en-US Wed, 07 May 2025 07:52:46 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 61842212 Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us and all is well, for now...

In her first novel for over a decade, Claire Kilroy takes us deep into the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love for a new life with a seismic change in identity, she vividly realises the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of love, autonomy and creativity.

As she smiles at her baby, Sailor, while mentally composing her own suicide note, an old friend makes a welcome return, but can he really offer a lifeline to the woman she used to be?]]> 256 Claire Kilroy Arnab 0 currently-reading 4.05 2023
author: Claire Kilroy
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 51342996 The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia.

Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point.

Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the United Kingdom’s Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process.

More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.]]> 308 Richard Ovenden 0674241207 Arnab 0 to-read 3.71 2020
author: Richard Ovenden
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> 63132362
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband―and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history―and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…]]> 486 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621836 Arnab 0 to-read 4.22 2023
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/17
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]]> 78112289 Starting with Rebecca Smith’s own family history � foresters in Cumbria, miners in Derbyshire, millworkers in Nottinghamshire, builders of reservoirs and the Manchester Ship Canal � Rural is an exploration of our green and pleasant land, and the people whose labour has shaped it.

Beautifully observed, these are the stories of professions and communities that often go overlooked. Smith shows the precarity for those whose lives are entangled in the natural landscape. And she traces how these rural working-class worlds have changed. As industry has transformed � mines closing, country estates shrinking, farmers struggling to make profit on a pint of milk, holiday lets increasing so relentlessly that local people can no longer live where they were born � we are led to question the legacy of the countryside in all our lives.

This is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain.]]> 240 Rebecca Smith 0008526273 Arnab 0 to-read 3.90 2023
author: Rebecca Smith
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 219467820 A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'

'Essential reading' - Telegraph
'Thoughtful and nuanced' - The Guardian
'A calm, sensitive, soothingly sociological book' - The Sunday Times
'Will change the way you think about Britain' - Robert Ford, author of Brexitland

________

Underdogs is a surprising journey into the heart of the misunderstood white working class. And it might just change how you see Britain.

While Brexit helped to turn the white working class into a social and political force, in its aftermath one-third of the population has been reduced to a caricature. Portrayed as angry and hostile to change, as xenophobic, even racist, it’s a tired narrative favoured by both politicians and the press.

The truth is far more compelling.

In Underdogs, Economist journalist Joel Budd takes us across the UK, from the shores of Teesside to the Isle of Wight, from the Valleys of South Wales to the fields of Lincolnshire, talking with a diverse group of people about their jobs, their families and neighbourhoods, their struggles and hopes.

Offering an eye-opening corrective to the familiar stereotype, Budd discovers the white working class are not just grumbling about the transformation of Britain. With warmth and determination, they are pushing the country forward.]]> 330 Joel Budd 1035015145 Arnab 0 to-read 3.83
author: Joel Budd
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.83
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]]> 52694527 Set in a brand-new, Norse-inspired world, and packed with myth, magic and bloody vengeance, The Shadow of the Gods begins an epic new fantasy saga from bestselling author John Gwynne.

After the gods warred and drove themselves to extinction, the cataclysm of their fall shattered the land of Vigrið.

Now a new world is rising, where power-hungry jarls feud and monsters stalk the woods and mountains. A world where the bones of the dead gods still hold great power for those brave - or desperate - enough to seek them out.

Now, as whispers of war echo across the mountains and fjords, fate follows in the footsteps of three people: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman who has rejected privilege in pursuit of battle fame, and a thrall who seeks vengeance among the famed mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.

All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods . . .]]> 480 John Gwynne 0356514188 Arnab 0 to-read 4.19 2021
author: John Gwynne
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 5068 Last Orders is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.]]> 296 Graham Swift 0330489674 Arnab 0 3.69 1996
author: Graham Swift
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> 32075861
Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne's spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.]]> 422 Sarah Perry 0062666371 Arnab 0 currently-reading 3.49 2016
author: Sarah Perry
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 301899 Music From Big Pink is a moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's cliched and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy....This well-written first novel captures not just some of the dreams of that bygone era, but the way those dreams died."
-Greg Kamiya, The New York Times Book Review

Music From Big Pink is faction: real people like Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman rub shoulders with fictional characters and actual, documented events thread their way through text alongside imagined scenarios. Through the eyes of 23-year-old Greg Keltner, drug-dealer and wannabe musician, we witness the gestation and birth of a record that will go on to cast its spell across five decades - bewitching and inspiring artists as disparate as The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Travis, Wilco and Mercury Rev.]]> 160 John Niven 082641771X Arnab 3 3.71 2005
author: John Niven
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 215749903 A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster

In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and forcing millions more to emigrate.

In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers the definitive account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom and the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation. Ireland’s overreliance on the potato was a desperate adaptation to an unstable and unequal marketplace created by British colonialism. The empire’s laissez-faire economic policies saw Ireland exporting livestock and grain even as its people starved. When famine struck, relief efforts were premised on the idea that only free markets and wage labor could save the Irish. Ireland’s wretchedness, before and during the Great Famine, was often blamed on Irish backwardness, but in fact, it resulted from the British Empire’s embrace of modern capitalism.

Uncovering the disaster’s roots in Britain’s deep imperial faith in markets, commerce, and capitalism, Rot reshapes our understanding of the Great Famine and its tragic legacy.]]> 352 Padraic X. Scanlan 1541601548 Arnab 0 to-read 4.04 2025
author: Padraic X. Scanlan
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
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]]> 1287678 555 Christian G. Appy 0091910110 Arnab 5 4.37 2003
author: Christian G. Appy
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2013/08/20
date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 218372802 An award-winning mathematician shows how we prove what’s true, and what to do when we can’t

How do we establish what we believe? And how can we be certain that what we believe is true? And how do we convince other people that it is true? For thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to the Arabic golden age to the modern world, science has used different methods—logical, empirical, intuitive, and more—to separate fact from fiction. But it all had the same goal: find perfect evidence and be rewarded with universal truth.

As mathematician Adam Kucharski shows, however, there is far more to proof than axioms, theories, and laws: when demonstrating that a new medical treatment works, persuading a jury of someone’s guilt, or deciding whether you trust a self-driving car, the weighing up of evidence is far from simple. To discover proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases and embrace uncertainty—and never more so than when existing methods fail.

Spanning mathematics, science, politics, philosophy, and economics, this book offers the ultimate exploration of how we can find our way to proof—and, just as importantly, of how to go forward when supposed facts falter.]]> 368 Adam Kucharski 1541606698 Arnab 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Adam Kucharski
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
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]]> 195167624 This is the astonishing story of the ten million books that US intelligence smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

From copies of Orwell to Agatha Christie, the Western effort was to undermine the censorship of the Soviet bloc, offer different visions of thought and culture to the people, and build relationships with real readers in the East.

Historian Charlie English follows the characters of the era, with Bucharest-born George Minden at the narrative’s heart. Tasked with masterminding the effort, Minden understood both sides of the he was opposed to the intellectual straightjacket created by the communist system, but he also resented the Americans� patronising tone � the people weren’t fooled by what their puppet governments were saying, but they did need culture, diversity of thought, entertainment, art, reassurance and solidarity. This is how the perilous mission to bring books as beacons of hope played out, told in riveting detail.]]> 304 Charlie English 0008495122 Arnab 0 to-read 3.85 2025
author: Charlie English
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
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]]> 208868850 In a world where your hiding places are suddenly exposed, where do you put your skeletons? This is more than the story of Credit Suisse, a bank that failed; it's an investigation into greed, lies and unrelenting human ambition.

Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of Swiss banking. When it folded in March 2023, it sent shockwaves through the world of high finance.

Why was such a big bank allowed to fail?

Who was responsible?

And ultimately, could it have been avoided?

From international financial journalist and author of the bestselling Pyramid of Lies, Duncan Mavin, Meltdown is the fascinating history of one of the biggest financial institutions of our times, which forces you to ask the in a modern world of free knowledge and information, will big banks ever be allowed to survive again? And, more importantly, should they be?]]> 333 Duncan Mavin 1035037483 Arnab 0 to-read 3.97
author: Duncan Mavin
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.97
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]]> 20613764 Red Nile navigates a meandering course through the history of the world’s greatest river, exploring this unique breeding ground for creativity, power clashes, and constant change.

Seasoned historical writer Robert Twigger connects the comprehensive history of the Nile with his personal experience of living in Egypt while researching the Nile’s historical origins. Twigger covers the entirety of the river, charting the length of the Nile from its disputed origins through Africa on a whirlwind tour of the rulers, explorers, conquerors, generals, and novelists who painted the Nile “red.� Both comprehensive and intimate, this narrative guides readers through history by way of the mighty river known across the world.

The result of this meticulously researched book is an all-inclusive history of this epic river and the incredible connections throughout history. The stories of excess, love, passion, splendor, and violence are what make the Nile so engaging, even after centuries of change.]]> 480 Robert Twigger 1250052335 Arnab 0 currently-reading 3.79 2013
author: Robert Twigger
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2013
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]]> 26014651
Twenty-two-year-old Jane Fairchild has worked as a maid at an English country house since she was sixteen. For almost all of those years she has been the clandestine lover to Paul Sheringham, young heir of a neighboring house. The two now meet on an unseasonably warm March day—Mothering Sunday—a day that will change Jane's life forever.

As the narrative moves back and forth from 1924 to the end of the century, what we know and understand about Jane—about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, remembers—expands with every vividly captured moment. Her story is one of profound self-discovery, and through her, Graham Swift has created an emotionally soaring, deeply affecting work of fiction.]]> 177 Graham Swift 1101947527 Arnab 4 3.71 2016
author: Graham Swift
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Arnab 2 3.66 2010
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> 214986252 A deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping's definition of who is "Chinese," from an award-winning NPR correspondent.

In the hot summer months of 2021, China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. Authorities held propaganda and education campaigns across the country defining the ideal Chinese ethnically Han Chinese, Mandarin speaking, solidly atheist, and devoted to the socialist project of strengthening China against western powers.Ìý

No one can understand modern China—including its response to the pandemic—without understanding who actually lives there, and the ways that the Chinese State tries to control its people. Let Only Red Flowers Bloom collects the stories of more than two dozen people who together represent a more holistic picture of Chinese identity. The Uyghurs who have seen millions of their fellow citizens detained in camps; mainland human rights lawyer Ren Quanniu, who lost his law license in a bureaucratic dispute after representing a Hong Kong activist; a teacher from Inner Mongolia, forced to escape persecution because of his support of his mother tongue. These are just a few narratives that journalist Emily Feng reports on, revealing human stories about resistance against a hegemonic state and introducing readers to the people who know about Chinese identity the best.Ìý

Illuminating a country that has for too long been secretive of the real lives its citizens are living, Feng reveals what it’s really like to be anything other than party-supporting Han Chinese in China, and the myriad ways they’re trying to survive in the face of an oppressive regime.]]> 304 Emily Feng 0593594223 Arnab 0 to-read 4.27
author: Emily Feng
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.27
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]]> 35187182 312 Amy Liptrot 0393355594 Arnab 4 3.95 2015
author: Amy Liptrot
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 214597760 All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe's world. All Ettie wants is to escape it.

The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows . . .

Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.

The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.]]> 327 Lucy Steeds 1399819593 Arnab 0 to-read 4.44 2025
author: Lucy Steeds
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 2753062 160 Jan Morris 1580800475 Arnab 0 to-read 4.10 1958
author: Jan Morris
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> 214152321 Shortlisted for The Women’s Prize � Named a most anticipated book by Electric Literature, Publishers Weekly, The BBC, Daily Mail (London), and more

A darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions personal and political.

Meet the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.

First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone but is sometimes visited by Niaz, her Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose and yet manages to survive. Elizabeth’s daughters wound up in America: Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future, and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned housewife languishing in the chaparral-filled hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student in New York City trying to find deeper meaning by quietly giving away her belongings.

When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up in jail, the family’s upper-class veneer is cracked open. Shirin embarks upon a quest to restore the family name to its former glory, but what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow?

By turns satirical and philosophical, spanning from 1940s Iran to a splintered 2000s, The Persians upends the reader’s expectations while exploring questions about love, family, money, art, and how to find yourself and each other when your country is lost. Wry and witty, brazen and absurd, The Persians is a deeply moving reinvention of the American family saga.]]> 384 Sanam Mahloudji 166801579X Arnab 0 to-read 3.50 2024
author: Sanam Mahloudji
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Arnab 0 to-read 3.90 2018
author: Ling Ma
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> 125937631
The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world�—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.

In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epicÌýjourney across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.

Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turnÌýraw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new the ground up.]]> 512 Ed Conway 0593534344 Arnab 0 to-read 4.48 2023
author: Ed Conway
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/09
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]]> 54390506
The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing twenty first-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Features original illustrations depicting Earth history and nearly 50 figures (maps, tables, photographs, graphs).]]> 272 Andrew H. Knoll 0062853910 Arnab 0 to-read 3.84 2021
author: Andrew H. Knoll
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/09
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]]> 61032263 247 Adam Farrer 1913393461 Arnab 4 4.48
author: Adam Farrer
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> 33832945
But that's tough when your grandmother is a Yaga, a guardian who guides the dead into the afterlife. It's even harder when you live in a house that wanders all over the world . . . carrying you with it. Even worse, Marinka is being trained to be a Yaga. That means no school, no parties--and no playmates that stick around for more than a day.

So when Marinka stumbles across the chance to make a real friend, she breaks all the rules . . . with devastating consequences. Her beloved grandmother mysteriously disappears, and it's up to Marinka to find her--even if it means making a dangerous journey to the afterlife.


With a mix of whimsy, humor, and adventure, this debut novel will wrap itself around your heart and never let go.]]> 337 Sophie Anderson 1474940668 Arnab 3 4.09 2018
author: Sophie Anderson
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Arnab 3 3.55 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/28
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]]> 44659 BOOK 1 OF THE BELGARIAD, the worldwide bestselling fantasy series by master storyteller David Eddings. Discover the epic story that inspired thousands - from Raymond Feist's The Riftwar Cycle series to George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.

A battle is coming...

...And in that battle shall be decided

the fate of the world

Myths tell of the ancient wars of Gods and men, and a powerful object - the Orb - that ended the bloodshed. As long as it was held by the line of Riva, it would assure the peace.

But a dark force has stolen the Orb, and the prophecies tell of war.

Young farm boy Garion knows nothing of myth or fate. But then the mysterious Old Storyteller visits his aunt, and they embark on a sudden journey. Pursued by evil forces, with only a small band of companions they can trust, Garion begins to doubt all he thought he knew...]]> 304 David Eddings 0345468643 Arnab 3 4.17 1982
author: David Eddings
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> 150778774
In an act of feminist inquiry, personal adventure, and literary quest, Alice Albinia takes us over borders and through disparate island cultures, past and present. She uncovers the enduring and subversive mythology of islands ruled by women―finding female independence woven through Roman colonial reports and Welsh medieval poetry, Restoration utopias and island folk songs―and sheds light on women’s status in the body politic today. The Britannias boldly upturns established truths about Britain while revealing its suppressed and forgotten beauty. 1 map; 14 black-and-white illustrations]]> 512 Alice Albinia 0393608557 Arnab 0 to-read 3.59
author: Alice Albinia
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.59
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]]> 6668835
Australia has dominated test cricket over the last 130 years. But it's not the formal cricket academies or high-end sports coaching that are responsible for the Australian cricket team's winning ways. The backyard has been the real academy of Australian cricket. Don Bradman's unique grip, stance and backlift all evolved in response to the pace at which the golf ball rebounded off the tank stand in his backyard games. Greg Chappell's unique flick off the hip shot came about because the leg side of his backyard wicket offered the best scoring opportunities. Alan Davidson bowled accurately because he had to: if he missed the stumps on his home-made pitch, he had to chase the ball down the hill into the scrub. Doug Walters played spin with ease because his ant-bed backyard pitch spun like a top. Neil Harvey's immaculate footwork came from playing balls darting off cobblestones in his back lane. This collection of cricketers and the stories of the backyards that made them gets to the heart and soul of their game. Facing up to hostile brothers on dodgy pitches created a love of competition and developed a skill set that allowed them to take on the world in their chosen sport.]]> 240 Steve Cannane 0733321143 Arnab 3 3.51 2010
author: Steve Cannane
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> 15698891 David Frith Arnab 0 to-read 3.64 1974
author: David Frith
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> 2194408 168 David Frith 0442301502 Arnab 0 to-read 4.00 1975
author: David Frith
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> 212923993 A mother and son, estranged but yearning for reunion, reckon at last with the secret that has kept them apart for decades in this highly anticipated novel by "one of the country's most talented writers" (Wall Street Journal�)

At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of his clients only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.

Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.

With unsurpassed emotional depth,ÌýMothers and SonsÌýreveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and what might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam HaslettÌýdemonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary giftsâ€� (New York Times).]]> 336 Adam Haslett 0316574716 Arnab 0 to-read 3.79 2025
author: Adam Haslett
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 34449
Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings obstinately to the prestige of her family name even as her husband prepares to move their household to Tokyo, where that name means nothing. Sachiko compromises valiantly to secure the future of her younger sisters. The unmarried Yukiko is a hostage to her family’s exacting standards, while the spirited Taeko rebels by flinging herself into scandalous romantic alliances. Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist, The Makioka Sisters is a classic of international literature.]]> 530 Jun'ichir� Tanizaki 0679761640 Arnab 0 to-read 4.03 1948
author: Jun'ichir� Tanizaki
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Arnab 4 4.11 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> 656
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.


Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.]]> 1392 Leo Tolstoy 0192833987 Arnab 0 currently-reading 4.14 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Arnab 5 4.35 2024
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
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]]> 76401 The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.]]> 509 Dee Brown 0805066691 Arnab 5 4.24 1970
author: Dee Brown
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
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]]> 36620482 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE

A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present.

The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well.

Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention.

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.]]> 526 David Treuer Arnab 0 to-read 4.24 2019
author: David Treuer
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> 59386098 From a British literary sensation, the story of two rural outcasts and the crop circles they create over the course of a long, hot and very strange summer.

Summer 1989, rural England, the tail end of long decade of mass unemployment, class war and rebellion, and the continued destruction of the English countryside.

Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men - traumatized ex-soldier Calvert, and affable and chaotic Redbone - set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, designs so intricate that they inspire the kind of awe that the ancient Gothic cathedral in nearby Salisbury once inspired.

As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

But as harvest-time beckons -- and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work-- Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix.

Moving and exhilarating, and recalling the apocalyptic visions of William Blake, Alan Moore and Cormac MacCarthy, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating, tender and slyly witty novel about the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.]]> 211 Benjamin Myers 1612199585 Arnab 4 3.95 2022
author: Benjamin Myers
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
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]]> 35805856 A fresh, strikingly immediate and elegant verse translation of the classic, with an introduction and helpful guides to each section, by the rising American poet.

Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer, and found that the Bhagavad Gita had much to teach him with its song of multiplicities. Chief among them is that its own assertions aren't as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals; it is, he believes, the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language. His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna--strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. Listening guides to each section follow the main text, and expand in accessible terms on the text and what is happening between the lines. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and--perhaps most important--devotion.]]> 256 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa 1524733474 Arnab 0 4.23 -400
author: Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.23
book published: -400
rating: 0
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]]> 197716282 304 Dan Davies 1782839259 Arnab 0 to-read 3.91 2024
author: Dan Davies
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/12
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]]> 40604846 Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.]]> 338 Barbara Demick Arnab 5 4.47 2009
author: Barbara Demick
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> 127278133 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893690 Arnab 0 to-read 4.15 2024
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/03
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]]> 205478751 480 David Peace 1324086262 Arnab 0 to-read 3.93
author: David Peace
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> 62919887
During the Arab Spring, an American spy's final mission goes dangerously awry in this "crackling debut thriller" (The New Yorker) written by a former CIA officer and hailed as "an instant classic" (Paul Vidich, author of Beirut Station).

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he's anxious to dispense with his mission—uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. But then he meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.

When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict. His budding romance with Almaisa—and his loyalties—are upended; in an instant, he's caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. Drawing on all his skills as a spymaster, he sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa's love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain's secrets end and America's begin.]]> 308 I.S. Berry 1982194545 Arnab 0 to-read 3.60 2023
author: I.S. Berry
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> 58993078
Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. This narrowest of talent pools has shaped the modern country. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Oxford University - and the friendships and worldviews it created - helped give us today's Britain, including Brexit.]]> 240 Simon Kuper 1788167384 Arnab 3 3.91 2022
author: Simon Kuper
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Arnab 3 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
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]]> 202747653 Rarely named and frequently written out of history, the remarkable women of British intelligence finally receive the recognition they so richly deserve in this expertly researched narrative that will be a must-read for fans of military history.

To the undiscerning eye, they were secretaries, typists, personal assistants, and telephonists. But those innocuous job titles provided the perfect cover for what were in reality a range of complex technical, clerical, and occupational roles. Often overlooked and underestimated by outsiders, the women of British intelligence encoded, decoded, and translated enemy messages, wrote propaganda, and oversaw agents, performing duties as diverse as they were indispensable.
Ìý
One of those women was Kathleen Pettigrew, super-secretary to three consecutive Chiefs of MI6, the secret foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, and widely regarded as the inspiration for author Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny. Serving her county loyally for four decades, Kathleen amassed a formidable knowledge of people and events. From the surprise apprehension of World War I courtesan spy Mata Hari to the unmasking of MI6 officer Kim Philby, the ‘Third Man� of the Cambridge spy ring, Kathleen created, organized, and archived an empire of top-secret information.
Ìý
Though most women toiled in offices and backrooms, there were also agent-runners and agents, prized for their ability to hide in plain sight. Drawing on extensive research and unique access to family archives, Claire portrays many of these remarkable figures—including the brilliant, multi-lingual Lunn sisters, glamorous spy Olga Gray; and Jane Sissmore, MI5’s first female officer� and reconsiders the priceless contributions they made.
Ìý
In a field where women were often assumed to be little more than window-dressing, Secret Servants of the CrownÌýreveals their multi-faceted, essential roles, offering a powerful and compelling testament to their many accomplishments.
Ìý]]> 352 Claire Hubbard-Hall 1399603469 Arnab 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Claire Hubbard-Hall
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> 63024269
From the author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into owls—the most elusive of birds—and why they exert such a hold on human imagination

For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Though our fascination goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand in deep detail the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active in the dark of night.

Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior. She joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. We now know that the hoots, squawks, and chitters of owls follow sophisticated and complex rules, allowing them to express not just their needs and desires but their individuality and identity. Owls duet. They migrate. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows; some roost in large groups; some dine on black widows and scorpions.

Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls and dives deep into why these birds beguile us. What an Owl Knows is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of their astonishing hunting skills, communication, and sensory prowess. By providing extraordinary new insights into the science of owls, What an Owl Knows pulls back the curtain on the nature of the world’s most enigmatic group of birds.]]> 333 Jennifer Ackerman 0593298888 Arnab 0 to-read 4.14 2023
author: Jennifer Ackerman
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> 60784365 An original and probing debut work of nonfiction by a brilliant new writer, rooted in her years-long quest to study the cultural legacy of the wolf

In this enthralling, kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves both real and symbolic, Erica Berry weaves historic and scientific findings alongside criticism, journalism, and memoir to illuminate the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both.

From 17th-century Europeans referring to mysterious bodily sores as wolves, to contemporary xenophobia about wolves crossing national borders, wolves have long been made to carry our most entrenched sociopolitical, environmental, and bodily fears. Intimate and thought-provoking, Wolfish is a lyrical inquiry into the relationship between humans and wolves, anchored in the dual stories of one legendary tagged wolf, OR-7, and the author.

Charting OR-7’s long-distance solo journey after he leaves his pack in northeastern Oregon beside the author’s own roaming trajectory away from her Oregon home, Wolfish wrestles with inherited narratives around fear, danger, and the body. From her grandfather’s sheep farm to a wolf sanctuary on an aristocratic English estate, Erica Berry untangles binaries of predator and prey, self and other, and wild and domestic, finding new expressions for how to be a brave woman, human, and animal in our warming world.

Perfect for readers of cultural criticism, environmental writing, Rebecca Solnit, H is for Hawk, or anybody trying to navigate a world that is often scary. A timely and necessary book for current and future generations.]]> 432 Erica Berry 1250821622 Arnab 0 to-read 3.56 2023
author: Erica Berry
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
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]]> 622855
George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.

So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.]]> 146 John Le Carré 0743431685 Arnab 2 3.57 1962
author: John Le Carré
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1962
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> 204236707 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk—and the players raising the stakes In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life.ÌýÌýThese professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21stÌýcentury. By embedding within these worlds, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—including the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.]]> 576 Nate Silver 1594204128 Arnab 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Nate Silver
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 35251362 An ALA Notable A “funny, surprising� tale told though stunningly delightful artwork (The Wall Street Journal).
Ìý
Mr. Crocodile loves his job. Every morning he gets up with an alarm. He brushes his teeth. He chooses the right tie to match his outfit, eats a quick slice of toast, and heads off to work on a crowded train. But what exactly is his job? The answer may surprise you!
Ìý
Readers young and old will want to pore over this witty, wordless book again and again, finding new details and fresh stories every time.]]> 32 Giovanna Zoboli 1452167001 Arnab 0 to-read 4.34 2017
author: Giovanna Zoboli
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/02
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]]> 208965431
SeaglassÌýis a collection of such moments; essaysÌýblending creative non-fiction with nature writing and memoir, and portraying with powerful observation and moving honesty the journey of a young woman navigating modern adulthood.ÌýThe stories draw a map of Kathryn’s life,Ìýfrom Manchester to the South Wales coastline and out to the Thousand Islands in Canada’s Saint Lawrence River.ÌýTraversing wilderness, natural history, travel and water â€� rivers, lakes, coastlines and leisure centres –ÌýSeaglassÌýexplores shared experiences,Ìýanxieties, confidence and contentment.]]> 176 Kathryn Tann 1915279623 Arnab 5 4.18
author: Kathryn Tann
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 1111 The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.

In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.]]> 1246 Robert A. Caro 0394720245 Arnab 0 to-read 4.51 1974
author: Robert A. Caro
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22529382
Amplifying the story of family and Wasteland, Meyer takes us on a journey across Manchuria's past, a history that explains much about contemporary China--from the fall of the last emperor to Japanese occupation and Communist victory. Through vivid local characters, Meyer illuminates the remnants of the imperial Willow Palisade, Russian and Japanese colonial cities and railways, and the POW camp into which a young American sergeant parachuted to free survivors of the Bataan Death March. In Manchuria is a rich and original chronicle of contemporary China and its people.]]> 384 Michael Meyer 1620402866 Arnab 0 to-read 4.01 2015
author: Michael Meyer
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/20
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]]> 15195
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust� (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.]]> 296 Art Spiegelman 0141014083 Arnab 5 4.57 1980
author: Art Spiegelman
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
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]]> 212106829 We are all in need of lights to follow.

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly � and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, building little wooden huts that will protect the ducks come spring; to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for the woman to gather, like feathered gold.

Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not at all what he had previously thought. As the weeks pass, what began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.]]> 304 James Rebanks 0241426952 Arnab 0 to-read 4.38 2024
author: James Rebanks
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/15
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]]> 18594406 A revelatory and groundbreaking book chronicling the complexity of modern-day China from the perspective of its border regions.

In 1949, Mao Zedong announced the birth of the People’s Republic of China, a proclamation to the world that, after centuries of war and social conflict, China had emerged as one nation. Since then, this idea has been constantly propagated for the benefit of the international community. For many living in the vast country, however, the old Chinese adage holds true: “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.�

Few Westerners make it far beyond the major cities—the Chinese government has made it difficult to do so. David Eimer undertook a dangerous journey to China’s unexplored frontiers (it borders on fourteen other countries), to the outer reaches where Beijing's power has little influence. His chronicle shines new light on the world’s most populous nation, showing clearly that China remains in many ways a divided state. Traveling through the Islamic areas of Xinjiang province, into the forbidden zone of Tibet and across Route 219, which runs the rough boundary shared with India, the only disputed frontier in China, Eimer exposes the country’s inner conflict. All the tensions in China today—from its war against drugs and terrorism and the unstable relationships it maintains with Russia and Korea to its internal social issues—take on new meaning when seen from China’s most remote corners. A brilliant melding of journalism and history, The Emperor Far Away is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary China.]]> 336 David Eimer 1620403633 Arnab 4 3.93 2014
author: David Eimer
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> 205363955 Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life � one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism�. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind� or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.]]> 208 Oliver Burkeman 0374611998 Arnab 0 to-read 4.26 2024
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/04
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]]> 205313047 From the UK’s ‘statistical national treasure�, a clever and data-driven guide to how we can live with risk and uncertainty

Life is uncertain. We are all the result of an unforeseen and unforeseeable sequence of small occurrences. But what underlies this fragile chain of events? Is it random or just complex? And what role does luck play in our lives?

David Spiegelhalter has spent his career crunching data in order to help understand uncertainty and assess the chances of what might happen. In The Art of Uncertainty, he gives readers a window onto how we can all do this better.

Uncertainty, he argues, is a relationship between the observer and an object in the outside world. He shows us how we can express it numerically, and then update our beliefs about the future in the face of constantly changing experience. In crystal-clear prose, he takes us through the principles of probability, a field that informs everything from annuities to pandemics and climate change, while also examining the limitations of statistical modelling and arguing we need to have the humility to admit our ignorance.

Drawing on a wide range of real-world examples, this is an essential guide to navigating uncertainty in a world that makes it inevitable.]]> 482 David Spiegelhalter 0241658640 Arnab 0 to-read 3.97 2024
author: David Spiegelhalter
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/04
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]]> 1707244 Take a walk down Sarajevo's Logavina Street with Barbara Demick, author of the prize-winning Nothing to Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Demick spent muchÌý of 1993 through 1995 on one street in the Bosnian capital with a front-row seat as a country was torn apart by ethnic warfare and a modern city was held under siege. She watched and recorded as neighbors, Muslim, Serb and Croat, tried to keep their society intact against the forces of intolerance. In Logavina Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, meet a teenager whose parents were killed by a mortar shell in front of her, a dentist debating whether to emigrate to America, a besotted husband separated from his wife by war, obsessing about her lipstick color. Demick's coverage of the Bosnian war won the Robert F. Kennedy awardÌý for international reporting, the Polk award for international reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer.]]> 182 Barbara Demick 0836213262 Arnab 0 to-read 4.26 1996
author: Barbara Demick
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 62039294
But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same-the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost broth­ers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone.

Close to Home begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.]]> 288 Michael Magee 0374608326 Arnab 5 4.05 2023
author: Michael Magee
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
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]]> 7141642
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?�

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.]]> 479 David Mitchell 1400065453 Arnab 0 to-read 4.01 2010
author: David Mitchell
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> 51025650
In an attempt to capture this vast issue, Andri Snær Magnason takes both a personal and a scientific approach―weaving his way through climate science via ancient legends about sacred cows, stories of ancestors and relatives, and interviews with the Dalai Lama. The resulting narrative is at once a travel story, a world history, and a reminder to live in harmony with future generations.]]> 329 Andri Snær Magnason 194883023X Arnab 0 to-read 4.27 2019
author: Andri Snær Magnason
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 564979 256 Nancy Mitford 0060129883 Arnab 2 3.85 1966
author: Nancy Mitford
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1966
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> 195037194 How our biases cause us to fall for misinformation—and how to combat it.

Our lives are minefields of misinformation. It ripples through our social media feeds, our daily headlines, and the pronouncements of politicians, executives, and authors. Stories, statistics, and studies are everywhere, allowing people to find evidence to support whatever position they want. Many of these sources are flawed, yet by playing on our emotions and preying on our biases, they can gain widespread acceptance, warp our views, and distort our decisions.

In this eye-opening book, renowned economist Alex Edmans teaches us how to separate fact from fiction. Using colorful examples—from a wellness guru’s tragic but fabricated backstory to the blunders that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the diet that ensnared millions yet hastened its founder’s death—Edmans highlights the biases that cause us to mistake statements for facts, facts for data, data for evidence, and evidence for proof.

Armed with the knowledge of what to guard against, he then provides a practical guide to combat this tide of misinformation. Going beyond simply checking the facts and explaining individual statistics, Edmans explores the relationships between statistics—the science of cause and effect—ultimately training us to think smarter, sharper, and more critically. May Contain Lies is an essential read for anyone who wants to make better sense of the world and better decisions.]]> 322 Alex Edmans 0241630177 Arnab 4 4.11 2024
author: Alex Edmans
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> 101921 749 Hilary Mantel 0312426399 Arnab 5 3.98 1992
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/17
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]]> 77287 Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece]]> 482 Halldór Laxness 0679767924 Arnab 0 to-read 4.13 1934
author: Halldór Laxness
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 773971 Ìý
Praise for The Fight
Ìý
“Exquisitely refined and attenuated . . . [a] sensitive portrait of an extraordinary athlete and man, and a pugilistic drama fully as exciting as the reality on which it is based.� � The New York Times
Ìý
“One of the defining texts of sports journalism. Not only does Mailer recall the violent combat with a scholar’s eye . . . he also makes the whole act of reporting seem as exciting as what’s occurring in the ring.� � GQ
Ìý
“Stylistically, Mailer was the greatest boxing writer of all time.� —Chuck Klosterman, Esquire
Ìý
“One of Mailer’s finest books.� —Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Ìý
Praise for Norman Mailer
Ìý
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.� � The New York Times
Ìý
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.� � The New Yorker
Ìý
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.� � The Washington Post
Ìý
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.� � Life
Ìý
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.� � The New York Review of Books
Ìý
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.� � Chicago Tribune
Ìý
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.� � The Cincinnati Post]]> 234 Norman Mailer 0375700382 Arnab 3 4.05 1975
author: Norman Mailer
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
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]]> 33877608
Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight?

Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.]]> 325 Barbara Demick 0812998758 Arnab 4 4.14 2020
author: Barbara Demick
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
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]]> 202618021
After years of their secret affair, they stepped out together on top of the world, full of delight in one another and in the future they imagined. Or was it only Dan who imagined it, really? He never had the chance to find out, because a few days into their adventure a single phone call changed everything.

Now, at the height of summer, with only a rucksack, a few pages of DH Lawrence that had been Julia’s, and his private strata of memory and forgetting, Dan is back on the trail. Step by step, with a tumult of emotions jostling with the demands of the dramatic Alpine landscape, he reckons with what his life is and what it might have been, had he been a different man with different choices.]]> 214 Tim Parks 1529930316 Arnab 0 to-read 3.77
author: Tim Parks
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> 1127087 This sad tale of love gone south still has its funny side. You have either to laugh or cry when you see, as acutely and elegantly as St John captures it here, the things women will do to hold on to love, and the things men will do to escape it.
"St John's intelligence transforms a simple story into a much larger commentary on love and loss." - Mademoiselle
"The Essence of the Thing grabs the reader's sympathy and attention from the startling first pages and doesn't let go." - Newsday
"A brisk, sophisticated, and artful narrative" - New York Times Book Review]]> 240 Madeleine St. John 0786706791 Arnab 0 to-read 3.45 1997
author: Madeleine St. John
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 258571 336 Paul Bailey 0140100156 Arnab 0 to-read 4.09 1986
author: Paul Bailey
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36004 204 Anita Desai 0140238131 Arnab 0 to-read 3.37 1984
author: Anita Desai
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
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]]> 1209186 Flying to Nowhere awakens our secret hopes and fears and our need to believe in miracles.]]> 89 John Fuller 0907540279 Arnab 0 to-read 3.41 1983
author: John Fuller
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 80607 240 Brian Moore 0586087397 Arnab 0 to-read 3.74 1976
author: Brian Moore
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 75665931 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 Benjamín Labatut 0593654471 Arnab 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54735156
A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.

The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand; from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of morals.]]> 640 Elizabeth Knox 0593296737 Arnab 3 3.03 2019
author: Elizabeth Knox
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
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]]> 209050020 352 Donald Rayfield 1789149096 Arnab 0 to-read 4.18
author: Donald Rayfield
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36348067 Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son.

By turns heartbreaking and fiercely inventive, Half Gods reveals with sharp clarity the ways that parents, children, and friends act as unknowing mirrors to each other, revealing in their all-too human weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows a connection to the divine.]]> 208 Akil Kumarasamy 0374167672 Arnab 0 to-read 3.86 2018
author: Akil Kumarasamy
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 17886196 240 Neamat Imam 0670086657 Arnab 0 to-read 3.53 2013
author: Neamat Imam
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13337715
Tyrion Lannister, having killed his father, and wrongfully accused of killing his nephew, King Joffrey, has escaped from King’s Landing with a price on his head.

To the north lies the great Wall of ice and stone � a structure only as strong as those guarding it. Eddard Stark's bastard son Jon Snow has been elected 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. But Jon has enemies both inside and beyond the Wall.

And in the east Daenerys Targaryen struggles to hold a city built on dreams and dust.]]> 690 George R.R. Martin Arnab 5 4.33 2011
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2013/06/29
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 9844 Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 420 Curtis Sittenfeld 081297235X Arnab 0 to-read 3.44 2005
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 90988
Under the column headed 'Aggravation' for offences received from society (unpleasantness of Bank Manager; general diminution of life caused by advertising), debit Christie; under 'Recompense' for offences given back to society (general removal of items of stationery; Pork Pie Purveyors Ltd. bomb hoax), credit Christie. All accounts are to be settled in full, and they are - in the most alarming way.

B.S. Johnson was one of Britain's most original writers and Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is his funniest book.]]> 187 B.S. Johnson 0330484826 Arnab 0 to-read 4.06 1973
author: B.S. Johnson
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/27
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]]> 41017647 A thriller of war that never was—of survival in an impossible city—of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new.

“Beauty will be convulsive. . . .�

1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseilles, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever.

1950. A lone Surrealist fighter, Thibault, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Résistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and the Exquisite Corpse.

But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties—to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself.]]> 209 China Miéville 0345544005 Arnab 3 3.52 2016
author: China Miéville
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
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]]> 16118280 209 Arkady Strugatsky 0575093137 Arnab 0 to-read 3.97 1972
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 33549 201 Richard Matheson 0575074639 Arnab 3 3.82 1956
author: Richard Matheson
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
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]]> 174943528 369 Charles Beaumont 1804364797 Arnab 0 to-read 4.12
author: Charles Beaumont
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 201751505 DECEPTION IS A FINE ART.

When Orlando Whitfield first meets Inigo Philbrick, they are students dreaming of dealing art for a living. Their friendship lasts for fifteen years until one day, Inigo - by then the most successful dealer of his generation - disappears, accused of a fraud so gigantic and audacious it rocks the art world to its core.

A sparklingly sharp memoir of greed, ambition and madness, All That Glitters will take you to the heart of the contemporary art world, a place wilder and wealthier than you could ever imagine.]]> 336 Orlando Whitfield 0593316746 Arnab 0 to-read 3.58 2024
author: Orlando Whitfield
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 34728667 They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.]]> 544 Tomi Adeyemi 1250170974 Arnab 0 to-read 4.10 2018
author: Tomi Adeyemi
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> 13587149 Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out, and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every 40 to 60 years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style, and focusing on key events and personalities, "Games without Rules" provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.
]]> 397 Tamim Ansary 1610390946 Arnab 0 to-read 4.38 2012
author: Tamim Ansary
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 55339408 From the bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow and the co-author of Nudge, a groundbreaking exploration of why most people make bad judgments, and how to control for that noise.�

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients � or that two judges in the same courthouse give different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different food inspectors give different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants � or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to be handling the particular complaint. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, or the same company official makes different decisions, depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.
Ìý
In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony show how noise contributes significantly to errors in all fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, police behavior, food safety, bail, security checks at airports, strategy, and personnel selection. And although noise can be found wherever people make judgments and decisions, individuals and organizations alike are commonly oblivious to the role of chance in their judgments and in their actions.
Ìý
Drawing on the latest findings in psychology and behavioral economics, and the same kind of diligent, insightful research that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment � and what we can do about it.
Ìý]]> 454 Daniel Kahneman 0316451401 Arnab 0 currently-reading 3.64 2021
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 16286 The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire. The friendship soon evolves into a deadly game, in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas finds that he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival.]]> 656 John Fowles 0316296198 Arnab 0 to-read 4.06 1965
author: John Fowles
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 48595115
Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends trying to find their place in the world. It is about the uncelebrated people of this world. And it asks a surprisingly enthralling question: Can kind people change the world?]]> 252 Ronan Hession 161219849X Arnab 5 4.14 2019
author: Ronan Hession
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> 201423341
Except, underneath the surface, not much has changed at all. He's still the boy seeking his father's approval; the young man playing late-night poker with his best friend, unreliable, infuriating Ben Mossam; the one still desperately in love with the enigmatic Lia.

Lia's life, on the other hand, has been transformed: now a single mum to two-year-old Joel, she doesn't have time for anyone - not even herself.

When the unthinkable happens, Joel finds himself at the centre of a strange constellation of men - Téo, Vic, Ben - none of whom is fully equipped to look after him, but whose strange, tentative attempts at love might just be enough to offer him a new place to call home.]]> 320 Tom Lamont 1399727524 Arnab 0 to-read 4.04 2024
author: Tom Lamont
name: Arnab
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> 147120 In this acclaimed novel, Dan Rhodes, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, has created a tragicomic work of macabre beauty that both amuses and moves in equal measure.]]> 226 Dan Rhodes 0156029952 Arnab 0 to-read 3.56 2003
author: Dan Rhodes
name: Arnab
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
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]]>