac5

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago

COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN!

I truly loved this book! If you're outdoorsy, adventurous, support women supporting women, dogs, van life or anything along these lines to NEED to get read this book. I have not read a book cover to cover this fast in a LONG time! I absolutely recommend it :)

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago
from Nolanville, TX

Her words flow beautifully

I have been following Bri for years and was so excited when she finally wrote a book. She has such a way with words and thoughts, I would read ten more if she wrote them. Hope there is more to come. I love to get to live through her eyes for a while.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

3 years ago
from Austin, TX

I’ve followed Bri for years, love her words

After following Briana’s story for YEARS through Instagram and often being brought to tears by her eloquently written and git-wrenchingly vulnerable social posts, you can imagine how STOKE I was to preorder this book the day orders opened and also how many tears I shed before I completed this read. I loved it as much as I’ve loved following her journey all these years and I’m just as honored to be able to support her through the purchase of her first book as I was (and always have been) to have been able to contribute to the funds for Dagwood’s survival so that, as Bri writes, to continue to leave all the paw prints in the red sand of the desert west. I absolutely will be supporting ALL of her future works: published and just “posted”. I highly recommend any of the words this woman writes in any of the mediums in which she chooses to write them.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com