Rob's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:02:53 -0700 60 Rob's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Malas 198562549 A story full of passion and revenge, following one family living on the Texas Mexico border and a curse that reverberates across generations--"Fuentes has achieved something rare and indelible with this story of complex women.� (Erika L. Sánchez)

In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguierre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family.

More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives on the alone and shunned on the edge of town.

Their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu’s family’s past. As the quinceañera looms—and we move between these two strong, irascible female voices—one woman must make peace with the past, and one girl pushes to embrace her future.

Rich with cinematic details—from dusty rodeos to the excitement of a Selena concert and the comfort of conjunto ballads played at family gatherings—this memorable debut is a love letter to the Tejano culture and community that sustain both of these women as they discover what family means.]]> 381 Marcela Fuentes 0593655796 Rob 0 currently-reading 4.01 2024 Malas
author: Marcela Fuentes
name: Rob
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Dictionary of Symbols (Occult)]]> 21488573 514 Juan Eduardo Cirlot 0486132668 Rob 5 3.96 1958 A Dictionary of Symbols (Occult)
author: Juan Eduardo Cirlot
name: Rob
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:

]]> I Was a Teenage Slasher 199897851 From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.]]> 384 Stephen Graham Jones Rob 0 currently-reading 3.58 2024 I Was a Teenage Slasher
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Rob
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories]]> 418836 212 Washington Irving 1420924982 Rob 3 3.71 1820 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories
author: Washington Irving
name: Rob
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1820
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
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]]> Avenue of Mysteries 25399932 John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory.In Avenue of Mysteries, Juan Diego—a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico—has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what’s coming—specifically, her own future and her brother’s. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn’t know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you. Lupe doesn’t know the future as accurately. But consider what a terrible burden it is, if you believe you know the future—especially your own future, or, even worse, the future of someone you love. What might a thirteen-year-old girl be driven to do, if she thought she could change the future? As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. As we grow older—most of all, in what we remember and what we dream—we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present. Avenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past—in Mexico—collides with his future.]]> 481 John Irving 1451664184 Rob 0 to-read 3.60 2015 Avenue of Mysteries
author: John Irving
name: Rob
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hobbit, or There and Back Again]]> 437049
"If you care for journeys there and back, out of the comfortable Western world, over the edge of the Wild, and home again, and can take an interest in a humble hero (blessed with a little wisdom and a little courage and considerable good luck), here is a record of such a journey and such a traveler. The period is the ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men, when the famous forest of Mirkwood was still standing, and the mountains were full of danger. In following the path of this humble adventurer, you will learn by the way (as he did) - if you do not already know all about these things - much about trolls, goblins, dwarves, and elves, and get some glimpses into the history and politics of a neglected but important period."

"For Mr. Bilbo Baggins visited various notable persons; conversed with the dragon, Smaug the Magnificent; and was present, rather unwillingly, at the Battle of the Five Armies. This is all the more remarkable, since he was a hobbit. Hobbits have hitherto been passed over in history and legend, perhaps because they as a rule preferred comfort to excitement. But this account, based on his personal memoirs, of the one exciting year in the otherwise quiet life of Mr. Baggins will give you a fair idea of the estimable people now (it is said) becoming rather rare. They do not like noise."

Description from back cover]]> 275 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618002219 Rob 5 4.36 1937 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Rob
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1937
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films]]> 60191563 214 Rob E. King 1476682089 Rob 0 to-read 0.0 David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films
author: Rob E. King
name: Rob
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle]]> 60881633
Unlike the much more famous nuclear-weapons-production sites at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Rocky Flats, the Pantex plant has drawn little attention, hidden under a metaphoric "cap of invisibility." Lucie Genay now lifts that invisibility cap to give the world its first in-depth look at Pantex and the people who have spent their lives as neighbors and employees of this secretive industry. The book investigates how Pantex has impacted local identity by molding elements of the past into the guaranty of its future and its concealment. It further examines the multiple facets of Pantexism through the voices of native and adoptive Panhandlers.]]> 304 Lucie Genay 0826364225 Rob 0 3.50 Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle
author: Lucie Genay
name: Rob
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/23
date added: 2023/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia, #2)]]> 317501 The four Pevensies help Caspian battle Miraz and ascend his rightful throne.

NARNIA... the land between the lamp-post and the castle of Cair Paravel, where animals talk, where magical things happen... and where the adventure begins.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are returning to boarding school when they are summoned from the dreary train station (by Susan's own magic horn) to return to the land of Narnia—the land where they had ruled as kings and queens and where their help is desperately needed.]]> 216 C.S. Lewis 0020442408 Rob 4 youth 3.94 1951 Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia, #2)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Rob
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/07/29
shelves: youth
review:

]]> Collected Stories 11891 912 John Cheever 0099748304 Rob 5 4.30 1978 Collected Stories
author: John Cheever
name: Rob
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/07/29
shelves: my-canon, short-story-works-of-genius
review:

]]> Complete Tales and Poems 262478 1027 Edgar Allan Poe 0394716787 Rob 4 my-canon 4.38 1849 Complete Tales and Poems
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Rob
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1849
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/05/11
shelves: my-canon
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States]]> 40121985 A pathbreaking history of the United States' overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire," exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories--the islands, atolls, and archipelagos--this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of space. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.]]> 513 Daniel Immerwahr 0374172145 Rob 0 to-read 4.46 2019 How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
author: Daniel Immerwahr
name: Rob
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World]]> 42863110 The shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our privacy, our freedom, and even democracy itself.Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone.With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns.Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.]]> 251 Joseph Menn 1541762371 Rob 0 to-read 3.90 2019 Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
author: Joseph Menn
name: Rob
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Scapegoat 53317481 A mesmerizing postmodern debut novel, The Scapegoatis a propulsive and destabilizing literary mystery that follows a man at a university in the San Francisco Bay area as he investigates his father's death

N is employed at a prestigious California university, where he has distinguished himself as an aloof and somewhat eccentric presence. His meticulous, ordered life is violently disrupted by the death of his estranged father--unanticipated and, as it increasingly seems to N, surrounded by murky circumstances. His investigation leads him to a hotel built over a former Spanish mission, a site with a dark power and secrets all its own. On campus, a chance meeting with a young doctor provokes uncomfortable feelings on the direction of his life, and N begins to have vivid, almost hallucinatory daydreams about the year he spent in Ottawa, and a shameful episode from his past.

Meanwhile, a shadowy group of fringe academics surfaces in relation to his father's death. Their preoccupation with a grim chapter in California's history runs like a surreal parallel to the staid world of academic life, where N's relations with his colleagues grow more and more hostile. As he comes closer to the heart of the mystery, his ability to distinguish between delusion and reality begins to erode, and he is forced to confront disturbing truths about himself: his irrational antagonism toward a young female graduate student, certain libidinal impulses, and a capacity for violence. Is he the author of his own investigation? Or is he the unwitting puppet of a larger conspiracy?

With this inventive, devilish debut, saturated with unexpected wit and romanticism, Sara Davis probes the borders between reality and delusion, intimacy and solitude, revenge and justice. The Scapegoat exposes the surreal lingering behind the mundane, the forgotten history underfoot, and the insanity just around the corner.]]> 224 Sara Davis 0374181454 Rob 0 to-read 3.08 2021 The Scapegoat
author: Sara Davis
name: Rob
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Outlawed 50997696 In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.

She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.]]> 261 Anna North Rob 0 to-read 3.47 2021 Outlawed
author: Anna North
name: Rob
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema]]> 56329371 217 Robert Arnett 3030436675 Rob 4 4.25 Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema
author: Robert Arnett
name: Rob
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/03
date added: 2021/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Moonlighting: An Oral History 55161500 288 Scott Ryan 1949024261 Rob 0 to-read 4.07 Moonlighting: An Oral History
author: Scott Ryan
name: Rob
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Without Warning 2689325 0 Fern Michaels 067183651X Rob 0 to-read 4.03 1981 Without Warning
author: Fern Michaels
name: Rob
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit]]> 53369489
An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capitol of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater).

The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar, where conversations are actually being read from multiple karaoke screens arrayed around the barroom. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite," when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters.

Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit is a book about the deep pleasures of reading and drinking, the tumultuous reign of a cabal of mystic mobsters, and, of course, the transcendent love of a father for his daughter.]]> 288 Mark Leyner 0316560502 Rob 0 to-read 3.47 2021 Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit
author: Mark Leyner
name: Rob
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Lord Peter Wimsey, #5)]]> 192887 243 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043540 Rob 3 4.05 1928 The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Lord Peter Wimsey, #5)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Rob
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1928
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/07
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Truly Like Lightning 53317497 From the New York Times–bestselling author David Duchovny, an epic adventure that asks how we make sense of right and wrong in a world of extremes

For the past twenty years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and ten children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary, and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence—controversial, difficult, but Edenic—is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.

Maya, threatening to report the family to social services, convinces them to enter three of their children into a nearby public school. Bronson and his wives agree that if Maya can prove that the kids do better in town than in their desert oasis, they will sell her a chunk of their priceless plot of land. Suddenly confronted with all the complications of the twenty-first century that they tried to keep out of their lives, the Powerses must reckon with their lifestyle as they try to save it.

Truly Like Lightning, David Duchovny’s fourth novel, is a heartbreaking meditation on family, religion, sex, greed, human nature, and the vanishing environment of an ancient desert.]]> 445 David Duchovny 0374277745 Rob 0 to-read 3.81 2021 Truly Like Lightning
author: David Duchovny
name: Rob
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War]]> 2973596 138 Mary Borden 1843914433 Rob 3 4.12 1929 The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War
author: Mary Borden
name: Rob
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1929
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/18
date added: 2020/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Rob 3 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Rob
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/09
date added: 2020/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 55205410 213 Agatha Christie Rob 4 4.37 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
author: Agatha Christie
name: Rob
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1926
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/26
date added: 2020/10/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Ulysses 331597
William Blake saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Considered the greatest 20th century novel written in English, in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text.]]> 657 James Joyce 0394743121 Rob 5 4.26 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: Rob
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1922
rating: 5
read at: 2020/10/20
date added: 2020/10/20
shelves: my-canon, personally-required, tomes
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age (Postwestern Horizons)]]> 3630013
Ěý

Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, Neil Campbell shows how the West (or west-ness) continually breaks away from a mainstream notion of American “rootedness� and renews and transforms itself in various cultural forms. A region long traversed by various transient peoples (from tribes and conquerors to immigrants, traders, and trappers), the West reflects a mythic quest for settlement, permanence, and synthesis—even notions of a national or global identity—at odds with its rootless history, culture, and nature. Crossing the concept of “roots� with “routes,� this book shows how notions of the West—in representations ranging from literature and film to photography, music, and architectural theory—give expression to ideas about identity, nationhood, and belonging in a world increasingly defined by movement across time and borders. The Rhizomatic West offers a new vision of the American West as a hybrid, performative space, a staging place for myriad intersecting and constantly changing identities.]]> 392 Neil Campbell 0803215398 Rob 0 to-read 4.11 2008 The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age (Postwestern Horizons)
author: Neil Campbell
name: Rob
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]> 159973
Here, at last, a finely sensitive translation gives us the poem itself, not just a translator's impression, for Miss Borroff's translation successfully preserves the formulaic character of the language, reflects the diction of the original poem, and reproduces the metrical variety of the original and the cumulative momentum or "swing".

In her Introduction, Miss Borroff places the work in its historical context, succinctly outlining the rich literary tradition surrounding Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and delineating the "alliterative long line" of the poem.]]> 62 Unknown 0393097544 Rob 4 my-canon 3.75 1375 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
author: Unknown
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1375
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/09/27
shelves: my-canon
review:

]]> Women in Love 9784 Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War, and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire.

Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke. Quintessentially modernist, Women in Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works.]]> 416 D.H. Lawrence 0486424588 Rob 3 3.68 1920 Women in Love
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Rob
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1920
rating: 3
read at: 2020/09/21
date added: 2020/09/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories]]> 50403463 Virtuosic stories by one of “the more interesting and ambitious prose stylists of our time� (Los Angeles Times)

In this madcap, insatiably inventive, bravura story collection, Julián Herbert brings to vivid life people who struggle to retain a measure of sanity in an insane world. Here we become acquainted with a vengeful “personal memories coach� who tries to get even with his delinquent clients; a former journalist with a cocaine habit who travels through northern Mexico impersonating a famous author of Westerns; the ghost of Juan Rulfo; a man who discovers music in his teeth; and, in the deliriously pulpy title story, a drug lord who looks just like Quentin Tarantino, who kidnaps a mopey film critic to discuss Tarantino’s films while he sends his goons to find and kill the doppelgänger that has colonized his consciousness. Herbert’s astute observations about human nature in extremis feel like the reader’s own revelations.

The antic and dire stories in Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino depict the violence and corruption that plague Mexico today, but they are also deeply ruminative and layered explorations of the narrative impulse and the ethics of art making. Herbert asks: Where are the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person (and a country) take? The stories in this explosive collection showcase the fevered imagination of a significant contemporary writer.

The ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta --
M.L. EstefanĂ­a --
White paper --
NEETS --
The Roman wedding --
There where we stood --
Caries --
The dog's head --
Z --
Bring me the head of Quentin Tarantino]]> 176 Julián Herbert 1644450410 Rob 0 to-read 3.64 2017 Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories
author: Julián Herbert
name: Rob
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lolly Willowes 937105 Ěý
But it’s in the countryside, among nature, where Lolly has her first taste of freedom. Duty-bound to no one except herself, she revels in the solitary life. When her nephew moves there, and Lolly feels once again thrust into her old familial role, she reaches out to the otherworldly, to the darkness, to the unheeded power within the hearts of women to feel at peace once moreĚý.Ěý.Ěý.]]> 222 Sylvia Townsend Warner 0940322161 Rob 3 3.75 1926 Lolly Willowes
author: Sylvia Townsend Warner
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1926
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/29
date added: 2020/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Life Events 51542296 A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die

What if Evelyn's whole life has been a mistake? At 37, she's on the verge of divorce and anxiously awaiting everyone she loves dying on her. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and wandering the freeways of California looking for an escape before discovering a collective of exit guides. Evelyn enrolls in training courses where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients looking for a conscious departure.

She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die, and whom she can't help but fall for. Each client allows her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reckon with her life choices.

Life Events is about planning your next phase when you see your past as a failure and your future as an impossible obligation. Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Karolina Waclawiak's breakout novel follows a woman searching for answers and intimacy while facing profound questions about how we live and die today.]]> 288 Karolina Waclawiak 0374186952 Rob 0 to-read 3.75 2020 Life Events
author: Karolina Waclawiak
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Cold Millions 50358038
The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.


Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?


An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, it is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors� (Boston Globe]]> 342 Jess Walter 006286808X Rob 0 to-read 3.89 2020 The Cold Millions
author: Jess Walter
name: Rob
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Arrest 51179946 From the award-winning author of The Feral DetectiveĚýand Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-apocalyptic yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted—cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters—quits working. . . .Ěý

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A.ĚýAn old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt.Ěý

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was.ĚýSandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way.ĚýPlopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza?ĚýWhatever he's up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.Ěý

Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread,ĚýThe ArrestĚýis speculative fiction at its absolute finest.]]> 307 Jonathan Lethem 0062938789 Rob 0 to-read 3.07 2020 The Arrest
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Rob
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard]]> 52591373
You may not know the name Robert E. Howard, but you probably know his work. His most famous creation, Conan the Barbarian, is an icon of popular culture. In hundreds of tales detailing the exploits of Conan, King Kull, and others, Howard helped to invent the sword and sorcery genre.

Todd B. Vick delves into newly available archives and probes Howard's relationships, particularly with school teacher Novalyne Price, to bring a fresh, objective perspective to Howard's life. Like his many characters, Howard was an enigma and an outsider. He spent his formative years visiting the four corners of Texas, experiences that left a mark on his stories. He was intensely devoted to his mother, whom he nursed in her final days, and whose impending death contributed to his suicide in 1936 when he was just thirty years old.

Renegades and Rogues is an unequivocal journalistic account that situates Howard within the broader context of pulp literature. More than a realistic fantasist, he wrote westerns and horror stories as well, and engaged in avid correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft and other pulp writers of his day. Vick investigates Howard's twelve-year writing career, analyzes the influences that underlay his celebrated characters, and assesses the afterlife of Conan, the figure in whom Howard's fervent imagination achieved its most durable expression.]]> 266 Todd B. Vick 1477321950 Rob 0 to-read 4.14 2021 Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard
author: Todd B. Vick
name: Rob
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry]]> 42507102 344 Lucie Genay 0826360130 Rob 4 4.67 Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry
author: Lucie Genay
name: Rob
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/05/11
date added: 2020/05/11
shelves:
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]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Rob 0 to-read 3.69 2020 The Only Good Indians
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Rob
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conversations With Mark Frost: Twin Peaks, Hill Street Blues, and the Education of a Writer]]> 50163546 Twin PeaksĚýandĚýThe Return, is often lost in the shadow of cocreator David Lynch in the eyes of critics and scholars. In fact, Frost played at least as crucial a role in developing the narrative, mythology, and aesthetic of those groundbreaking, critically revered series.ĚýConversations with Mark FrostĚýdeconstructs that legendary partnership, while at the same time exploring Frost’s values, influences, thematic preoccupations, and approach to creating art—for the screen, the stage, and the printed page—as well as his thoughts on a wide variety of political, artistic, and social topics. Included, for example, are Frost's recollections of a bizarre encounter with Warren Beatty and Donald Trump in the mideighties, his days as a production assistant onĚýMister Roger's Neighborhood,Ěýhis experiences working alongside the likes of David Milch in the legendarily competitive writers' room atĚýHill Street Blues,Ěýconversations about alien life and time travel with iconic film director Steven Spielberg, and much, much more.
Ěý]]> 296 David Bushman 1949024105 Rob 0 to-read 4.10 Conversations With Mark Frost: Twin Peaks, Hill Street Blues, and the Education of a Writer
author: David Bushman
name: Rob
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Screwtape Letters 480236 209 C.S. Lewis Rob 5 my-canon 4.21 1942 The Screwtape Letters
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Rob
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/12/22
shelves: my-canon
review:

]]> <![CDATA[IN DREAMS: A Unified Interpretation of Twin Peaks & Other Selected Works of David Lynch]]> 46009157
But what if the recurrence wasn’t an aesthetic decision? What if, rather, it was a narrative one? What if, instead of being mere elements that Lynch revisits, these were links between his separate works, forming � when viewed from a certain perspective � a mega-narrative near-50 years in the telling?

That’s the insane supposition behind IN DREAMS, which takes six feature films, two television series, one short film, four paintings and four novels, all from or related to the oeuvre of David Lynch, and analyses them through the perspective that they are, in fact, separate chapters in the same story, the greatest story never told, and the underground magnum opus of America’s most accomplished absurdist auteur.
]]> 522 H. Perry Horton Rob 0 4.30 IN DREAMS: A Unified Interpretation of Twin Peaks & Other Selected Works of David Lynch
author: H. Perry Horton
name: Rob
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2019/07/23
date added: 2019/07/23
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]]> The Harder They Come 23215481
Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people—an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son's paranoid, much older lover—as they careen towards an explosive confrontation.

On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, seventy-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal—only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control.

Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens� Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state, considering them to be false and non-applicable. Adam’s senior by some fifteen years, Sara becomes his protector and inamorata. As Adam's mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic—a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history.

As he explores a father’s legacy of violence and his powerlessness in relating to his equally violent son, T. C. Boyle offers unparalleled psychological insights into the American psyche. Inspired by a true story, The Harder They Come is a devastating and indelible novel from a modern master.]]> 384 T. Coraghessan Boyle 0062390716 Rob 0 abandoned, to-read 3.58 2015 The Harder They Come
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Rob
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/17
shelves: abandoned, to-read
review:

]]> A Skeleton Key to Twin Peaks 45311384 289 JB Minton 1732639108 Rob 4 I would say that the textual portions of the book are accessible to all audiences, though I suspect this book's audience is comprised of serious fandom. The author does include his own perspectives on the material but in a manner that welcomes counter-arguments. Fans and researchers of the series will be most impressed with his extraordinary analytical approaches and inclusion of colorful graphics and charts. Anyone taking academic approaches to their Twin Peaks research would find this book's organization extremely helpful and add a quantitative element to their findings. ]]> 4.50 A Skeleton Key to Twin Peaks
author: JB Minton
name: Rob
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/07/13
shelves:
review:
There are many books on Twin Peaks, some are a part of the transmedia narrative and then there are the analysis books and guides. J.B. Minton's book brings a unique approach to some of the staples, such as Thorne's "Essential Wrapped in Plastic" and Bushman and Smith's "Twin Peaks FAQ." As a single-author book, Minton has provided a balance that includes data-driven graphics and breakdowns of the third season of Twin Peaks. Those previously mentioned titles are focused on seasons one and two as well as "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," making this a welcome edition to complete the narrative.
I would say that the textual portions of the book are accessible to all audiences, though I suspect this book's audience is comprised of serious fandom. The author does include his own perspectives on the material but in a manner that welcomes counter-arguments. Fans and researchers of the series will be most impressed with his extraordinary analytical approaches and inclusion of colorful graphics and charts. Anyone taking academic approaches to their Twin Peaks research would find this book's organization extremely helpful and add a quantitative element to their findings.
]]> Doxology 41088575
On September 11, 2001, the city’s unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Flora’s family will have no choice but to look to the past—both to examine wounds that have never healed, and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten.

At once an elegiac takedown of today’s political climate and a touching invocation of humanity’s goodness, Doxology offers daring revelations about America’s past and possible future that could only come from Nell Zink, one of the sharpest novelists of our time.]]> 0 Nell Zink 006287781X Rob 0 to-read 3.46 2019 Doxology
author: Nell Zink
name: Rob
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present]]> 10530912 296 Robin R. Means Coleman 0415880203 Rob 5 4.35 2011 Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present
author: Robin R. Means Coleman
name: Rob
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2019/05/27
date added: 2019/05/27
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Raven and Other Favorite Poems]]> 269321
To --
--
("I saw thee on thy bridal day") --
Dreams --
Spirits of the dead --
Evening star --
A dream within a dream --
Stanzas --
A dream --
The happiest day, the happiest hour --
The lake : to --
--
Sonnet : to Science --
Romance --
To --
("The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see") --
To the River --
--
To --
("I heed not that my earthly lot") --
Fairy-land --
To Helen ("Helen, thy beauty is to me") --
Israfel --
The city in the sea --
The sleeper --
Lenore --
The valley of unrest --
The Coliseum --
To one in paradise --
To F--
--
Sonnet : to Zante --
The haunted palace --
Sonnet : silence --
The conqueror worm --
Dream-land --
The raven --
Eulalie : a song --
To M.L. S--
--
Ulalume --
To --
--
("Not long ago, the writer of these lines") --
To Helen ("I saw thee once, once only, years ago") --
Eldorado --
For Annie --
To my mother --
Annabel Lee --
The bells --
Alone.]]> 64 Edgar Allan Poe Rob 4 4.20 1845 The Raven and Other Favorite Poems
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Rob
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1845
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/02/14
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian (Volume 1)]]> 43198714
For ten years, from October 1970 when Roy and artist Barry Smith assembled the first issue of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, to October 1980 when Roy and artist John Buscema completed their last issue together on the series, Thomas wrote of Conan's gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth—as well as the wars, the wenches, and the wizardry that bedeviled the Cimmerian from one issue to the next.

In this first of two volumes, Roy Thomas explains the creative process behind the first 51 issues of Conan the Barbarian. You'll look over his shoulder as he plots and scripts each issue, devises new adventures for Conan that expand Howard's original stories into a world-spanning epic, and works with such Conan artists as Barry Smith, Gil Kane, and John Buscema.

Whether you’re a Conan fan or a comics fan, you'll enjoy this in-depth look at a Marvel comic-book classic.]]> 324 Roy Thomas Rob 5 4.11 Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian (Volume 1)
author: Roy Thomas
name: Rob
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/24
date added: 2019/01/24
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]]> The Spectators 40626949 A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel--a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle.

Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery--both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.

In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators--Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.

With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention--and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.]]> 352 Jennifer duBois 0812995880 Rob 0 to-read 3.38 2019 The Spectators
author: Jennifer duBois
name: Rob
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Afterland 37946417 Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues -- but a world run by women isn't always a better place.

Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie -- all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.

To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step . . . even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.

A sharply feminist, high-stakes thriller from award-winning author Lauren Beukes, Afterland brilliantly blends psychological suspense, American noir, and science fiction into an adventure all its own -- and perfect for our times.]]> 411 Lauren Beukes 031626783X Rob 0 to-read 3.21 2020 Afterland
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Rob
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lot 40749395 Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.

In the city of Houston—a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America—the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys.

This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston's myriad neighborhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman's affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

Lockwood --
Alief --
610 North, 610 West --
Shepherd --
Wayside --
Bayou --
Lot --
South Congress --
Navigation --
Peggy Park --
Fannin --
Waugh --
Elgin]]> 240 Bryan Washington 0525533672 Rob 0 to-read 3.75 2019 Lot
author: Bryan Washington
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Instructions for a Funeral: Stories]]> 40121975 "Poetic, insightful, and deeply moving. David Means is one of my very favorite writers." --Tara Westover, author of Educated

Following the publication of his widely acclaimed, Man Booker-nominated novel Hystopia, David Means here returns to his signature form: the short story. Thanks to his four previous story collections, Means has won himself an international reputation as one of the most innovative short fiction writers working today: an "established master of the form." (Laura Miller, The Guardian). Instructions for a Funeral--featuring work from The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review, and VICE--finds Means branching out beyond the explorations of violence and trauma with which he is often identified, prominently displaying his sly humor and his inimitable way of telling tales that deliciously wind up to punch the reader in the heart. With each story Means pushes into new territory, writing with tenderness and compassion about fatherhood, marriage, a homeless brother, the nature of addiction, and the death of a friend at the hands of a serial-killer nurse. Means transmutes a fistfight in Sacramento into a tender, life-long love story; two FBI agents on a stakeout in the 1920s into a tale of predator and prey, paternal urges and loss; a man's funeral instructions into a chronicle of organized crime, real estate ventures, and the destructive force of paranoia.

Means's work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, Sherwood Anderson, Denis Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver but his place in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.

Confessions --
Fistfight, Sacramento, August 1950 --
The chair --
The terminal artist --
Fatherhood: three --
Farewell, my brother --
The Mighty Shannon --
Instructions for a funeral --
El Morro --
The butler's lament --
The ice committee --
The tree line, Kansas, 1934 --
Carver & Cobain --
Two ruminations on a homeless brotherv]]> 208 David Means 0374279810 Rob 0 to-read 2.97 2019 Instructions for a Funeral: Stories
author: David Means
name: Rob
average rating: 2.97
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Feral Detective 37578865
The unlikely pair traverse California's stunning Inland Empire, navigating the enclaves of hippies and vagabonds who aim to live off the grid. They learn that these outcasts exist in warring tribes--the Rabbits and the Bears--and that Arabella is likely caught in the middle. As Phoebe tries to delicately extricate her, she realizes that Heist has a complicated history with these strange groups and that they're all in grave danger.

Jonathan Lethem's first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn delivers the same memorable delights: ecstatic wordplay, warm and deeply felt characters, and an offbeat sense of humor. Combined with a vision of California that is at once scruffy and magnificent, The Feral Detective emerges as a transporting, comic, and absolutely unforgettable novel.]]> 336 Jonathan Lethem 0062859080 Rob 0 abandoned 2.96 2018 The Feral Detective
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Rob
average rating: 2.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> Golden State 39599913
Laz is a resident of The Golden State, a nation resembling California, where like-minded Americans retreated after the erosion of truth and the spread of lies made public life, and governance, increasingly impossible. There, surrounded by the high walls of compulsory truth-telling, knowingly contradicting the truth--the Objectively So--is the greatest possible crime. Stopping those crimes, punishing them, is Laz's job. In its service, he is one of the few individuals permitted to harbor untruths--to "speculate" on what might have happened in the commission of a crime.

But the Golden State is far less a paradise than its name might suggest. To monitor, verify, and enforce the Objectively So requires a veritable panopticon of surveillance, recording, and record-keeping. And when those in control of the truth twist it for nefarious means, the Speculators may be the only ones with the power to fight back.]]> 323 Ben H. Winters 0316505412 Rob 0 to-read 3.44 2019 Golden State
author: Ben H. Winters
name: Rob
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)]]> 40524312
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.]]> 620 Marlon James 0735220174 Rob 0 to-read 3.42 2019 Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)
author: Marlon James
name: Rob
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Amnesia Moon 526601 247 Jonathan Lethem 0151000913 Rob 0 abandoned 3.54 1995 Amnesia Moon
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Rob
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2018/08/13
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> The Third Hotel 36348514
Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way.

Filled with subtle but striking meditations on grief, marriage, art, misogyny, and the loneliness of travel, The Third Hotel is a singular, propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.]]> 212 Laura van den Berg 0374168350 Rob 0 to-read 3.22 2018 The Third Hotel
author: Laura van den Berg
name: Rob
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border]]> 39027983 Seminal moments, rites of passage, crystalline vignettes--a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border.

The tradition of retablo painting dates back to the Spanish Conquest in both Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Humble ex-votos, retablos are usually painted on repurposed metal, and in one small tableau they tell the story of a crisis, and offer thanks for its successful resolution.

In this uniquely framed memoir, playwright Octavio Solis channels his youth in El Paso, Texas. Like traditional retablos, the rituals of childhood and rites of passage are remembered as singular, dramatic events, self-contained episodes with life-changing reverberations.

Living in a home just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, growing up among those who live there, and those passing through on their way North. From the first terrible self-awareness of racism to inspired afternoons playing air trumpet with Herb Alpert, from an innocent game of hide-and-seek to the discovery of a Mexican girl hiding in the cotton fields, Solis reflects on the moments of trauma and transformation that shaped him into a man.

Praise for Octavio Solis's Retablos

"Unpretentiously and with an unerring accuracy of tone and rhythm, Solis slowly builds what amounts to a storybook cathedral. We inhabit a border world rich in characters, lush with details, playful and poignant, a border that refutes the stereotypes and divisions smaller minds create. Solis reminds us that sometimes the most profound truths are best told with crafted fictions--and he is a master at it."--Julia Alvarez is the author of How the Garc�a Girls Lost Their Accents, /p>

"The murky flow of the Rio Grande River, the border patrol we call la migra, demons, a petty crime of stolen candy, street urchins, family squabbles, eccentric neighbors, and bike rides in which dust envelops a skinny kid named Octavio Solis. When he stops peddling years later, he'll spank the dust from his clothes, but not all of it. Some of it clings to his very soul, and will cling to us, the reader, in this tender and perceptive memoir. This is American and Mexican literature a stone's throw from the always hustling El Paso border."--Gary Soto, author of The Elements of San Joaquin

"Octavio Solis isn't a painter, but he ought to be. He's not a poet, but he could be. His isn't fiction or memoir but, like dreams, might be either. His vision of El Paso and the border is as though through an undulating haze of desert heat."--Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories

"Solis has written beautifully about his youth on the border, never flinching from his childish blunders, nor failing to find soul in the frailties of others. These stories soar and shimmer with poetry and a playwright's gift for dramatic compression, comedy and pathos running through them arm in arm. Retablos is deeply moving, and a joy."--Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen: A Novel

"To enter into this book is like walking into a shrine, walls lined with beautiful paintings, each one colorful and visceral, depicting memories, life on the border, death and sadness and joy. This is one of the most memorable books written about the borderlands in years"--
Daniel Chac�n, author of Hotel Ju�rez: Stories, Rooms and Loops

"The short-short format is often called flash fiction these days, but Octavio Solis' stories are more like slow fiction: a moment unfolds, revealing a life, a way of life, generations. He explores the borderlands, not just the streets of El Paso where he grew up, just across the Rio Grande from Mexico, but also those liminal zones between fiction and nonfiction, childhood and adulthood, and magic and melancholy. Small but mighty, these stories will stay with you long after the moment has passed."--Frances Lefkowitz, author of To Have Not: A Memoir

"A retablo is a devotional painting, playwright Octavio Solis tells us. In this poignantly written, heart-warming coming-of-age memoir, Solis pays tribute to those cornerstone moments in his life, negotiating borders at once personal and cultural, with such color that the reader is left spellbound. Astonishing, what more can I say?"--Greg Sarris, author of How a Mountain was Made: Stories]]> 168 Octavio Solis 0872867862 Rob 0 to-read 4.13 2018 Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
author: Octavio Solis
name: Rob
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lake Success 36739942 When his dream of the perfect marriage, the perfect son, and the perfect life implodes, a Wall Street millionaire takes a cross-country bus trip in search of his college sweetheart and ideals of youthĚýin the long-awaited novel, his first in seven years, from the acclaimed, bestselling author ofĚýSuper Sad True Love Story.
Ěý
Myopic, narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his 3 year-old-son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen or spoken to in years.

Meanwhile, reeling from the fight that caused Barry's departure, his super-smart wife Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved a picture-perfect life, with all the accoutrements of a huge bank account—has her own demons to face.

How these two imperfect characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is the heart of this biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.]]> 339 Gary Shteyngart 0812997417 Rob 0 to-read 3.56 2018 Lake Success
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Rob
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Room to Dream 35224286 Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced - sometimes successful, sometimes not - to bring his projects to fruition.

Part-memoir, part-biography, Room to Dream interweaves Lynch's own reflections on his life with the story of those times, as told by Kristine McKenna, drawing from extensive and explosive interviews with ninety of Lynch's friends, family members, actors, agents, musicians and collaborators. Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.]]> 496 David Lynch 1782118381 Rob 4 4.36 2018 Room to Dream
author: David Lynch
name: Rob
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2018/06/15
date added: 2018/06/15
shelves:
review:

]]> The Satanic Verses 4834 alternate covers for this ISBN can be found here.

Just before dawn one winter's morning a hijacked jumbo-jet blows apart high above the English Channel. Through the debris of limbs, drinks trolleys, memories, blankets and oxygen masks, two figures fall towards the sea without benefit of parachutes: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices, self-made self and Anglophile supreme. Clinging to each other, singing rival songs, they plunge downward, and are finally washed up, alive, on the snow-covered sands of an English beach. A miracle; but an ambiguous one, because it soon becomes apparent that curious changes are coming over them. Gibreel seems to have acquired a halo, while, to Saladin's dismay, his legs grow hairier, his feet turn into hoofs, and there are bumps burgeoning at his temples.

So begins The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie's first novel for five years.

Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen (by whom?) as protagonists in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But which is which? Can demons be angelic? Can angels be devils in disguise? As the two men tumble through their tale, through time as well as space, towards their final confrontation, we are witnesses to a cycle of extraordinary stories, tales of love and passion, of betrayal and faith: the story of Ayesha, the butterfly-shrouded visionary who leads an Indian village on an impossible pilgrimage; of Allie, the mountain-climber haunted by a ghost who urges her to attempt the ultimate feat � a solo ascent of Everest; of murders, metamorphoses and riots in a London "visible but unseen"; and, centrally, the story of Mahound, the Prophet of Jahilia, the city of sand � Mahound, the recipient of a revelation in which satanic verses mingle with divine.

In this great wheel of a book, where the past and the future chase each other furiously, Salman Rushdie takes us on an epic journey, a journey of tears and laughter, of wonderful stories and astonishing flights of the imagination, a journey towards the evil and the good that lie inseparably entwined within the hearts of women and of men.


--front flap]]> 549 Salman Rushdie 0670825379 Rob 5 3.66 1988 The Satanic Verses
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Rob
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/05/19
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review:

]]> Against the Day 409
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

About the Author:
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland and, most recently, Mason and Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.]]> 1085 Thomas Pynchon 159420120X Rob 3 4.01 2006 Against the Day
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Rob
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/05/16
shelves: tomes, personally-required, my-canon, to-read
review:

]]> Mrs. Fletcher 36373519 New York Times bestselling novel, Tom Perrotta, whom Time calls “the Steinbeck of suburbia,� delivers a penetrating and hilarious novel about sex, love, and identity on the frontlines of America’s culture wars.

Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when she gets a text message from an anonymous number: �U R my MILF!� Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. While serving as Executive Director of the local senior center by day and taking a community college course on Gender and Society at night, Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website called MILFateria.com, which features the erotic exploits of ordinary, middle-aged women like herself. Before long, Eve’s online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.

Meanwhile, miles away at the state college, Eve’s son Brendan discovers that his new campus isn’t nearly as welcoming to his hard-partying lifestyle as he had imagined. Only a few weeks into his freshman year, Brendan is floundering in a college environment that challenges his white-dude privilege and shames him for his outmoded, chauvinistic ideas of sex. As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in morally fraught situations that come to a head on one fateful November night.

“Tom Perrotta is a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America� (The New York Times Book Review). Sharp, witty, and provocative, Mrs. Fletcher is a gentle but piercing satire from “the Jane Austen of 21st century sexual mores� (New York Newsday) about the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong.]]> 320 Tom Perrotta 1501144030 Rob 0 to-read 3.43 2017 Mrs. Fletcher
author: Tom Perrotta
name: Rob
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Etidorhpa or The End of Earth (Illustrated)]]> 35565809 468 John Uri Lloyd Rob 0 to-read 0.0 1895 Etidorhpa or The End of Earth (Illustrated)
author: John Uri Lloyd
name: Rob
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Days of Awe: Stories 36795976
In A Prize for Every Player, a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in Hello Everybody and She Got Away, Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.

In the nearly three decades since her seminal debut collection The Safety of Objects, Homes has been celebrated by readers and critics alike as one of our boldest and most original writers, acclaimed for her psychological accuracy and "satire so close to the truth it's terrifying" (Ali Smith). Her first book since the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, Days of Awe is a major new addition to her body of visionary, fearless, outrageously funny work.

Brother on Sunday --
Whose story is it, and why is it always on her mind? --
Hello everybody --
All is good except for the rain --
National cage bird show --
Your mother was a fish --
Last good time --
Be mine --
A prize for every player --
Omega point --
She got away]]> 304 A.M. Homes 0670025496 Rob 0 to-read 3.42 2018 Days of Awe: Stories
author: A.M. Homes
name: Rob
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Miss Subways 36347874 Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny. A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York.]]> 309 David Duchovny 0374210403 Rob 0 to-read 3.66 2018 Miss Subways
author: David Duchovny
name: Rob
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There There 36356613
Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death. Edwin is looking for his true father. Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance. All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand.

All of them are there for the celebration of culture that is the Big Oakland Powwow.

But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powwow with darker intentions.]]> 304 Tommy Orange 1787300358 Rob 0 to-read 4.04 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Rob
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lost Empress 36750069 From the author of the acclaimed, PEN/Bingham Prize-winning A Naked Singularity; a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America's most popular sport and its criminal justice system.

From Paterson, New Jersey to Rikers Island to the streets of New York City, Sergio De La Pava's Lost Empress introduces readers to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, lonely pastors and others at the fringes of society--each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate. At the story's center is Nina Gill, daughter of the aging owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who was instrumental in building her father's dynasty. So it's a shock when her brother inherits the team and she is left with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's only Indoor Football League franchise. Nina vows to take on the NFL and make the Paterson Pork pigskin kings of America. Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles--a brilliant and lethal criminal mastermind--has gotten himself thrown into Rikers to commit perhaps the most audacious crime of all time. With grace, humor, and razor-sharp prose, De La Pava tackles everything from Salvador Dali, Joni Mitchell, psychiatric help, and emergency medicine to religion, the many species of love, and theoretical physics, as all these threads combine to count down to an epic conclusion.]]> 629 Sergio de la Pava 152474722X Rob 0 to-read 3.71 2018 Lost Empress
author: Sergio de la Pava
name: Rob
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath]]> 35959632 New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, an exploration of addiction, and the stories we tell about it, that reinvents the traditional recovery memoir.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do, and what happens when they fail us.

All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson, as well as brilliant figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.

For the power of her striking language and the sharpness of her piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.]]> 534 Leslie Jamison 0316259616 Rob 0 to-read 3.99 2018 The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath
author: Leslie Jamison
name: Rob
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Neighborhood 35259556 A thrilling tale of desire and Peruvian corruption swirls around a scandalous expose that leads to murder

From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori's presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima's high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail.

One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposes. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique's wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique's lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru's unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest expose yet.

Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa's signature style. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori's regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.]]> 256 Mario Vargas Llosa 0374155127 Rob 0 to-read 3.21 2016 The Neighborhood
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Rob
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Infinite Future 34720060 An exhilarating, original novel, set in Brazil, Idaho, and outer space, about an obsessive librarian, a down-at-heel author, and a disgraced historian who go on the hunt for a mystical, life-changing book--and find it.

The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in SĂŁo Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good?

In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.]]> 390 Tim Wirkus 0735224323 Rob 0 to-read 3.33 2018 The Infinite Future
author: Tim Wirkus
name: Rob
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Largesse of the Sea Maiden]]> 35135343 The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.

Finished shortly before Johnson’s death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.

The largesse of the sea maiden
The starlight on Idaho
Strangler Bob
Triumph over the grave
Doppelganger, poltergeist]]> 207 Denis Johnson 0812988639 Rob 0 to-read 3.95 2018 The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
author: Denis Johnson
name: Rob
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Maxx: Maxxed Out Volume 2 30027066 280 Sam Kieth 1631407058 Rob 5 my-canon 4.25 2011 The Maxx: Maxxed Out Volume 2
author: Sam Kieth
name: Rob
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2017/12/28
date added: 2017/12/28
shelves: my-canon
review:

]]> The Maxx: Maxxed Out, Vol. 3 32686482 Sam Kieth's opus The Maxx is collected here in all its freshly-colored glory. Taking remastered pages from The Maxx: Maxximized, this new volume collects the final issues of the series, #25-35.]]> 272 Sam Kieth 1631408801 Rob 0 to-read 3.93 2011 The Maxx: Maxxed Out, Vol. 3
author: Sam Kieth
name: Rob
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The MAXX: Maxxed Out, Volume 1 (The Maxx Maxxed Out, #1)]]> 28159711 284 Sam Kieth 1631405551 Rob 5 4.34 2010 The MAXX: Maxxed Out, Volume 1 (The Maxx Maxxed Out, #1)
author: Sam Kieth
name: Rob
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s]]> 26135622
Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s features new essays and interviews by 20 emerging and established writers who address the ways the widespread fear of a Satanic conspiracy was both illuminated and propagated through almost every pop culture pathway in the 1980s, from heavy metal music to Dungeons & Dragons role playing games, Christian comics, direct-to-VHS scare films, pulp paperbacks, Saturday morning cartoons, TV talk shows and even home computers. The book also features case studies on McMartin, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and Long Island “acid king� killer Ricky Kasso. From con artists to pranksters and moralists to martyrs, the book aims to capture the untold story of the how the Satanic Panic was fought on the pop culture frontlines and the serious consequences it had for many involved.

Satanic Panic features essays and interviews by authors and media critics including Adam Parfrey (Apocalypse Culture), Gavin Baddeley (Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship and Rock n� Roll), Liisa Ladouceur (Encyclopedia Gothica), David Flint (Sheer Filth!), Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Rape Revenge Films: A Critical Study), Adrian Mack (The Georgia Straight), Forrest Jackson (Cosmic Suicide: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven’s Gate), Alison Nastasi (Flavorwire), Leslie Hatton (Popshifter), David Canfield (Twitch), David Bertrand (Fangoria; Spectacular Optical), Alison Lang (Rue Morgue, Broken Pencil), Kevin L. Ferguson (Eighties People), Wm Conley (Deathwound), Kurt Halfyard (Twitch), Samm Deighan (Satanic Pandemonium), Stacey Rusnak (The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction), Ralph Elawani (C’est complet au royaume des morts), Gil Nault (Liturgie apocryphe), one-man band John Schooley and Joshua Benjamin Graham, alongside co-editors Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films) and Paul Corupe (Canuxploitation). The book also features comic art by Rick Trembles (Motion Picture Purgatory) and original illustrations by Toronto artist Mike McDonnell.]]> 362 Kier-la Janisse 0992146313 Rob 0 to-read 3.99 2015 Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s
author: Kier-la Janisse
name: Rob
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido]]> 36225609 The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture.In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.THE NAUGHTY NINETIES also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra.]]> 613 David Friend Rob 0 to-read 3.33 2017 The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido
author: David Friend
name: Rob
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier 34802642 The crucial sequel to the New York Times bestselling The Secret History of Twin Peaks, this novel bridges the two series, and takes you deeper into the mysteries raised by the new series.

The return of Twin Peaks this May is one of the most anticipated events in the history of television. The subject of endless speculation, shrouded in mystery, fans will come flocking to see Mark Frost and David Lynch's inimitable vision once again grace the screen. Featuring all the characters we know and love from the first series, as well as a list of high-powered actors in new roles, the show will be endlessly debated, discussed, and dissected.

While The Secret History of Twin Peaks served to expand the mysteries of the town and place the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier tells us what happened to key characters in the twenty-five years in between the events of the first series and the second, offering details and insights fans will be clamoring for. The novel also adds context and commentary to the strange and cosmic happenings of the new series. For fans around the world begging for more, Mark Frost's final take laid out in this novel will be required listening.]]> 145 Mark Frost 1250163307 Rob 5 would not read it before watching Showtime's 2017 Twin Peaks: A Limited Series Event.
Answers, answers, answers.
If you prefer Lynch's aura of mystery, you may want to approach this with caution. The mystery is not erased, but the angles are more clearly defined.
]]> 3.87 2017 Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier
author: Mark Frost
name: Rob
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/31
date added: 2017/10/31
shelves:
review:
Mark Frost nails down some details in this novel. I would not read it before watching Showtime's 2017 Twin Peaks: A Limited Series Event.
Answers, answers, answers.
If you prefer Lynch's aura of mystery, you may want to approach this with caution. The mystery is not erased, but the angles are more clearly defined.

]]> Burnt Offerings 897717
But Mrs. Allardyce never seems to emerge from her room, and it soon becomes clear that something weird and terrifying is happening in the house. As the suspense builds towards a revelation of what really lies behind that locked door, the Rolfes will discover that their cheap vacation rental comes at a terrible cost...

The basis for a classic 1976 film adaptation and an acknowledged influence on Stephen King’s The Shining, Burnt Offerings is one of the most original and scariest haunted house novels ever written.]]> 246 Robert Marasco 0440009286 Rob 2 3.79 1973 Burnt Offerings
author: Robert Marasco
name: Rob
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1973
rating: 2
read at: 2017/10/05
date added: 2017/10/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary's Baby, #1)]]> 228296
Suppose that only after you became pregnant did you begin to suspect the building harbored a diabolically evil group of devil worshippers who had mastered the arts of black magic and witchcraft.

Suppose that this satanic conspiracy set out to claim not only your husband but your baby.

Well, that's what happened to Rosemary... Or did it...?]]> 308 Ira Levin 0451194004 Rob 4 4.04 1967 Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary's Baby, #1)
author: Ira Levin
name: Rob
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/04
date added: 2017/10/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Rose Magazine: Issue #03]]> 35625855
Issue 3 contents

Reference Guide of Parts 1-10 by John Thorne. (Seriously, that should be enough to entice you.) Each part will be split into synopsis, notes and comments, filled with full color pictures from the episodes - courtesy of Showtime.

Interview with Nicole LaLiberté (Darya) by Scott Ryan

The Art of David Lynch vs Season 3 by Courtenay Stallings

An article about The Catherine Coulson Welcome Fund by Scott Ryan

A Tribute to Michael Parks (Jean Renault) by Brad Dukes

Hard copies of this magazine are available for pre-order at ]]> 126 Scott Ryan Rob 4 4.45 The Blue Rose Magazine: Issue #03
author: Scott Ryan
name: Rob
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/22
date added: 2017/09/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Manhattan Beach 34467031
‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.]]> 438 Jennifer Egan 1476716730 Rob 0 to-read 3.55 2017 Manhattan Beach
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Rob
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons]]> 677288
ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION screamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times . John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plot line into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic.

George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic?

With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

Ěý]]> 350 George Pendle 0156031795 Rob 0 3.96 2005 Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons
author: George Pendle
name: Rob
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/12
shelves: always-reading-coming-back-to, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era]]> 1698163 In the mid-1970s, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, and several hundred other shameless showoffs and incorrigible cutups from across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelot—but it couldn’t last.

William Knoedelseder was then a cub reporter covering the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of several of the future stars. And he was there when the comedians—who were not paid by the clubs where they performed� tried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In I’m Dying Up Here he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there. As comedy clubs and cable TV began to boom, many would achieve stardom.... but success had its price.

]]> 280 William Knoedelseder 158648317X Rob 4 3.97 2009 I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era
author: William Knoedelseder
name: Rob
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/12
date added: 2017/09/12
shelves:
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]]> Careers for Women 32940862 New York in the late 1950s. A city, and a world, on the cusp of change..

Maggie Gleason is looking toward the future. Part of a midcentury wave of young women seeking new lives in New York City, Maggie works for legendary Port Authority public relations maven Lee K. Jaffe--affectionately known to her loyal staff as Mrs. J. Having left Cleveland, Maggie has come to believe that she can write any story for herself that she imagines.

Pauline Moreau is running from the past--and a shameful secret. She arrives in the city on the brink of despair, saddled with a young daughter who needs more love, attention, and resources than Pauline can ever hope to provide. Seeing that Pauline needs a helping hand, Mrs. J tasks Maggie with befriending, and looking after, Pauline.

As the old New York gives way to the new, and Mrs. J's dream of the world's largest skyscraper begins to rise from the streets of lower Manhattan, Pauline--with the aid of Maggie and Mrs. J--also remakes herself. But when she reignites the scandal that drove her to New York, none of their lives will ever be the same. Maggie must question everything she thought she knew about love, work, ambition, and family to discover the truth about the enigmatic, strong woman she thought she had rescued.

Careers for Women is a masterful novel about the difficulties of building a career, a dream, or a life--and about the powerful small mercies of friendship and compassion.]]> 304 Joanna Scott 0316363839 Rob 0 to-read 3.31 2017 Careers for Women
author: Joanna Scott
name: Rob
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Approaching Twin Peaks: Critical Essays on the Original Series]]> 35612127
This collection of new essays explores its filmic influences, its genre-bending innovations and its use of horror and science fiction conventions, from the original series through the earlier film prequel Twin Fire Walk with Me and subsequent video releases.]]> 212 Eric Hoffman 1476630054 Rob 3 3.50 2017 Approaching Twin Peaks: Critical Essays on the Original Series
author: Eric Hoffman
name: Rob
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/09/05
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves:
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]]> Mrs. Fletcher 33584812
Meanwhile, Eve’s son Brendan, is discovering that the oafish frat-boy charm that impressed high school girls may not be so enticing to college women. Increasingly isolated, with mediocre grades and a confusing crush on a softball-playing social justice champion, Brendan struggles to adjust to a campus ill disposed to his brand of white-dude bravado. As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in ethically fraught situations that come to a head one fateful November night.

A coming-of-age novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fletcher is a provocative, witty look at contemporary sexual politics and timeless moral dilemmas--a moving and funny examination of sexuality, identity, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they're no longer sure who they are and where they belong.]]> 309 Tom Perrotta 1501144022 Rob 0 to-read 3.33 2017 Mrs. Fletcher
author: Tom Perrotta
name: Rob
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hero with a Thousand Faces]]> 2617434 “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won�

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction.

As part of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, this third edition features expanded illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography, and more accessible sidebars.

As relevant today as when it was first published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences in fields ranging from religion and anthropology to literature and film studies. The book has also profoundly influenced creative artists � including authors, songwriters, game designers, and filmmakers � and continues to inspire all those interested in the inherent human need to tell stories.]]> 418 Joseph Campbell 1577315936 Rob 4 4.10 1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
author: Joseph Campbell
name: Rob
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/02
date added: 2017/08/02
shelves:
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]]> The Changeling 31147267
Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood, to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His quest, which begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts, takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

This captivating retelling of a classic fairy tale imaginatively explores parental obsession, spousal love, and the secrets that make strangers out of the people we love the most. It’s a thrilling and emotionally devastating journey through the gruesome legacies that threaten to devour us and the homely, messy magic that saves us, if we’re lucky.]]> 431 Victor LaValle 0812995945 Rob 0 to-read 3.75 2017 The Changeling
author: Victor LaValle
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers]]> 24988635
Emissaries from these supernatural abodes come to earth, sometimes under human form and sometimes as monsters. They perform wonders. They serve man or fight him. They influence civilizations through mystical revelation.

These matters are the subject of Passport to Magonia, Jacques Vallee's seminal master-work that changed our understanding of the UFO phenomenon. An instant classic when first published in 1969, the book remains a must-have resource for anybody interested in the topics of UFOs and alien contact, as well as those fascinated by fairy folklore and other paranormal encounters.]]> 515 Jacques F. Vallée Rob 3 4.28 1969 Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers
author: Jacques F. Vallée
name: Rob
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2017/06/23
date added: 2017/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Mythologies 51715 Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.

Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.

What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.]]> 160 Roland Barthes 0374521506 Rob 0 to-read 4.12 1957 Mythologies
author: Roland Barthes
name: Rob
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wind (Barker Texas History Center Series)]]> 2130557 352 Dorothy Scarborough 0292790368 Rob 0 abandoned, to-read 3.87 1925 The Wind (Barker Texas History Center Series)
author: Dorothy Scarborough
name: Rob
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/02
shelves: abandoned, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Light in the Trees (Voice in the American West)]]> 25404123 192 Gail Folkins 0896729524 Rob 2 3.42 2015 Light in the Trees (Voice in the American West)
author: Gail Folkins
name: Rob
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2017/04/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Key to Eraserhead: David Lynch's Greatest Secret Unlocked!]]> 34627336 72 J.A. Fairhurst Rob 3 It would be too easy to spoil the topic, which is the crux of this work.
You know, if you are a a fan of film analysis and of Eraserhead, I'd jump in. If you hold your own interpretation dear, I would thrive on that without this work. The author allows for ample warning in that direction. The theory within is a literary one--that much I can add. Now, it's up to you whether or not to use that "key." ]]> 3.71 The Key to Eraserhead: David Lynch's Greatest Secret Unlocked!
author: J.A. Fairhurst
name: Rob
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2017/03/27
date added: 2017/03/28
shelves:
review:
This was good. Those three stars are solid stars. There is a lot of ego behind this, too, to approach this topic with such assurance. Still, I cannot say I have much of a dispute for it, and what it managed to do was enrich my own interpretation, which clearly runs parallel to the theory within.
It would be too easy to spoil the topic, which is the crux of this work.
You know, if you are a a fan of film analysis and of Eraserhead, I'd jump in. If you hold your own interpretation dear, I would thrive on that without this work. The author allows for ample warning in that direction. The theory within is a literary one--that much I can add. Now, it's up to you whether or not to use that "key."
]]> The Scarlet Gospels 23014674
The Scarlet Gospels takes readers back many years to the early days of two of Barker's most iconic characters in a battle of good and evil as old as The long-beleaguered detective Harry D'Amour, investigator of all supernatural, magical, and malevolent crimes faces off against his formidable, and intensely evil rival, Pinhead, the priest of hell.

Barker devotees have been waiting for The Scarlet Gospels with bated breath for years, and it's everything they've begged for and more. Bloody, terrifying, and brilliantly complex, fans and newcomers alike will not be disappointed by the epic, visionary tale that is The Scarlet Gospels . Barker's horror will make your worst nightmares seem like bedtime stories. The Gospels are coming. Are you ready?

Readers can get more Pinhead from the direct to video Judgment movie coming February 2018.]]> 361 Clive Barker 1250055806 Rob 1 to-read 3.47 2015 The Scarlet Gospels
author: Clive Barker
name: Rob
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2017/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The backslider 1486503 About the Blackslider, novel Max Crawford 0374108005 Rob 0 to-read 4.00 The backslider
author: Max Crawford
name: Rob
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Blood Miracles 32870347 Like all twenty-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is. This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Ireland. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he's irreparably corrupted. And he really wishes he hadn't accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour.

There may be a way clear of the chaos in the business proposals of music promoter Colm and in the attention of the charming, impulsive Natalie. But now that his boss's ambitions have rattled the city, Ryan is about to find out what he's made of, and it might be that chaos is in his blood.

]]> 297 Lisa McInerney 1444798898 Rob 0 to-read 3.75 2017 The Blood Miracles
author: Lisa McInerney
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 50420 One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.]]> 458 Gabriel García Márquez 0060929790 Rob 5 personally-required 4.10 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Rob
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2011/08/04
date added: 2017/02/27
shelves: personally-required
review:

]]> Lincoln in the Bardo 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 Rob 4 3.75 2017 Lincoln in the Bardo
author: George Saunders
name: Rob
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/10
date added: 2017/02/10
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Conspiracy Against the Human Race]]> 8524528
"There is a signature motif discernible in both works of philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror. It may be stated Behind the scenes of life lurks something pernicious that makes a nightmare of our world."**

His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction book may be even scarier. Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy. At once a guidebook to pessimistic thought and a relentless critique of humanity's employment of self-deception to cope with the pervasive suffering of their existence, The Conspiracy against the Human Race may just convince readers that there is more than a measure of truth in the despairing yet unexpectedly liberating negativity that is widely considered a hallmark of Ligotti's work.]]> 240 Thomas Ligotti 098242969X Rob 0 4.04 2011 The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
author: Thomas Ligotti
name: Rob
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2017/01/17
date added: 2017/01/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Evolution of the Weird Tale]]> 171994 220 S.T. Joshi 0974878928 Rob 0 3.96 2004 The Evolution of the Weird Tale
author: S.T. Joshi
name: Rob
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2017/01/17
date added: 2017/01/17
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: Perspectives on Twin Peaks]]> 33027245 220 H. Perry Horton Rob 3 3.94 BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: Perspectives on Twin Peaks
author: H. Perry Horton
name: Rob
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2016/12/28
date added: 2016/12/28
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[TV (the Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time]]> 28450861 The Wire better than Breaking Bad? Is Cheers better than Seinfeld? What's the best high school show ever made? Why did Moonlighting really fall apart? Was the Arrested Development Netflix season brilliant or terrible?

For twenty years-since they shared a TV column at Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper-critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating these questions and many more, but it all ultimately boils down to this:

What's the greatest TV show ever

That debate reaches an epic conclusion in TV (THE BOOK). Sepinwall and Seitz have identified and ranked the 100 greatest scripted shows in American TV history. Using a complex, obsessively all- encompassing scoring system, they've created a Pantheon of top TV shows, each accompanied by essays delving into what made these shows great. From vintage classics like The Twilight Zone and I Love Lucy to modern masterpieces like Mad Men and Friday Night Lights, from huge hits like All in the Family and ER to short-lived favorites like Firefly and Freaks and Geeks, TV (THE BOOK) will bring the triumphs of the small screen together in one amazing compendium.

Sepinwall and Seitz's argument has ended. Now it's time for yours to begin!]]> 432 Alan Sepinwall 1455588199 Rob 4 3.90 2016 TV (the Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time
author: Alan Sepinwall
name: Rob
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/12/28
date added: 2016/12/28
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]]>