Patty's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 06:19:33 -0700 60 Patty's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me]]> 59364113 A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.

To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.

In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.]]> 240 Patrick Bringley 1982163321 Patty 3 4.00 2023 All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
author: Patrick Bringley
name: Patty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: 2025, art, art-history, artists, museums, new-york-city, chicago, non-fiction, trains, trauma, travel, tragedy, death-and-dying, brothers, family, fathers-and-sons, fathers-and-daughters, friendship, grief
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto]]> 306776
Through special introductions and personal favors, Victoria was able to attend one of Kyoto’s most prestigious tea schools, where this ago-old Japanese art has been preserved for generations and where she was taken under the wing of an American expatriate who became her mentor in the highly choreographed rituals of this extraordinary culinary discipline.

During her year in Kyoto, Victoria explored the mysterious and rarefied world of tea kaiseki, living a life inaccessible to most foreigners. She also discovered the beguiling realm of modern-day Japanese food—the restaurants, specialty shops, and supermarkets. She participated in many fast-disappearing culinary customs, including making mochi (chewy rice cakes) by hand, a beloved family ritual barely surviving in a mechanized age. She celebrated the annual cleansing rites of New Year’s, donning an elaborate kimono and obi for a thirty-four-course extravaganza. She includes twenty-five recipes for favorite dishes she encountered, such as Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl, Japanese Beef and Vegetable Hotpot, and Green-Tea Cooked Salmon Over Rice.

Untangling My Chopsticks is a sumptuous journey into the tastes, traditions, and exotic undercurrents of Japan. It is also a coming-of-age tale steeped in history and ancient customs, a thoughtful meditation on life, love, and learning in another land.]]> 304 Victoria Abbott Riccardi 076790852X Patty 3 3.70 2003 Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto
author: Victoria Abbott Riccardi
name: Patty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: 2025, japan, new-york-city, cookbook, cooking, family, food, friendship, restaurants, buddhism, women, work, women-writers, tea, travel, history, religion, relationships, recipes
review:
Interesting story of one woman’s attempt to learn about a different culture. I am glad that Riccardi wrote so well about the variations on the Japanese tea ceremony. I can’t imagine ever having the opportunity to participate in an authentic tea ceremony.
]]> <![CDATA[The Shortest History of Japan: From Mythical Origins to Pop Culture Powerhouse: The Global Drama of an Ancient Island Nation]]> 229405148
Even at the nearest point, Japan—an archipelago strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland—is considerably farther from Asia than Britain is from Europe. The sea provides an effective barrier against invasion and has enabled the culture to develop in unique and distinctive ways. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shoguns successfully closed the country to the West. After Japan opened, it swung in the opposite direction, adopting Western culture wholesale. Both these strategies enabled it to avoid colonization, one of the very few non-Western countries to do so, and to retain its traditions and way of life.

This history will be of interest to people who know nothing about Japan, but also full of insights for those who do. Lesley Downer takes the listener through the great sweep of Japanese history, focusing on the dramatic stories of larger-than-life individuals—from emperors descended from the Sun Goddess to warlords, samurai, merchants, court ladies, women warriors, geisha, and businessmen who shaped this extraordinary modern society.]]> Lesley Downer Patty 0 currently-reading 0.0 2024 The Shortest History of Japan: From Mythical Origins to Pop Culture Powerhouse: The Global Drama of an Ancient Island Nation
author: Lesley Downer
name: Patty
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Children of Time (Children of Time #1)]]> 40514364 Adrian Tchaikovsky's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel Children of TimeĚýis the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]> 609 Adrian Tchaikovsky 0316452491 Patty 0 currently-reading 4.40 2015 Children of Time (Children of Time #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Patty
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Anthropocene Reviewed 58103745 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 297 John Green Patty 4 “To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.�

“We probably didn't know what we were doing thousands of years ago as we hunted some large mammals to extinction. But we know what we're doing now. We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we chose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.�

“I remember as a child hearing phrases like "Only the strong survive" and "survival of the fittest" and feeling terrified, because I knew I was neither strong nor fit. I didn't yet understand that when humanity protects the frail among us, and works to ensure their survival, the human project as a whole gets stronger.�

“After the death of the poet Jane Kenyon, her husband Donald Hall wrote, “We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.�

It is hard for me to review a book of reviews. I did like this book. One reason I liked it was that Green is a good writer. He makes me think, Another reason is he brought to my attention some interesting quotes from other good writers. If I owned this book, I would probably dip into it like I dip into my poetry books. Sometimes well written words are necessary,
]]> 3.90 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed
author: John Green
name: Patty
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/10/10
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: 2021, ebook, essays, writing, non-fiction, florida, indiana, family, depression, mental-health, memoir, memory, autobiography
review:
“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.�

“We probably didn't know what we were doing thousands of years ago as we hunted some large mammals to extinction. But we know what we're doing now. We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we chose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.�

“I remember as a child hearing phrases like "Only the strong survive" and "survival of the fittest" and feeling terrified, because I knew I was neither strong nor fit. I didn't yet understand that when humanity protects the frail among us, and works to ensure their survival, the human project as a whole gets stronger.�

“After the death of the poet Jane Kenyon, her husband Donald Hall wrote, “We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.�

It is hard for me to review a book of reviews. I did like this book. One reason I liked it was that Green is a good writer. He makes me think, Another reason is he brought to my attention some interesting quotes from other good writers. If I owned this book, I would probably dip into it like I dip into my poetry books. Sometimes well written words are necessary,

]]> <![CDATA[Second Chance Girl (Happily Inc, #2)]]> 34893127 A touching modern fairy tale that won't let go of your heart, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Fool's Gold romances! Ěý

Mathias Mitchell's easy smile hides a world of hurt. After the worst kind of family betrayal, he moves to Happily Inc., California—the wedding destination town supplies a steady stream of bridesmaids, perfect for his "no promises, no pain" lifestyle. Yet he can't stop watching for his beautiful, elusive neighbor on the animal preserve behind their homes.Ěý

Gamekeeper Carol Lund knows she's not special enough to attract an alpha male like Mathias, so his offer to help her adopt a herd for her lonely giraffe is surprising—and his determined seduction, even more so. But just as she finally welcomes him into her bed, his careless actions crush her heart. Will she give him a second chance to prove she'll always come first in his heart?

]]> 384 Susan Mallery 1488081026 Patty 3 4.27 2017 Second Chance Girl (Happily Inc, #2)
author: Susan Mallery
name: Patty
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: contemporary-romance, ebook, england, california, desert, giraffes, women-writers, weddings, romance, 2025, family, fashion, fathers-and-sons, fiction, friendship, brothers, twins, art, artists, glass-making, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, marriage, husband-and-wife
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over]]> 199669092
This third perspective on myself is disconcerting.Ěý

The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s OverĚýis voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.Ěý

A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.]]> 117 Anne de Marcken 0811237869 Patty 4 “I don't miss my name and I haven't bothered to replace it. I miss your name. I'm sorry but I have forgotten it, too. I don't look for it on the walls. The thought that I might read it and pass it by, just to go on to the next name is terrible. Like meeting you in another life and failing to recognize you.�

“I can hear you clearly but it is also as if you are far away. It is unbearable to look back from the future we did not know we had been traveling toward. That is not right. It is unbearable because we did know. It was plain as our own palms.�

“I realize now that when I was playing these silent movies of life after our life, you were still there. You were sitting with me, the two of us alone in the theater, still together. This sadness is not an empty church and not an empty house. It is the whole empty world and I am in it and it is in me.�

I picked up this book because of the crow on the cover - I have been thinking a lot about corvids. I am not sure what I read in these few passages, but I will be thinking about them for a bit. Very powerful, very horrible and very lovely all at the same time.]]> 3.64 2024 It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
author: Anne de Marcken
name: Patty
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: zombies, death-and-dying, apocalyptic-fiction, seashore, birds, dystopia, speculative-fiction, women-writers, women, tragedy, trauma, travel, fire, fiction, friendship, future, 2025, nobel-prize, grief
review:
“I don't miss my name and I haven't bothered to replace it. I miss your name. I'm sorry but I have forgotten it, too. I don't look for it on the walls. The thought that I might read it and pass it by, just to go on to the next name is terrible. Like meeting you in another life and failing to recognize you.�

“I can hear you clearly but it is also as if you are far away. It is unbearable to look back from the future we did not know we had been traveling toward. That is not right. It is unbearable because we did know. It was plain as our own palms.�

“I realize now that when I was playing these silent movies of life after our life, you were still there. You were sitting with me, the two of us alone in the theater, still together. This sadness is not an empty church and not an empty house. It is the whole empty world and I am in it and it is in me.�

I picked up this book because of the crow on the cover - I have been thinking a lot about corvids. I am not sure what I read in these few passages, but I will be thinking about them for a bit. Very powerful, very horrible and very lovely all at the same time.
]]> The Lilac People 217045791 For readers of All the Light We Cannot See and In Memoriam, a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves

In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin’s thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.

In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him—not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies� vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States.

Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history.]]> 320 Milo Todd 1640097031 Patty 0 to-read 4.35 The Lilac People
author: Milo Todd
name: Patty
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rest of Us Just Live Here 25207164


AĚýbold and irreverent YA novel that powerfully reminds us that there are many different types of remarkable, The Rest of Just Live Here is from novelist Patrick Ness, author of the Carnegie Medal- and Kate Greenaway Medal-winning A Monster Calls and the critically acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy.



What if you aren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you're like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week's end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.

ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults *ĚýCooperative Children’s Book Center CCBC Choice * Michael Printz Award shortlist * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * VOYA Perfect Ten * NYPL Top TenĚýBest Books of the Year for Teens * Chicago Public Library Best Teen Books of the Year * Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books * ABC Best Books for Children * Bank Street Best Books List]]> 333 Patrick Ness 0062403184 Patty 3 3.72 2015 The Rest of Us Just Live Here
author: Patrick Ness
name: Patty
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: 2025, ebook, high-school, alcholism, politics, family, fantasy, fathers-and-daughters, fathers-and-sons, fiction, friendship, speculative-fiction, monsters, crime, tragedy, trauma, marriage, goddess, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, anorexia-nervosa, mental-health, young-adult, ya-fiction, siblings, music, brothers-and-sisters, death-and-dying
review:
Such an odd, wonderful novel. The antithesis (IMHO) of many young adult fantasy novels. I am not entirely sure what I read, but Ness can really tell a tale.
]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 Patty 0 to-read 4.18 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths]]> 10051438 A landmark publishing event of one of Japan's most famous cartoonists

Shigeru Mizuki is the preeminent figure of Gekiga manga and one of the most famous working cartoonists in Japan today–a true living legend. Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is his first book to be translated into English and is a semiautobiographical account of the desperate final weeks of a Japanese infantry unit at the end of WorldWar II. The soldiers are told that they must go into battle and die for the honor of their country, with certain execution facing them if they return alive. Mizuki was a soldier himself (he was severely injured and lost an arm) and uses his experiences to convey the devastating consequences and moral depravity of the war.

Mizuki's list of accolades and achievements is long and detailed. In Japan, the life of Mizuki and his wife has been made into an extremely popular television drama that airs daily. Mizuki is the recipient of many awards, including the Best AlbumAward for his book NonNonBa (to be published in 2012 by D+Q) and the Heritage Essential Award for Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Special Award, the Kyokujitsu Sho Decoration, the Shiju Hosho Decoration, and the KodanshaManga Award.His hometown of Sakaiminato honored him with Shigeru Mizuki Road—a street decorated with bronze statues of his Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro characters—and the Shigeru Mizuki International Cultural Center.]]> 372 Shigeru Mizuki 1770460411 Patty 0 to-read 4.03 1991 Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
author: Shigeru Mizuki
name: Patty
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jane and Dan at the End of the World]]> 214268974 Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part� all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.]]> 368 Colleen Oakley 0593200829 Patty 0 to-read 3.78 2025 Jane and Dan at the End of the World
author: Colleen Oakley
name: Patty
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Passengers on the Hankyu Line]]> 223854441 Welcome aboard the Hankyu Line train!

Come along on a heartwarming, funny, and perfectly cozy voyage with the charming and relatable passengers—including one dashing dachshund—whose lives intersect and affect each other on one of Japan’s most romantic railway lines from international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa.

Between the two beautiful towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu Line train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey, we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them find resolutions.

A young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can check it out himself, a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad, a university student heads home after class, a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend, and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter.

With stories that crisscross like the railway lines, the Hankyu train trundles on, propelling the lives and loves of its passengers ever forward.]]> 256 Hiro Arikawa Patty 0 to-read 3.89 2008 The Passengers on the Hankyu Line
author: Hiro Arikawa
name: Patty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories]]> 206777151 This ground-breaking collection from Tomoka Shibasaki, author of the acclaimed novel Spring Garden, pushes the short story to a new level.

In these stories of human connection in a contemporary, alienated world, people come together to share pieces of their lives, then part. We meet the women who share a house after the outbreak of war before going their separate ways once it is over; the man who lives in a succession of rooftop apartments; the diverging lives of two brothers who are raised as latch-key kids by factory workers; the old ramen restaurant that endures despite the demolition of all surrounding buildings; people who watch a new type of spaceship lift off from a pier that once belonged to an island resort; and more.

These 34 tales from all over the planet have the compulsive power of news reports, narrated in a crisp yet allegorical style.]]> 208 Tomoka Shibasaki Patty 0 to-read 3.59 A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories
author: Tomoka Shibasaki
name: Patty
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully]]> 200714812 A comforting and informative guide that demystifies our end-of-life journey, from the compassionate expert known as @hospicenursejulieWhat if we didn’t consider death the worst possible outcome? What if we discussed it honestly, embraced hospice care, and prepared for the end of our lives with hope and acceptance?ĚýĚýĚýĚýIn this compassionate and knowledgeable guide, TikTok star Julie McFadden—known online as “Hospice Nurse Julie”—shares the valuable lessons she’s learned in her fifteen years as an RN in the ICU and in hospice. Expertly interweaving emotional insight and practical advice, Nothing to Fear demystifies end-of-life care for both patients and caregivers, covering topics biological details of dyingwhich medical interventions help and which only make things worsethe otherworldly beauty of deathbed phenomenafinancial and logistical preparations for deathfacts and myths about hospice carethe most important conversations to have before you diethe grieving process, before and after deathĚýĚýĚýĚýSure to be a go-to resource for years to come, McFadden’s first book proves a better death goes hand in hand with a better life.]]> 239 Julie McFadden 0593713257 Patty 0 4.50 Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully
author: Julie McFadden
name: Patty
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: 2025, death-and-dying, hospice, medicine, illness, faith, family, women-writers, narrative-non-fiction, non-fiction, cancer, ebook
review:
Since both my parents died while in hospice, this book did not add much to my knowledge of hospice. However, it is a good basic introduction and if you are considering using hospice it might answer a lot of your questions.
]]> <![CDATA[Dreaming Spies (Mary Russell, #13)]]> 24958226
Laurie R. King’sĚýnovels of suspense featuring Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, are critically acclaimed and beloved by readers for the author’s adept interplay of history and adventure. Now the intrepid duo is finally trying to take a little time for themselves—only to be swept up in a baffling case that will lead them from the idyllic panoramas of Japan to the depths of Oxford’s most revered institution.

After a lengthy case that had the couple traipsing all over India, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are on their way to California to deal with some family business that Russell has been neglecting for far too long. Along the way, they plan to break up the long voyage with a sojourn in southern Japan. The cruising steamer Thomas Carlyle is leaving Bombay, bound for Kobe. Though they’re not the vacationing types, Russell is looking forward to a change of focus—not to mention a chance to travel to a location Holmes has not visited before. The idea of the pair being on equal footing is enticing to a woman who often must race to catch up with her older, highly skilled husband.

Aboard the ship, intrigue stirs almost immediately. Holmes recognizes the famous clubman the Earl of Darley, whom he suspects of being an occasional not an unlikely career choice for a man richer in social connections than in pounds sterling. And then there’s the lithe, surprisingly fluent young Japanese woman who befriends Russell and quotes haiku. She agrees to tutor the couple in Japanese language and customs, but Russell can’t shake the feeling that Haruki Sato is not who she claims to be.

Once in Japan, Russell’s suspicions are confirmed in a most surprising way. From the glorious city of Tokyo to the cavernous library at Oxford, Russell and Holmes race to solve a mystery involving international extortion, espionage, and the shocking secrets that, if revealed, could spark revolution—and topple an empire.

Praise for Dreaming Spies

“[Holmes and Russell’s] unusual partnership is, as always, a delight to observe, and King expertly combines rich historical detail, deftly drawn characters and taut suspense. For Holmes fans, mystery lovers and those interested in either Japan or Oxford, this novel is a multilayered and entirely enjoyable journey.� � Shelf Awareness

“Compulsively readable . . . Through astute, precise, and elegant writing, great attention to time and place, and beautifully realized characters, King has created a mystery series that is at once intelligent, reflective, and action filled.� � Library Journal

“A story that keeps the reader enthralled . . . one of the most consistently outstanding mystery series out there. Any time spent with the Russell-Holmes duo is a delight.� � Booklist

“Snappy prose and a captivating plot distinguish King’s fourteenth novel featuring Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes. . . . Many will find the character deepened by his partnership with the spirited and clever Russell.� � Publishers Weekly

“The author continues to offer up incredible plotlines. . . . [Holmes and Russell’s] emotional bond only adds to the magic, suspense, and beauty of the original creation. King’s imagination continues to shine!� � Suspense Magazine

“[King] manages more surprises than usual in this graceful exercise in cultural tourism–cum-intrigue.� � Kirkus Reviews]]> Laurie R. King Patty 0 currently-reading 3.96 2015 Dreaming Spies (Mary Russell, #13)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Patty
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 59039991
Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 528 Shelby Van Pelt 0063242400 Patty 4 4.39 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Patty
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: death-and-dying, deception, women-writers, octopus, oceans, water, grandparents, family, fathers-and-sons, fiction, friendship, california, washington, work, intelligence, motherhood, mothers-and-sons, sports, tragedy, trash, travel, trauma, relatives, relationships, 2025-bookgroup
review:
This was a tearjerker, in the best way, for me. I wish my mom was around for me to share this book with. I think she would have liked Marcellus.
]]> <![CDATA[Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World]]> 55004124 In this thoughtful, culturally rich, mind-expanding book, he provides answers. Yunkaporta’s writing process begins with images. Honoring indigenous traditions, he makes carvings of what he wants to say, channeling his thoughts through symbols and diagrams rather than words. He yarns with people, looking for ways to connect images and stories with place and relationship to create a coherent world view, and he uses sand talk, the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground to convey knowledge.Ěý In Sand Talk, he provides a new model for our everyday lives. Rich in ideas and inspiration, it explains how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It’s about how we learn and how we remember. It’s about talking to everyone and listening carefully. It’s about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it’s about a very special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world. Sand Talk include 22 black-and-white illustrations that add depth to the text.]]> 256 Tyson Yunkaporta 0062975625 Patty 5 “I’m not reporting on Indigenous Knowledge systems for a global audience’s perspective. I’m examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective.â€�

“If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.�

“You can't maintain a culture that is based on retarding the development of half the population, particularly the half that is responsible for creating life.�

“The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.�

“Engaging with them (malignant narcissists) alone is futile - never wrestle a pig, as the old saying goes; you both end up covered in shit, and the pig likes it. The fundamental rules of human interaction do not apply to them, although they weaponize those rules against everyone else.�

“Every viewpoint is useful, and it takes a wide diversity of views for any group to navigate this universe, let alone to act as custodians for it.�

I need to remember about yarning.


]]> 4.29 2019 Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
author: Tyson Yunkaporta
name: Patty
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: australia, narrative-non-fiction, non-fiction, faith, family, fighting, fishing, future, climate-crisis, indigenous, tragedy, tradition, trauma, travel, culture, social-commentary, social-responsibility, societal-issues, women, work, 2025
review:
What an amazing book. Have never read anything like this. All I can do is quote some of his words.
“I’m not reporting on Indigenous Knowledge systems for a global audience’s perspective. I’m examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective.�

“If people are laughing, they are learning. True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.�

“You can't maintain a culture that is based on retarding the development of half the population, particularly the half that is responsible for creating life.�

“The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.�

“Engaging with them (malignant narcissists) alone is futile - never wrestle a pig, as the old saying goes; you both end up covered in shit, and the pig likes it. The fundamental rules of human interaction do not apply to them, although they weaponize those rules against everyone else.�

“Every viewpoint is useful, and it takes a wide diversity of views for any group to navigate this universe, let alone to act as custodians for it.�

I need to remember about yarning.



]]> <![CDATA[A Cat Was Involved (Chet and Bernie Mystery, #0.1)]]> 59516067 Spencer Quinn 1470341433 Patty 3 Lots of fun. 4.00 2012 A Cat Was Involved (Chet and Bernie Mystery, #0.1)
author: Spencer Quinn
name: Patty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: audiobook, california, cats, dogs, ebook, mystery, fiction, friendship, brothers, short-stories, 2025
review:
Lots of fun.
]]> Finding Langston 44067056 In a debut historical novel about the Great Migration a boy discovers Chicago's postwar South Side and the poetry of Langston Hughes.

When 11-year-old Langston's mother dies in 1946, he and his father leave rural Alabama for Chicago's brown belt as a part of what came to be known as the Great Migration. It's lonely in the small apartment with just the two of them, and at school Langston is bullied. But his new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the local public library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston, a poet whom he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.]]> 3 Lesa Cline-Ransome 197490704X Patty 4 Lovely story, told well. 4.42 2018 Finding Langston
author: Lesa Cline-Ransome
name: Patty
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: juvenile-fiction, african-americans, african-american-literature, poetry, poets, audiobook, ebook, chicago, alabama, school, bullying, death-and-dying, family, fathers-and-sons, farming, fiction, friendship, funerals, grandparents, mothers-and-sons, neighbors, women-writers, work, books-about-books, books-and-reading, books-for-children, librarian, libraries, 2025
review:
Lovely story, told well.
]]> <![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]> 8161568 Anthony Bourdain, host of Parts Unknown, reveals "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine" in his breakout New York Times bestseller Kitchen Confidential.Bourdain spares no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable.Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.]]> 321 Anthony Bourdain 1596917245 Patty 3
I will always be grateful to Bourdain for one of the meals I had in Saigon and for his view of how to live life. I am very sorry that he is not still on the planet.]]> 4.26 2000 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Patty
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: 2025, family, food, france, friendship, ebook, cooking, restaurants, chefs, new-york-city, new-york, massachusetts, non-fiction, memoir, memory, trauma, travel, drug-abuse, tokoyo, work
review:
I can't believe that it has been 25 years since Bourdain wrote this book. I probably would have liked it better if I had read it then. This book is good, but by now, I had heard many of these stories from other readers.

I will always be grateful to Bourdain for one of the meals I had in Saigon and for his view of how to live life. I am very sorry that he is not still on the planet.
]]> <![CDATA[That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (Mead Mishaps, #1)]]> 123425292
All she wanted to do was live her life in peace--maybe get a cat, expand the family spice farm. Really, anything that didn't involve going on an adventure where an orc might rip her face off. But they say the Goddess has favorite, and if so, Cin is clearly not one of them...Ěý

After saving the demon Fallon in a wine-drunk stupor, all Fallon wants to do is kill an evil witch enslaving his people. And, who can blame him? But he's dragging Cinnamon along for the ride.ĚýOn the bright side, at least he keeps burning off his shirt.]]> 279 Kimberly Lemming Patty 3 Ridiculously fun. 3.92 2021 That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (Mead Mishaps, #1)
author: Kimberly Lemming
name: Patty
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: ebook, family, fantasy, farming, fathers-and-daughters, fiction, fighting, fire, flying, freedom, friendship, death-and-dying, speculative-fiction, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, dragons, women-writers, romance, romantasy, witches, 2025, werewolves, sex
review:
Ridiculously fun.
]]> <![CDATA[This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir]]> 212294437 A vibrant graphic memoir of a woman—an immigrant, a survivor, a writer, a foodie, and, ultimately, an optimist—who rebuilds her life in New York City while recovering from the trauma of an abusive relationship.

“An intimate portrait of the city not only as a place of dreams, but as a vital source for healing and self-discovery.”—Nick Sousanis, Eisner Award–winning author of Unflattening

On her first night in New York City, Kay Sohini sits on the tarmac of JFK Airport making an inventory of everything she’s left behind in India: her family, friends, home, and gaslighting ex-boyfriend. In the wake of that untethering she realizes two things: she’s finally made it to the city of her literary heroes—Kerouac, Plath, Bechdel—and the trauma she’s endured has created gaping holes in her memory.

As Kay begins the work of piecing herself back together she discovers the deep sense of belonging that can only be found on the streets of New York City. In the process she falls beautifully, ridiculously in love with the bustling landscape, and realizes that the places we love do not always love us back but can still somehow save us in weird, unexpected ways.

At once heartbreaking and uplifting, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City explores the relationship between trauma and truth, displacement and belonging, and what it means to forge a life of one’s own.]]> 128 Kay Sohini 0593836154 Patty 0 to-read 3.93 This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir
author: Kay Sohini
name: Patty
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Changes Everything: A Surprisingly Funny Story About Race, Cancer, Faith, and Other Things We Don’t Talk About]]> 223227761
When Tyler Merritt was diagnosed with cancer, everything he thought he knew about what mattered in life changed. This Changes Everything is a humorous and optimistic love letter to this beautiful life.

Though he made it through a highly invasive surgery and thought he was in the clear, Tyler soon realized that the cancer had other plans. It wasn’t a question of if the tumor would come back for an encore, his doctors told him. It was a question of when. Laced with Tyler’s trademark humor, love of pop culture, and arguably too many musical theater references, This Changes Everything is a story about how wrestling with the idea of death can birth a whole new outlook on life, how we live it, and the urgency that comes when you grasp that time is a precious commodity.

8 hrs. 59 min.]]> 9 Tyler Merritt Patty 4 4.29 This Changes Everything: A Surprisingly Funny Story About Race, Cancer, Faith, and Other Things We Don’t Talk About
author: Tyler Merritt
name: Patty
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: tragedy, trauma, travel, memoir, music, actors, illness, cancer, las-vegas, nevada, tennesee, nashville, non-fiction, faith, family, fathers-and-sons, forgiveness, friendship, funerals, death-and-dying, 2025, mothers-and-sons, christianity, christian-living, spiritual-journey, spirituality, african-american-women, african-americans, medicine, audiobook, autobiography
review:
Merritt knows how to tell a story. I liked his first book and so picked up this one. Wow - life has changed for Merritt, but he is still trying to tell his truth in his way. This was an excellent audiobook.
]]> Next of Kin 203690472 339 Hannah Bonam-Young Patty 3 3.89 2022 Next of Kin
author: Hannah Bonam-Young
name: Patty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: contemporary-romance, ebook, adoption, siblings, sisters, brothers, family, fathers-and-sons, fiction, fighting, foster-care, friendship, mothers-and-daughters, motherhood, babies, tragedy, trauma, women-writers, work, drug-dealers, alcholism, romance, 2025, deafness
review:
Two people who survived terrible families make an awesome family of their own. So glad I read this.
]]> <![CDATA[Loving Corrections (Emergent Strategy #12)]]> 198843270
This selection of prescient, compassionate essays explores patterns we engage in that are rooted in limited thinking. Through a lens of “loving correctionâ€� rather than mere critique, author adrienne mareeĚýbrown helps us reimagine how to hold ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities accountable byĚýsetting clear boundaries, engaging in reflection, and nurturing honest relationships.

Loving CorrectionsĚýis divided into two sections, with the first portion featuring new essaysĚýincluding “A Word for White Peopleâ€� and “Relinquishing the Patriarchyâ€� and writing onĚýtopics like moving from fragility to fortitude, disability, and navigating critique within activist communities.ĚýThe second section expands and updates pieces from brown's popular monthly column “Murmurationsâ€� inĚýYES!ĚýMagazineĚýthatĚýexplore accountability—within oneself and community—with depth,Ěýinventiveness, and empathy.

Along with allowing us more authentic access to ourselves and to each other, the “correctionsâ€� in the book’s title are intended toĚýexplore and break identity-based patterns including white supremacy, fragility, patriarchy, and ableism. brown also offers practical guidance on how to apologize and be accountableĚýfrom our nuanced positions of power, history, and resources.

Building on her previous work—especiallyĚýHolding ChangeĚýandĚýWe Will Not Cancel Us—brown reminds us how much we need each "It is only through relationship that we learn how to be, understand our impact on others and explore small shifts that may yield remarkable collective change."]]> 203 Adrienne Maree Brown 1849355134 Patty 0 to-read 4.34 Loving Corrections (Emergent Strategy #12)
author: Adrienne Maree Brown
name: Patty
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir]]> 35873159 Finalist for 2018 International Book Award for Best New Non-Fiction
Sharon Harrigan's father was larger than life, a brilliant but troubled man who blew off his hand with dynamite before she was born and died in a mysterious and bizarre accident when she was seven.ĚýĚýThe story of his death never made sense. How did he really die? And why was she so sure that asking would be dangerous? A series of events compel her to find the answers, collecting other people s memories and uncovering her own. Her two-year odyssey takes her from Virginia to Detroit to Paris and finally to the wilds of northern Michigan where her father died. There, she discovers the real danger and has to confront her fear.Ěý Playing with Dynamite Ěýis about the family secrets that can distance us from each other and the honesty that can bring us closer. It s about a daughter who goes looking for her father but finds her mother instead. It s about memory and truth, grieving and growing, and what it means to go home again.]]> 248 Sharon Harrigan 1612482104 Patty 0 to-read 4.62 2017 Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir
author: Sharon Harrigan
name: Patty
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Duke in Shining Armor 34568437
Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend’s bride. All he’s trying to do is recapture the slightly inebriated Lady Olympia Hightower and return her to her intended bridegroom.

For reasons that elude her, bookish, bespectacled Olympia is supposed to marry a gorgeous rake of a duke. The ton is flabbergasted. Her family’s ecstatic. And Olympia? She’s climbing out of a window, bent on a getaway. But tall, dark, and exasperating Ripley is hot on her trail, determined to bring her back to his friend. For once, the world-famous hellion is trying to do the honorable thing.

So why does Olympia have to make it so deliciously difficult for him . . . ?]]> 405 Loretta Chase 006245739X Patty 3 4.04 2017 A Duke in Shining Armor
author: Loretta Chase
name: Patty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: 2025, romance, historical-romance, brothers-and-sisters, marriage, ebook, england, family, fathers-and-sons, fathers-and-daughters, fashion, fiction, friendship, mothers-and-daughters, husband-and-wife, women-writers
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood � Youth � Dependency]]> 56442303 Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This single-volume hardcover contains all three volumes of her memoirs

Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969�71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.

Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today’s discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen’s trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up—in this sense, it’s Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction.

Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with "Tove fever" gripping readers.]]> 371 Tove Ditlevsen 0374602409 Patty 0 to-read-hoopla 4.25 1967 The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood – Youth – Dependency
author: Tove Ditlevsen
name: Patty
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read-hoopla
review:

]]> Fiona and Jane 57238523 A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition--qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost.

In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho's debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship--the intensity, resentment, and boundless love--to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.

Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.]]> 288 Jean Chen Ho 0593296044 Patty 0 under-consideration-prl 3.28 2022 Fiona and Jane
author: Jean Chen Ho
name: Patty
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: under-consideration-prl
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman]]> 60467873
Deep in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three times farther from the sun than the Earth is, orbits a massive asteroid called (16) Psyche. It is one of the largest objects in the belt; if its substantially metal core could be mined, the entire mass might be worth as much as ten-thousand-quadrillion dollars. But (16) Psyche has the potential to unlock something even more valuable: the story of how planets form, and how our planet formed. Soon we will find out, thanks to the extraordinary work of Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator of NASA's $800 million Psyche mission, and the second woman ever to be awarded a major NASA space exploration contract.

The journey that brought her to this place is extraordinary. Amid a childhood of terrible trauma, Elkins-Tanton fell in love with science as a means of healing and consolation. But still she wondered, was forced to wonder: as a woman, was science for her? In answering that question, she takes us from the wilds of the Siberian tundra to the furthest reaches of outer space, from the Mayo Clinic, where Elkins-Tanton battled ovarian cancer while writing the Psyche proposal, to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where her team brought that proposal to life.

A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman is a beautifully-constructed memoir that explores how a philosophy of life can be built from the tools of scientific inquiry. It teaches us how to approach difficult problems by asking the right questions and truly listening to the answers--and how we may find meaning through exploring the wonders of the universe around us.]]> 9 Lindy Elkins-Tanton Patty 4 3.44 2022 A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman
author: Lindy Elkins-Tanton
name: Patty
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 2025, audiobook, science, science-writing, women-and-science, women, women-s-liberation, women-writers, sexual-harassment, narrative-non-fiction, non-fiction, family, fathers-and-daughters, feminism, friendship, funerals, illness, cancer, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, maryland, astronomy, asteroids, geology, russia, siberia, massachusetts, arizona, washington, nasa, husband-and-wife, marriage, divorce, new-york, college, business
review:
Amazing story. I am glad I listened - not sure I would have followed it all in print. I am intrigued by how Elkins-Tanton told her story - there are some interesting gaps. However, you can't tell everything.
]]> Care and Feeding: A Memoir 216497043
Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.]]> 352 Laurie Woolever 0063327600 Patty 0 to-read 3.58 Care and Feeding: A Memoir
author: Laurie Woolever
name: Patty
average rating: 3.58
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation]]> 58745068
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.

Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.]]> 412 Imani Perry Patty 0 currently-reading 3.98 2022 South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
author: Imani Perry
name: Patty
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> How to End a Love Story 150343925 La romance enemies-to-lovers sexy et bouleversante, coup de cœur du book club de Reese Witherspoon !

Helen Zhang n’a pas revu Grant Shepard depuis treize ans, depuis le tragique accident qui a lié leurs vies à jamais

.Devenue une autrice renommée, Helen n’a qu’une obsession : sa carrière. Elle a même décroché une place très convoitée dans la salle d’écriture de l’adaptation télé de sa série de livres à succès pour adolescents. Il ne lui reste plus qu’� dissimuler son syndrome de l’imposteur et à dépasser sa panne d’inspiration, et elle est persuadée que le reste de sa vie rentrera dans l’ordre. Los Angeles est le nouveau départ dont elle avait besoin. Après tout, personne ne la connaît là-bas. Sauf...

Grant a fait tout son possible pour tourner la page sur son passé, y compris se construire une vie à l’autre bout du pays. Et même s’il est encore parfois sujet à des attaques de panique, il a réussi à se faire un nom dans le milieu en tant que scénariste. Il sait qu’il n’aurait pas dû accepter cette mission, mais c’est une opportunité qu’il ne peut pas se permettre de rater.

Grant est exactement le même que dans le souvenir d’Helen � toujours aussi charmant, drôle et populaire, tout ce qu’elle n’est pas � et, pour Grant, Helen n’a pas changé non plus � brillante, belle, renfermée. Travailler ensemble sur ce projet ne manque pas de faire des étincelles, d’autant que les parents d’Helen ignorent tout de l’implication de Grant, qu’ils n’ont jamais pardonné, dans la série.

Quand les secrets sont révélés au grand jour, Grant et Helen doivent se faire une raison : leur histoire n’était jamais destinée à être une histoire d’amour. Et pourtant� pour faire la paix avec leur passé � et avec eux-mêmes �, il leur faudra peut-être se raccrocher au présent.]]> 382 Yulin Kuang 0063310694 Patty 4 3.84 2024 How to End a Love Story
author: Yulin Kuang
name: Patty
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: 2025, 2025-woc, contemporary-romance, romance, writing, women-writers, death-and-dying, accident, ebook, california, new-jersey, new-york-city, los-angeles, television, books-about-books, books-and-publishing, family, fathers-and-daughters, fiction, friendship, funerals, forgiveness, chinese-americans, siblings, sisters, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons
review:
Right book at the right time. Loved every minute.
]]> <![CDATA[Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution]]> 123853149 “A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center�. The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail." �The New York Times

“A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman’s body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens.”—Bonnie Garmus, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Lessons in Chemistry

An ambitious, eye-opening, myth-busting and groundbreaking history of the evolution of the female body, by a brilliant new researcher and writer

Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause?ĚýWhy are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist?

In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it’s an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon’s findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women’s pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.

A 21st-century update of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Eve offers a true paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is and why it matters.]]> 596 Cat Bohannon 0345813316 Patty 4 4.20 2023 Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
author: Cat Bohannon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: narrative-non-fiction, non-fiction, ebook, 2025, women, women-and-science, women-s-history, women-writers, feminism, societal-issues, social-commentary, evolution, science-writing, science, biology
review:
Amazing book - learned so, so much
]]> <![CDATA[The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ]]> 33414312
Countering our contemporary tendency to bypass Jesus� crucifixion, Rutledge in these pages examines in depth all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She mines the classical writings of the Church Fathers, the medieval scholastics, and the Reformers as well as more recent scholarship, while bringing them all into contemporary context.

Widely known for her preaching, Rutledge seeks to encourage preachers, teachers, and anyone else interested in what Christians believe to be the central event of world history.]]> 696 Fleming Rutledge 0802875343 Patty 0 currently-reading 4.57 2015 The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
author: Fleming Rutledge
name: Patty
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Flirting Lessons 216247471 The exciting new contemporary romance—and her first to feature a queer romance—by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory

Avery Jensen is almost thirty, fresh off a breakup, and she’s tired of always being so uptight and well-behaved. She wants to get a hobby, date around (especially other women), flirt with everyone she sees, all the fun stuff normal people do in their twenties. One Avery doesn't know how to do any of that. She doesn't have a lot of dating experience, with men or women, and despite being self-assured at work, she doesn't have a lot of confidence when it comes to romance.

Enter Taylor Cameron,ĚýNapa Valley's biggest flirt and champion heartbreaker. Taylor just broke up with her most recent girlfriend, and her best friend bet her that she can't make it until Labor Day without sleeping with someone. (Two whole months? Without sex? Taylor?!?!) So, she offers to give Avery flirting lessons. It will keep her busy, stop her from texting people she shouldn't. And it might distract her from how inadequate she feels compared to her friends, who all seem much more settled and adult than Taylor.

At first, Avery is stiff and nervous, but Taylor is patient and encouraging, and soon, Avery looks forward to their weekly lessons. She tells herself it's because the lessons are fun, not because she kind of might have a little bit of a crush on Taylor. Taylor doesn't even try to deny that she's intrigued by Avery, but she's still got a bet to win. With Taylor’s help, Avery is finally doing what she wants to flirting with lots of women, making friends, having fun! But after a while, it becomes impossible for Avery and Taylor to ignore their attraction to one another, despite them both insisting to themselves and everyone else that it isn't serious. When Taylor is forced to confront her feelings for Avery, she doesn't know what to do, how to deal with it, and most importantly, if she's already ruined the best thing she's ever had.]]> 416 Jasmine Guillory 0593100913 Patty 0 to-read 3.59 2025 Flirting Lessons
author: Jasmine Guillory
name: Patty
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club]]> 221473261 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 448 Helen Simonson 1984801333 Patty 0 to-read 4.08 2024 The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
author: Helen Simonson
name: Patty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Milkweed and Honey Cake: A Memoir in Ritual Moments]]> 209352705
Using experiences, objects, and practices, Wendy A. Horwitz weaves personal stories with reflections on rituals that might provide solace, celebration, and transition at different points in life. Rather than a chronology, the chapters in Milkweed and Honey Cake create a collage of memories that are linked by themes. Some are more impressionistic while others are more narrative, but they all raise questions about searching for and creating meaning through different stages of life. Through these stories and vignettes, Horwitz examines the limits of the extent to which we can share each other's practices or create new ones, and the times when rituals fall short.

Intending to inspire and provide rather than prescribe, Milkweed and Honey Cake is an accessible, enriching memoir that searches the religious, secular, and natural worlds that fill our lives with meaning.]]> 248 Wendy A. Horwitz 1684352304 Patty 0 to-read 4.53 Milkweed and Honey Cake: A Memoir in Ritual Moments
author: Wendy A. Horwitz
name: Patty
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One Step Forward 199793579 One Step Forward is a compelling debut YA historical fiction novel in verse about Matilda Young—the youngest American suffragist imprisoned for picketing the White House to demand women’s right to vote.

Raised in a politically divided family, Matilda wondered if she could be as courageous as her older sister who fought for suffrage. Joining the radical protest movement came with plenty of risk. Women were routinely scorned, harassed, arrested—and worse. And taking a stand for her rights could tear her family apart.

Told in powerful verse, One Step Forward follows Matilda's coming-of-age journey as she takes her first step into action. Amid the backdrop of World War I, Matilda’s story vividly highlights the extreme mental, physical, and emotional battles faced by the protestors leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. It also reveals the bravery, hard work, and spirit of the women who paved the way for future generations to use their voices and votes.]]> 320 Marcie Flinchum Atkins 0063339315 Patty 0 to-read 3.92 2025 One Step Forward
author: Marcie Flinchum Atkins
name: Patty
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Maid for Each Other 220458655
Declan is a busy man, working his way up at Hathaway Holdings. Which is why he’s never met the woman who cleans his penthouse every week.

Abi needs a place to stay, and Declan is out of town, so the solution seems simple and, crucially, free.

When Declan’s parents tell him they met his girlfriend at his apartment, he's surprised to say the least. But it is nice to have them off his back about being single for a change. . .

Declan finds out who Abi really is, and decides to makes her a pretend to date him, and he’ll provide everything she needs.

What could go wrong? It’s business, not pleasure. Right?

Fake DatingForced Proximity]]> 368 Lynn Painter 0593638034 Patty 0 to-read 3.91 2025 Maid for Each Other
author: Lynn Painter
name: Patty
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Last Vineyard Summer 220161155 From the “great storyteller� (Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society) Brooke Lea Foster, a captivating new novel set in 1965 and 1978 about a graduate student who returns with her sisters to their family’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and begins to unravel old family secrets.

After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother—a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement—calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts.

When Betsy arrives on the island a week later, she must reckon with her strained familial relationships, a long-ago forbidden romance, and the complicated legacy of her parents, who divided the family even as they did good for the world.

Following a dual timeline between 1965 and 1978, and filled with the vibrant, sunlit nostalgia of the cherished New England vacation setting, Our Last Vineyard Summer poignantly captures two generations of women navigating love, loss, and womanhood while trying to find the courage to stand up for what they believe in—and the strength to decide if the home they once loved is worth saving.]]> 336 Brooke Lea Foster 1668034409 Patty 0 to-read 3.50 Our Last Vineyard Summer
author: Brooke Lea Foster
name: Patty
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road]]> 214151516 From Vanity Fair and The New York Times contributor comes a beautifully written, deeply felt memoir recounting the solo, cross-country journey she made along the Ten across the American a mission to uncover both what harrowing violence may or may not have happened to her late mother, but also, to look within and discover who she herself is—where her mother ends and she begins.

In her trusted loaded-up minivan “Minnie,� E.A. Hanks follows the same route as a long-ago road trip with her mother in an attempt to better understand the complicated woman who gave her life. Along the way, as she follows her mother’s diaries and her own recollections of the route, she begins to uncover secrets—some unexpectedly wonderful, and others darker and more violent than she ever imagined—that bring more questions than answers.

From the quiet expanses of White Sands National Park to the bustling streets of New Orleans, and the Texas-Mexico border to the swamps of the Florida panhandle, she interacts with the amazing breadth and diversity of the people that call these places home. Reckoning with the past, the present, her memories, and herself, Hanks brings us along a beautiful voyage towards understanding how the stories we tell about the places we’re from ultimately become the stories we tell about the people we are.]]> 352 E.A. Hanks 1982131292 Patty 0 to-read 3.58 2025 The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road
author: E.A. Hanks
name: Patty
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Anatomy of Magic 198189782 A young woman learns to embrace all the messy imperfections of life and love with some help from her magical family in this next novel by New York Times bestselling author J.C. Cervantes.

Lilian Estrada seemingly has it all: an ob-gyn star on the rise, a master at balancing work with whirlwind romances and part of a family of fiercely loyal and exceptional women, all bound together by an extraordinary secret. The Estrada women each possess a unique power, and Lily shines with the rare gift to manipulate memories. Yet not even her mystical abilities can shield her from a harrowing event at the hospital, one that sends her powers—and her confidence—spiraling out of control.

Seeking solace, Lily retreats to her family's ancestral home in Mexico, only to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past—Sam, the first love she never forgot. Nearly a decade since she last saw him, Sam is hardly the boy she once knew, and as old flames spark to life, Lily must navigate the mysteries of their shared history and the depths of her own heart if she hopes to control her unpredictable magic.]]> 304 J.C. Cervantes 0778310825 Patty 0 to-read 3.64 2025 The Anatomy of Magic
author: J.C. Cervantes
name: Patty
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Own the Sky 59806051 208 Rodman Philbrick 1338736299 Patty 3 3.83 2022 We Own the Sky
author: Rodman Philbrick
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: historical-fiction, orphanages, orphans, tragedy, travel, death-and-dying, prejudice, social-commentary, family, fiction, fighting, flying, friendship, juvenile-fiction, 2025, hunger, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, brothers-and-sisters
review:
Fascinating story of a daring aviatrix and the KKK in Maine. Based on a true story.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hellion's Waltz (Feminine Pursuits, #3)]]> 53286982
Sophie Roseingrave hates nothing more than a swindler. After her family lost their piano shop to a con man in London, they’re trying to start fresh in a new town. Her father is convinced Carrisford is an upright and honest place, but Sophie is not so sure. She has grave suspicions about silk-weaver Madeline Crewe, whose stunning beauty doesn’t hide the fact that she’s up to something.

All Maddie Crewe needs is one big score, one grand heist to properly fund the weavers� union forever. She has found her mark in Mr. Giles, a greedy draper, and the entire association of weavers and tailors and clothing merchants has agreed to help her. The very last thing she needs is a small but determined piano-teacher and composer sticking her nose in other people’s business. If Sophie won’t be put off, the only thing to do is to seduce her to the cause.

Will Sophie’s scruples force her to confess the plot before Maddie gets her money? Or will Maddie lose her nerve along with her heart?]]> 240 Olivia Waite 0062931814 Patty 4 3.71 2021 The Hellion's Waltz (Feminine Pursuits, #3)
author: Olivia Waite
name: Patty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: weaving, music, musician, fabric, family, fathers-and-daughters, fiction, feminism, freedom, friendship, twins, looms, mothers-and-daughters, societal-issues, social-responsibility, women, women-s-rights, work, women-writers, lgbtq, 2025
review:
Lots of fun. Very good series.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South]]> 29100223 444 Michael W. Twitty 0062379291 Patty 0 currently-reading 4.04 2017 The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
author: Michael W. Twitty
name: Patty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness]]> 33516728
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission, to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.

Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness is a medical mystery that she says reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connection to the state of our microbiomes.]]> 432 Sarah Ramey 0385534078 Patty 0 to-read 3.67 2020 The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness
author: Sarah Ramey
name: Patty
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives]]> 735106 368 Sarah Strohmeyer 0451219104 Patty 3
I will admit I was a bit put off by the designer name dropping and the amount of money that the characters spent. And my book group is nothing like the one the Hunting Hills women apparently belong to. However, after reading a bit, I became interested in the characters and where Strohmeyer was taking them.

This is not an earth shattering or life changing book. However, for the time I was reading, I found the story well told, the characters fascinating and the ending fun. I cared about some of these women by the end of the book and only good writing got me there. Strohmeyer deserves lots of credit for making the fortunate wives worth caring about.

I recommend this book to women looking for a light, fun read, to readers who like domestic fiction as opposed to romances and to readers of the Bubbles novels since seeing an author's new direction is interesting.]]> 3.40 The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives
author: Sarah Strohmeyer
name: Patty
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/26
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: 2012, domestic-fiction, women-writers, women-s-books, marriage, friendship, husband-and-wife, humor, contemporary-fiction, fiction, ohio
review:
This book crossed my desk at work and since I had enjoyed Strohmeyer's Bubbles books, I decided to see what this was like. To start off, it is not like the Bubbles mysteries. These women would not pay any attention to Bubbles.

I will admit I was a bit put off by the designer name dropping and the amount of money that the characters spent. And my book group is nothing like the one the Hunting Hills women apparently belong to. However, after reading a bit, I became interested in the characters and where Strohmeyer was taking them.

This is not an earth shattering or life changing book. However, for the time I was reading, I found the story well told, the characters fascinating and the ending fun. I cared about some of these women by the end of the book and only good writing got me there. Strohmeyer deserves lots of credit for making the fortunate wives worth caring about.

I recommend this book to women looking for a light, fun read, to readers who like domestic fiction as opposed to romances and to readers of the Bubbles novels since seeing an author's new direction is interesting.
]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Patty 0 currently-reading 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Patty
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Make the Season Bright 206180033 Two exes find themselves stuck at the same house for Christmas in this holiday romance by Ashley Herring Blake, USA Today bestselling author of Iris Kelly Doesn't Date.

It's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée, and she’s doing more than okay. Sure, her single mother never checks in, but she has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true. As the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado—it is much cozier and quieter than Manhattan, and it would guarantee more practice time for the quartet’s upcoming tour. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister Adele also brought a friend home—and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton.

All Brighton Fairbrook wanted was to have the holliest, jolliest Christmas—and try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers—which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. Charlotte and Brighton are soon entrenched in horseback riding and cookie decorating, but Charlotte still won’t talk to her. Brighton can hardly blame her after what she did.

After a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together—Brighton on guitar, Charlotte on her violin—and it all feels painfully familiar. But it’s all in the past and nothing can melt the ice in their hearts...right?]]> 367 Ashley Herring Blake Patty 3 3.79 2024 Make the Season Bright
author: Ashley Herring Blake
name: Patty
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: ebook, family, fiction, friendship, new-york-city, colorado, college, nashville, michigan, mothers-and-daughters, lgbtq, lesbian, contemporary-romance, 2025, women-writers, music, musician, romance, christmas
review:

]]> The Mourner’s Bestiary 210436767 A critically acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness.

Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of 200 years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy.

A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall’s The Mourner’s Bestiary is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems—the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound—and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores.

The Gulf of Maine is the world’s fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf.]]> 320 Eiren Caffall 1955905584 Patty 0 to-read 4.38 2024 The Mourner’s Bestiary
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Patty
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Monster Calls 15714503 An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting-- he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-- whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-- Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.]]> 224 Patrick Ness Patty 4 4.41 2011 A Monster Calls
author: Patrick Ness
name: Patty
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: 2025, ebook, england, death-and-dying, cancer, family, fantasy, fathers-and-sons, fiction, friendship, grandparents, speculative-fiction, faerie, storytelling, tragedy, trauma, school, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, motherhood, ya-fiction, young-adult, grief
review:
Such a powerful story. So glad I decided to read this.
]]> <![CDATA[Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1)]]> 59355073
When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Harrowing and beautifully written, Elizabeth Wein creates a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other. Code Name Verity is an outstanding novel that will stick with you long after the last page.]]> 353 Elizabeth Wein Patty 4 3.87 2012 Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1)
author: Elizabeth Wein
name: Patty
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: world-war-ii, england, scotland, flying, spies, ebook, death-and-dying, tragedy, trauma, trains, travel, france, germany, writing, faith, family, fiction, friendship, military, airplanes, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, violence, war, women, women-s-liberation, women-s-history, women-writers, feminism, 2025, escape, espionage, historical-fiction, young-adult, ya-fiction
review:

]]> Wavewalker 102890076
Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children. Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water…]]> 397 Suzanne Heywood 0008498512 Patty 3 4.53 2023 Wavewalker
author: Suzanne Heywood
name: Patty
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: 2025-bookgroup, 2025, voyages-around-the-world, sea-voyage, oceans, sailing, trauma, travel, education, ebook, england, exploration, fiji, samoa, australia, new-zealand, women-writers, faith, family, fathers-and-daughters, fathers-and-sons, fishing, friendship, death-and-dying, college, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, husband-and-wife, marriage, personal-growth
review:
Heywood had a horrendous (IMHO), but she preserved and achieved her own goals. Her parents were incredibly selfish.
]]> <![CDATA[The Mimicking of Known Successes (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #1)]]> 59054079 The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter, by Malka Older, author of the critically-acclaimed Centenal Cycle.

On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university—and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems.

Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake—and, perhaps, their futures, together.]]> 176 Malka Ann Older Patty 3 3.88 2023 The Mimicking of Known Successes (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #1)
author: Malka Ann Older
name: Patty
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: speculative-fiction, science-fiction, ebook, jupiter, women-writers, women, lgbtq, fiction, friendship, death-and-dying, college, 2025, novella, academic-life, dystopia
review:
This was a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche.
]]> <![CDATA[Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure]]> 53968574 From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland � and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows

Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." Ěý

A surprise discovery � that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex � leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder.

Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living?ĚýPlunderĚýis both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance â€� material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.Ěý]]> 288 Meir Menachem Kaiser 132850803X Patty 0 to-read 3.64 2021 Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
author: Meir Menachem Kaiser
name: Patty
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Arboreality 61259096
A novella expansion of the Sturgeon Award winning short story “An Important Failure.”]]> 117 Rebecca Campbell Patty 0 to-read 3.97 2022 Arboreality
author: Rebecca Campbell
name: Patty
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Girl, Call Home 54359466
With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.

Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.]]> 245 Jasmine Mans 0593197143 Patty 0 to-read 4.44 2021 Black Girl, Call Home
author: Jasmine Mans
name: Patty
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mutual Interest 211004055 A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.

At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents' dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants-not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.

But Vivian's plans require capital, so the two pair up with Squire Clancey, scion of an old American fortune. Together they found Clancey & Schmidt, a preeminent manufacturer of soap, perfume, and candles. When Oscar and Squire fall in love, the trio form a new kind of partnership.

Vivian reaches the pinnacle of her power building Clancey & Schmidt into an empire of personal care products while operating behind the image of both men. But exposure threatens, and all three partners are made aware of how much they have to lose.

For readers of Hernan Diaz's Trust and Colm TĂłibĂ­n's The Magician, with echoes of Gustave Flaubert and E.M. Forster, Mutual Interest is a beguiling story of queer romance, empire, and power.]]> 336 Olivia Wolfgang-Smith 1639733329 Patty 0 to-read 3.65 2025 Mutual Interest
author: Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
name: Patty
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thrust 59089701 carrier, a person who can harness the power of meaningful objects to carry her through time. Sifting through the detritus of a fallen city known as the Brook, she discovers a talisman that will mysteriously connect her with a series of characters from the past two centuries: a French sculptor; a woman of the American underworld; a dictator's daughter; an accused murderer; and a squad of laborers at work on a national monument. Through intricately braided storylines, Laisve must dodge enforcement raids and find her way to the present day, and then, finally, to the early days of her imperfect country, to forge a connection that might save their lives--and their shared dream of freedom.

A dazzling novel of body, spirit, and survival, Thrust will leave no reader unchanged.]]> 352 Lidia Yuknavitch 0525534903 Patty 0 to-read 3.51 2022 Thrust
author: Lidia Yuknavitch
name: Patty
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883]]> 25017
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa � the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster � was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round the planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all � in view of today's new political climate � the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.

Simon Winchester's long experience in the world wandering as well as his knowledge of history and geology give us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event as he brings it telling back to life.]]> 416 Simon Winchester 0060838590 Patty 0 to-read-hoopla 3.88 2003 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
author: Simon Winchester
name: Patty
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read-hoopla
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not the Duke's Darling (Greycourt, #1)]]> 39790291 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt brings us the first book in her sexy and sensual Greycourt Series!

Freya de Moray is many things: a member of the secret order of Wise Women, the daughter of disgraced nobility, and a chaperone living under an assumed name. What she is not is forgiving. So when the Duke of Harlowe, the man who destroyed her brother and led to the downfall of her family, appears at the country house party she's attending, she does what any Wise Woman would do: she starts planning her revenge.

Christopher Renshaw, the Duke of Harlowe, is being blackmailed. Intent on keeping his secrets safe, he agrees to attend a house party where he will put an end to this coercion once and for all. Until he recognizes Freya, masquerading amongst the party revelers, and realizes his troubles have just begun. Freya knows all about his sins—sins he'd much rather forget. But she's also fiery, bold, and sensuous—a temptation he can't resist. When it becomes clear Freya is in grave danger, he'll risk everything to keep her safe. But first, Harlowe will have to earn Freya's trust-by whatever means necessary.

Features a bonus novella from New York Times bestselling author Grace Burrowes!]]> 496 Elizabeth Hoyt 1538763532 Patty 3 3.61 2018 Not the Duke's Darling (Greycourt, #1)
author: Elizabeth Hoyt
name: Patty
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: 2025, romance, historical-romance, ebook, england, faith, family, fathers-and-daughters, fathers-and-sons, fiction, friendship, india, kidnapping, tragedy, trauma, travel, husband-and-wife, marriage, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, death-and-dying, women-writers
review:

]]> How to Age Disgracefully 211183981
A senior citizens� center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from New York Times-bestselling author Clare Pooley

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens� Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.]]> Clare Pooley Patty 0 currently-reading 4.13 2024 How to Age Disgracefully
author: Clare Pooley
name: Patty
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights]]> 214274182 A dazzling YA anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators.

Books are disappearing from shelves across the country.

What does this mean for authors, illustrators, and—most crucially—for young readers?

This bold collection of fiction, memoir, poetry, graphic narratives, essays, and other genres explores book bans through various lenses, and empowers teens to fight back. From moving personal accounts to clever comebacks aimed at censorship, fifteen legendary YA authors and illustrators confront the high-stakes question of what is lost when books are kept from teens.

Contributors include Elana K. Arnold, Nikki Grimes, Ellen Hopkins, Kelly Jensen, Brendan Kiely, Maia Kobabe, Bill Konigsberg, Kyle Lukoff, MariNaomi, Trung LĂŞ Nguyá»…n, Ashley Hope PĂ©rez, Isabel Quintero, Traci Sorell, Robin Stevenson, and Padma Venkatraman; the collection is a star-studded must-read that packs strength and power into every last word.

Striking illustrations from Ignatz-nominated artist Debbie Fong pair perfectly with the searing, impactful narrative. Resources include tips from the Vandegrift Banned Book Club and other teen activists, as well as extensive recommended book lists, a How to Start Your Own Little Free Library flier, and more.]]> 304 Ashley Hope PĂ©rez 082345830X Patty 0 to-read 4.56 2025 Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights
author: Ashley Hope PĂ©rez
name: Patty
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Boxcar Librarian 214325867 🎧Run Time = 13 hours and 20 minutes

A brand-new 2025 release from an author whose writing “historical fiction fans will adore� (New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin): The stories of three women converge in 1936 Montana when editor Millie Lang arrives from DC to work on a series of travel books � only to find a town riddled with mystery, corruption, and secrets.


Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana.

When Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to what happened to Colette Durand.

Inspired by the fascinating, true history of Missoula’s Boxcar Library, the novel blends the story of the strong, courageous women who survived and thrived in the rough and rowdy West with that of the power of standing together to fight for workers� lives. And through it all shines the capacity of books to provide connection and light to those who need it most.]]> 464 Brianna Labuskes 006337630X Patty 0 to-read 4.10 2025 The Boxcar Librarian
author: Brianna Labuskes
name: Patty
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)]]> 54017820 Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...

Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love―and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back� by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.

The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.

Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail, she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.]]> 512 Margaret Owen 1250191904 Patty 0 to-read 4.24 2021 Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)
author: Margaret Owen
name: Patty
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories]]> 55315500
Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency, Never Say You Can’t Survive is the perfect manual for creativity in unprecedented times.]]> 240 Charlie Jane Anders 1250800013 Patty 0 to-read 4.22 2021 Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories
author: Charlie Jane Anders
name: Patty
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Constellation of Minor Bears]]> 199531847 Award-winning author Jen Ferguson has written a powerful story about teens grappling with balancing resentment with enduring friendship—and how to move forward with a life that’s not what they’d imagined.

Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger.

While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.

Determined to go on the trio’s post-graduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger.

Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead. . . .

Discover the evocative storytelling and emotion from the author of The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, which was the winner of the Governor General's Award, a Stonewall Award honor book, and a Morris Award finalist, as well as Those Pink Mountain Nights, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year!]]> 352 Jen Ferguson 0063334224 Patty 0 to-read 4.01 2024 A Constellation of Minor Bears
author: Jen Ferguson
name: Patty
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Information Desk: An Epic 63392295
Novelistic in its sweep, frantically informative, and deeply intimate in its private recollections, Information An Epic wayfares with riveting lyric intensity through an epic array of topics and concerns, including illusion, deception, self-deception, complicity, lecherous coworkers, the composition of pigment, the scattering of seeds, ideas, and capital, and insect infestations spreading within artwork. Along the way, Schiff pauses to invoke three terrifying muses—parasitic wasps—in desperate awe of their powers of precision and generative energy. Information An Epic undertakes a hemorrhaging ekphrastic journey through artifice and the natural world.]]> 144 Robyn Schiff 0143136801 Patty 0 to-read 3.94 2023 Information Desk: An Epic
author: Robyn Schiff
name: Patty
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting (A Lady's Guide, #1)]]> 59656358 Follows the adventures of an entirely unconventional heroine who throws herself into the London Season to find a wealthy husband. But the last thing she expects is to find love...

Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father’s massive debts, she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin.

Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season.

Kitty may be neither accomplished nor especially genteel—but she is utterly single-minded; imbued with cunning and ingenuity, she knows that risk is just part of the game.

The only thing she doesn’t anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn...

This is a frothy pleasure, full of brilliant repartee and enticing wit—one that readers will find an irresistible delight.

]]> 325 Sophie Irwin 0593491343 Patty 0 to-read 3.91 2022 A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting (A Lady's Guide, #1)
author: Sophie Irwin
name: Patty
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Snobs 92230
When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it?

One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as "Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man, descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama, "Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified.]]> 288 Julian Fellowes 0312336934 Patty 0 to-read 3.37 2004 Snobs
author: Julian Fellowes
name: Patty
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction]]> 207293992 A delightful, inspiring, and idea-rich selection of fifty-two of the best, most important short nonfiction works of all time—from Plato to Michael Pollan and Dante to Joan Didion—chosen by historian, lifelong reader, and bestselling author of Don’t Know Much About History. From ancient times to the present day, The World in Books offers a wide-ranging historical education through pleasure reading—and a fantastic introduction to some of the most thought-provoking, profound, and interesting nonfiction works of all time. From Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to Bell Hooks� All About Love, as well as such recent classics as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, Davis’s guide suggests a world of nonfiction books and explains just why they’re so historically meaningful and culturally relevant today. The perfect guide for the modern-day reader, these fifty-two selections provide an ideal way to explore some of the most enduring, influential books ever published, introducing us anew to world-shaping historical figures, events, and ideas.]]> 464 Kenneth C. Davis 1668015595 Patty 0 to-read 3.83 The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction
author: Kenneth C. Davis
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Librarians of Lisbon 208580945 The romance of Casablanca meets the spy world of Ian Fleming in this WWII love story for the ages.In a glittering city of secrets and shadows, love is the most perilous gamble of all. Lisbon 1943. As two American librarians are drawn into a city of dangerous subterfuge and unexpected love affairs, they are forced to choose between their missions and the men they love. Brimming with evocative writing and meticulous research, award-winning author Suzanne Nelson spins a web of secret aliases, sweeping romance, and great sacrifice. Inspired by real historical figures, this is the captivating story of two remarkable young women, their bravery and heartache, and a friendship that withstands the ravages of war.

With World War II raging across Europe, best friends Selene Delmont and Beatrice Sullivan are enlisted by the U.S. Intelligence Office and sent to Lisbon—a sparkling city and hotbed of trouble, harboring exiled royalty, hunted refugees, and spies trading double-edged secrets in seductively dark corners. In official capacity, librarians Selene and Bea have been recruited to catalog the vast mountain of information gathered by the Allies, but by night, both women are undercover agents tasked with infiltrating the Axis spy network.

Where Selene is confident and brash, Bea is bookish and careful. Selene longs to escape her family’s impossible expectations and embrace her independence, while all Bea wants is to heal from heartbreak and keep impulsive Selene out of trouble. But soon, both librarians are caught up in treacherous games of deception alongside two of Lisbon’s most notorious men—the outcast Portuguese baron, Luca Caldeira, and the lethal double-agent, Gable. As Selene charms her way through lavish ballrooms and fêtes with Luca, Bea is plunged into Gable’s shadowy underworld of informants.

Victory depends upon the joint success of their missions, but when an unexpected betrayal throws a carefully spun web of lies into chaos, everything they’ve sacrificed is put at risk. As Selene and Bea are pushed to their breaking points can their friendship, and their hearts, survive the cost of war?]]> 352 Suzanne Nelson 1638931658 Patty 0 to-read 3.91 The Librarians of Lisbon
author: Suzanne Nelson
name: Patty
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began]]> 61284027 A groundbreaking, triumphant investigation of the uterus--from birth to death, in sickness and in health, throughout history and into our possible future--from midwife and acclaimed writer Leah Hazard

The size of a clenched fist and the shape of a light bulb--with no less power and potential. Every person on Earth began inside a uterus, but how much do we really understand about the womb?

Bringing together medical history, scientific discoveries, and journalistic exploration, Leah Hazard embarks on a journey in search of answers about the body's most miraculous and contentious organ. We meet the people who have shaped our relationship with the uterus: doctors and doulas, yoni steamers and fibroid-tea hawkers, legislators who would regulate the organ's very existence, and boundary-breaking researchers on the frontiers of the field.

With a midwife's warmth and humor, Hazard tackles pressing questions: Is the womb connected to the brain? Can cervical crypts store sperm? Do hysterectomies affect sexual pleasure? How can smart tampons help health care? Why does endometriosis take so long to be diagnosed? Will external gestation be possible in our lifetime? How does gender-affirming hormone therapy affect the uterus? Why does medical racism impact reproductive healthcare?

A clear-eyed and inclusive examination of the cultural prejudices and assumptions that have made the uterus so poorly understood for centuries, Womb takes a fresh look at an organ that brings us pain and pleasure--a small part of our bodies that has a larger impact than we ever thought possible.]]> 336 Leah Hazard 0063157624 Patty 0 abandoned 4.09 2023 Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began
author: Leah Hazard
name: Patty
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage]]> 55523008 223 Anne Lamott 0593189701 Patty 3 4.25 2021 Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage
author: Anne Lamott
name: Patty
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: non-fiction, ebook, 2025, california, berkeley, marriage, husband-and-wife, inspirational, beauty, women-writers, writing, family, friendship, mothers-and-sons, alcholism, depression, climate-crisis
review:
I expect too much from Lamont’s short books. This was fine.
]]> <![CDATA[The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year]]> 204982650 Knives Out gets a holiday rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers romance-mystery fromĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Ally Carter.

The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room three days before Christmas.

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan

She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.

He’s Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)

But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.

That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.

She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 303 Ally Carter 0063276739 Patty 4 4.11 2024 The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
author: Ally Carter
name: Patty
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: new-york-city, ebook, mystery, death-and-dying, england, family, fiction, friendship, poor, writing, work, women, women-in-mass-media, women-writers, vacation, cold, books-about-books, books-and-publishing, books-and-reading, florida, arizona, college
review:

]]> A Magical Girl Retires 197448796 A millennial turned magical girl must combat climate change and credit card debt in this delightful, witty, and wildly imaginative ode to magical girl manga.

Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge.

But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white—her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone.

But the young woman’s initial excitement turns to frustration when she learns being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it’s portrayed in stories. It isn’t just destiny—it’s work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical, she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card—which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn’t a monster or an intergalactic war. It’s global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too.

Park Seolyeon reimagines classic fantasy tropes in a novel that explores real-world challenges that are both deeply personal and universal: the search for meaning and the desire to do good in a world that feels like it’s ending. A fun, fast-paced, and enchanting narrative that sparkles thanks to award-nominated translator Anton Hur, A Magical Girl Retires reminds us that we are all magical girls—that fighting evil by moonlight and winning love by daylight can be anyone's game.

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur.]]> 160 Park Seolyeon 0063373262 Patty 3 3.57 2022 A Magical Girl Retires
author: Park Seolyeon
name: Patty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: 2025, 2025-woc, fiction, friendship, freedom, future, magic, korea, women, women-writers, work, climate-crisis
review:

]]> Impossible Creatures 216683130
Mal and Christopher embark on a wild adventure, racing from island to island, searching for someone who can explain why the magic is fading and why magical creatures are suddenly dying. They consult sphinxes, battle kraken, and negotiate with dragons. But the closer they get to the dark truth of what's happening, the clearer it becomes: no one else can fix this. If the Archipelago is to be saved, Mal and Christopher will have to do it themselves.]]> 9 Katherine Rundell 1526661594 Patty 5 4.02 2023 Impossible Creatures
author: Katherine Rundell
name: Patty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: 2025, ebook, audiobook, faith, family, fantasy, fathers-and-sons, fiction, fighting, fire, flying, forgiveness, freedom, friendship, funerals, grandparents, grief, death-and-dying, magic, mothers-and-sons, dragons, mermaids, creativity, women-writers, juvenile-fiction
review:
So, so good. May have to listen again.
]]> Grace Notes 319556 Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna � estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated field. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand.]]> 284 Bernard MacLaverty 0393318419 Patty 5 Such a beautiful ending. 3.77 1997 Grace Notes
author: Bernard MacLaverty
name: Patty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/09
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: music, 2023, faith, family, fathers-and-daughters, feminism, fiction, friendship, funerals, scotland, ireland, mothers-and-daughters, motherhood, childbirth, children, pregnancy, prejudice, women, work, alcholism
review:
Such a beautiful ending.
]]> The Little Virtues: Essays 36242447 In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.


"A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.' � The New York Times Book Review]]> 170 Natalia Ginzburg 1628729023 Patty 0 abandoned 3.87 1962 The Little Virtues: Essays
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: Patty
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: abandoned
review:
Wrong book for right now. May be I will return.
]]> <![CDATA[Re:Fashion Wardrobe, The: Sew your own stylish, sustainable clothes]]> 61105670
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Lifestyle books 2023.

Every year, tons of clothing are sent to landfill, much of it owing to fast fashion and our desire to throw away clothes that aren’t considered 'fashionable'. In this book, learn how to alter or completely deconstruct once-loved clothes to create edited or entirely new garments and accessories that are not only chic but saving the planet.]]> 176 Portia Lawrie 1782218750 Patty 0 2024
Shirt in process. I am declaring this book read.

]]> 4.28 Re:Fashion Wardrobe, The: Sew your own stylish, sustainable clothes
author: Portia Lawrie
name: Patty
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2024
review:
Need to buy a men's shirt and then I will check this out of the library again.

Shirt in process. I am declaring this book read.


]]> <![CDATA[Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad]]> 41452792 Keep Working. Keep Playing. Keep Creating. In his previous books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, both New York Times bestsellers, Austin Kleon gave readers the keys to unlock their creativity and showed them how to become known. Now he offers his most inspiring work yet, with ten simple rules for how to stay creative, focused, and true to yourself—for life. The creative life is not a linear journey to a finish line, it’s a loop—so find a daily routine, because today is the only day that matters. Disconnect from the world to connect with yourself—sometimes you just have to switch into airplane mode. Keep Going celebrates getting outdoors and taking a walk (as director Ingmar Bergman told his daughter, ”The demons hate fresh airâ€�). Pay attention, and especially pay attention to what you pay attention to. Worry less about getting things done, and more about the worth of what you’re doing. Instead of focusing on making your mark, work to leave things better than you found them.Keep Going and its timeless, practical, and ethical principles are for anyone trying to sustain a meaningful and productive life. Ěý]]> 224 Austin Kleon 1523507861 Patty 4 4.42 2019 Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad
author: Austin Kleon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: ebook, art, art-history, artists, craft, work, illustrated, non-fiction, inspirational, 2025
review:
Kleon reminds me that I do art and I should take my art seriously.
]]> Things in the Basement 63005199 From New York Times bestselling author Ben Hatke comes Things in the Basement, a young readers graphic novel about Milo, a young boy who discovers a portal to a secret world in his basement.

It was supposed to just be a normal basement—some storage boxes, dust, you know, the usual basement stuff. But when Milo is sent by his mother to fetch a sock from the basement of the historic home they've moved into, Milo finds a door in the back that he's never seen before. Turns out that the basement of his house is enormous. In fact, there is a whole world down there. As Milo travels ever deeper into the Basement World, he meets the many Things that live in the shadows and gloom...and he learns that to face his fears he must approach even the strangest creatures with kindness.]]> 240 Ben Hatke 1250347351 Patty 3 4.20 2023 Things in the Basement
author: Ben Hatke
name: Patty
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: graphic-novel, juvenile-fiction, illustrated, ebook, family, fantasy, fiction, friendship, mothers-and-sons, twins, twitter, speculative-fiction, monsters, siblings, brothers-and-sisters, humor, 2025
review:
What fun. The story and drawings are wonderful
]]> <![CDATA[Elizabeth of East Hampton (For the Love of Austen #2)]]> 199898023
But after putting her own dreams on hold to help save her family’s failing bakery, she’s still surfing the same beach every morning and waiting for something, anything, to change. She’s not holding her breath though, not even when her sister starts flirting with the hot new bachelor in town, Charlie Pierce, and he introduces Lizzy to his even hotter friend.

Will Darcy is everything Lizzy Bennet is not. Aloof, arrogant…and rich. Of course, he’s never cared about money. In fact, it’s number one on his long list of things that irk him. Number two? His friend Charlie’s insistence on setting him up with his new girlfriend’s sharp-tongued sister. Lizzy Bennet is all wrong for him, from her money-hungry family to her uncanny ability to speak to him as bluntly as he does everyone else. But then maybe that’s why he can’t stop thinking about her.

Lizzy is sure Will hates everybody. He thinks she willfully misunderstands them. Yet, just as they strike an uneasy truce, mistakes threaten Charlie and Jane’s romance, with Will and Lizzy caught in the undertow. Between a hurricane and a hypocritical aunt, a drunken voicemail and a deceptive party promoter, the two must sift through the gossip and lies to protect the happiness of everyone they love—even if it means sacrificing their own. But when the truth also forces them to see each other in an entirely new light, they must swallow their pride to learn that love is a lot like surfing: sometimes the only way to survive is to let yourself fall.]]> 382 Audrey Bellezza Patty 4 2025 Could not put this one down. 4.03 Elizabeth of East Hampton (For the Love of Austen #2)
author: Audrey Bellezza
name: Patty
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025
review:
Could not put this one down.
]]> Ninety-Nine Stories of God 30547812 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding the Supreme Being.


This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.]]> 161 Joy Williams 1941040365 Patty 3 3.79 2013 Ninety-Nine Stories of God
author: Joy Williams
name: Patty
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: god, women, women-and-religion, women-writers, short-stories, religion, relationships, spirituality, faith, family, fiction, friendship, speculative-fiction, 2025
review:

]]> The Names 217245618
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Patty 0 under-consideration 4.35 2025 The Names
author: Florence Knapp
name: Patty
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: under-consideration
review:

]]> Fleishman Is in Trouble 41880602
But Toby's new life � liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night � is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know � she won't answer his texts or calls.

Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.]]> 373 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0525510877 Patty 0 3.61 2019 Fleishman Is in Trouble
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Patty
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: tournament-of-books, abandoned
review:
Although I now know from following the match ups at the Tournaments of Books that there are characters in this novel that I might like, I really don't like Toby Fleishman. This book is out of the ToB and so I am saving my reading time for something I like better.
]]> Love Walked In 8310057 From the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Us Shine comes a “bewitching, warmhearted grown-up fairy tale about old movies, charming princes, and finding happily ever after in the place where you’d least expect it� (Jennifer Weiner).When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. But little does she know that her newfound love is only the harbinger of greater changes to come. Meanwhile, across town, Clare Hobbs—eleven years old and abandoned by her erratic mother—goes looking for her lost father. She crosses paths with Cornelia while meeting with him at the café, and the two women form an improbable friendship that carries them through the unpredictable currents of love and life.]]> 332 Marisa de los Santos 1101213353 Patty 4 4.02 2005 Love Walked In
author: Marisa de los Santos
name: Patty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/19
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: 2023, ebook, england, philadelphia, virginia, loss, love, family, fathers-and-daughters, fiction, friendship, funerals, death-and-dying, mothers-and-daughters, motherhood, travel, tragedy, marriage, divorce, brothers-and-sisters, sisters, siblings, mental-health, neighbors, women-writers, middle-school
review:
Love wins. That is the best part of a wonderful story.
]]> Like a Love Story 40190305
Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart--and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.]]> 432 Abdi Nazemian Patty 4 “Love might just happen to them, but for us, it's not as easy. For us, it's a fight. Maybe someday it won't be. Maybe someday love will just be...love. But for now, love is that four-letter word they forgot we care about ever since they discovered that four-letter word, AIDS, the disease formerly known as GRID.�

“Tell your story until it becomes woven into the fabric of our story. Write about the joys and the pain and every event and every artist who inspires you to dream. Tell your story, because if you don't, it could be wiped out. No one tells our stories for us. And one more thing. If you see an elderly person walking down the street, or across from you at a coffee shop, don't look away from them, don't dismiss them, and don't just ask them how they're doing. Ask them where they have been instead. And then listen. Because there's no future without a past.�

This young adult novel is set in 1989-1990. I had two small kids during that time and I was consumed with rearing them, keeping my job and just juggling life. I knew about the AIDS crisis. I had read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. However, it did not have a lot of impact on my life.

This story reminds me of why I should have been paying more attention. Real people were dying because the majority, which included me, didn’t care enough. I am sorry that I didn’t pay attention. I am grateful to Nazemian for writing this story that put faces on the AIDS epidemic.

I am especially grateful that he has personalized this crisis for the young adult reader. History is best understood by knowing that people were involved with the events. It is not faceless statistics that make up history. Real people loved, fought and died in the major events of our lives. It is easier to dismiss these things if you can’t relate to those who were affected.

I read this because it was about LGBTQIA+ stories. There has been a lot of banning books lately. I want to support the authors and publishers who continue to tell these vital stories. I hope the banning of books slows down, but I don’t have my hopes up.]]> 4.25 2019 Like a Love Story
author: Abdi Nazemian
name: Patty
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/25
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: 2022, love, hiv, lgbtq, illness, death-and-dying, faith, fathers-and-daughters, fathers-and-sons, feminism, family, france, funerals, friendship, iran, canada, cancer, new-york-city, maryland, paris, san-francisco, mothers-and-daughters, mothers-and-sons, ya-fiction, young-adult, american-history, fashion, high-school, banned-books
review:
“Love might just happen to them, but for us, it's not as easy. For us, it's a fight. Maybe someday it won't be. Maybe someday love will just be...love. But for now, love is that four-letter word they forgot we care about ever since they discovered that four-letter word, AIDS, the disease formerly known as GRID.�

“Tell your story until it becomes woven into the fabric of our story. Write about the joys and the pain and every event and every artist who inspires you to dream. Tell your story, because if you don't, it could be wiped out. No one tells our stories for us. And one more thing. If you see an elderly person walking down the street, or across from you at a coffee shop, don't look away from them, don't dismiss them, and don't just ask them how they're doing. Ask them where they have been instead. And then listen. Because there's no future without a past.�

This young adult novel is set in 1989-1990. I had two small kids during that time and I was consumed with rearing them, keeping my job and just juggling life. I knew about the AIDS crisis. I had read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. However, it did not have a lot of impact on my life.

This story reminds me of why I should have been paying more attention. Real people were dying because the majority, which included me, didn’t care enough. I am sorry that I didn’t pay attention. I am grateful to Nazemian for writing this story that put faces on the AIDS epidemic.

I am especially grateful that he has personalized this crisis for the young adult reader. History is best understood by knowing that people were involved with the events. It is not faceless statistics that make up history. Real people loved, fought and died in the major events of our lives. It is easier to dismiss these things if you can’t relate to those who were affected.

I read this because it was about LGBTQIA+ stories. There has been a lot of banning books lately. I want to support the authors and publishers who continue to tell these vital stories. I hope the banning of books slows down, but I don’t have my hopes up.
]]> The Tiny Journalist 41745817 The Tiny Journalist put a human face on war and the violence that divides us from each other.]]> 112 Naomi Shihab Nye 1942683731 Patty 0 to-read 4.28 2019 The Tiny Journalist
author: Naomi Shihab Nye
name: Patty
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Patty 0 to-read 3.70 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Patty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When the Angels Left the Old Country]]> 56852512 A queer immigrant fairytale about individual purpose, the fluid nature of identity, and the power of love to change and endure.

Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.]]> 400 Sacha Lamb 1646142411 Patty 3 4.51 2022 When the Angels Left the Old Country
author: Sacha Lamb
name: Patty
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: young-adult, ya-fiction, yiddish, language, humor, travel, tradition, 2025, women-writers, women-and-religion
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness, #3)]]> 101141096
After achieving knighthood, Alanna leaves the capital city to explore the desert near the kingdom’s borders. When the local Bazhir people discover her, they charge her with trespassing and sentence her to a duel to the death. But when Alanna wins, she’s inducted into the tribe—and soon after, she becomes the tribe’s first female shaman.

Still, dire challenges lie ahead. Alanna must convince the Bazhir to change their ancient customs for their sake and for the sake of all Tortall.]]> 288 Tamora Pierce 1665937432 Patty 3 3.56 1986 The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness, #3)
author: Tamora Pierce
name: Patty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: ya-fiction, young-adult, fantasy, fathers-and-daughters, fiction, fighting, friendship, ebook, speculative-fiction, 2025, women, women-writers, knights
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Native Tongue (Native Tongue, #1)]]> 285563 Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists--a small, clannish group of families--have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.

Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control.]]> 327 Suzette Haden Elgin 1876756055 Patty 0 to-read 4.00 1984 Native Tongue (Native Tongue, #1)
author: Suzette Haden Elgin
name: Patty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What to Do When You Get Dumped]]> 211004025
After Suzy Hopkins's husband of thirty years unexpectedly left her to pursue an old flame, her grief was so overwhelming that she thought her own heart might stop. How do you take the first step forward after losing such an integral part of your life?

In What to Do When You Get Dumped, the mother-daughter duo of Hopkins and her New Yorker–illustrator extraordinaire daughter Hallie Bateman offer an incisive, tender, appealingly illustrated guide to “unbreaking� your heart. Using a countdown from the moment you're dumped, the book offers humor and hope as it guides readers on the journey to find new meaning and purpose in a life that's yours alone.

Lighthearted, impactful, and deeply consoling, What to Do When You Get Dumped provides the wisdom to emerge from a breakup smarter, stronger, and with the unshakable knowledge that you are worthy of lasting love.]]> 144 Suzy Hopkins 163973189X Patty 0 to-read 4.09 What to Do When You Get Dumped
author: Suzy Hopkins
name: Patty
average rating: 4.09
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> Bibliophobia: A Memoir 212806663 “A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.”—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners�.

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.]]> 240 Sarah Chihaya 059359472X Patty 0 to-read 3.77 2025 Bibliophobia: A Memoir
author: Sarah Chihaya
name: Patty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> These Summer Storms 220239075 New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean’s first foray into contemporary fiction, with a sharp, sexy novel about a wealthy New England family's long-overdue reckoning with hidden desires, destructive secrets…and one week that threatens to tear them apart

Alice isn't like the other Storm siblings. While the rest stayed to battle for their parents' approval, attention, and untold billions, she left, building her own life beyond the family’s name and influence. Nothing could induce her to come back, except the shocking death of her larger-than-life father. Now back on the family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast, she plans to keep her head down, pay the last of her respects, and leave the minute the funeral is over.

Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his widow and their grown children a final challenge--an inheritance game designed to humiliate, devastate, and unravel the Storm family in ways both petty and life-altering. The rules of the game are clear: stay on the island for one week, complete the tasks, receive the inheritance.

One week on Storm Island is an impossible task for Alice. Every corner of the sprawling old house is bursting dysfunctional chaos: Her older sister’s secret love affair. Her brother’s incessant mansplaining. Her sister-in-law’s unapologetic greed. Her younger sister’s obsession with "vibes". Her mother’s penchant for stirring up competition between her children. And all under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s enigmatic, unfairly good-looking, second-in-command. It will be a miracle if Alice manages to escape the week unscathed.

A story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family, this luscious novel is at once deliciously clever and surprisingly tender, exploring past secrets, present truths, and futures forged in the wake of wild summer storms.]]> 400 Sarah MacLean 0593972252 Patty 0 to-read 4.30 2025 These Summer Storms
author: Sarah MacLean
name: Patty
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> The Homemade God 219520756 Family is everything, even when it falls apart.

After the sudden death of a renowned artist, his four adult children travel to Italy to sort out his affairs with his much-younger wife, in this moving novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

World-famous artist Vic Kemp has relied on his four children ever since their mother died when they were young. Netta, the oldest, is a litigator who often serves as co-parent to her siblings; Susan, a housewife who cooks and cleans for both her husband and her father; Goose's own thwarted artistic ambitions have left him resigned to a job in Vic's studio; and Iris, the baby, drops everything the moment her father calls.Ěý

When Vic summons the siblings with the promise of big news, they hope their father is about to tell them he has finished the mysterious masterpiece he claims will be the capstone to his career. Instead, he announces he’s getting remarried.ĚýBella-Mae, his wife to be,Ěýis apparently beautiful, a fellow artist—and twenty-seven to his seventy-six years. When his children dare to express concern, Vic decamps with Bella-Mae to his summer home in Italy. Six weeks later, he is found dead. There is no sign of his will, or his promised final painting.Ěý

Netta, Susan, Goose, and Iris gather at the house on Lake Orta to piece together what happened and prepare to bring their father’s body home. They spend the summer in a waiting game, living under the same roof as Bella-Mae, and forced to confront Vic's legacy and the buried wounds they have incurred as his children. So who is Bella-Mae? Is she the woman their father believed her to be? Or is she the force that will destroy the family for good? How long can their old bonds hold?Ěý

With sparkling wit, compassion and tender insight, The Homemade God explores memory, identity, grief, healing, and the bonds of siblinghood—what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to find a new way forward.]]> 336 Rachel Joyce 0593448294 Patty 0 to-read 3.92 The Homemade God
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Patty
average rating: 3.92
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[This Princess Kills Monsters: The Misadventures of a Fairy-Tale Stepsister]]> 219301793 A princess with a mostly useless magical talent takes on horrible monsters, a dozen identical masked heroes, and a talking lion in a quest to save a kingdom—and herself—in this affectionate satire of the Grimm Brothers� fairy tale The Twelve Huntsmen.

Someone wants to murder Princess Melilot. This is sadly normal.

Melilot is sick of being ordered to go on dangerous quests by her domineering stepmother. Especially since she always winds up needing to be rescued by her more magically talented stepsisters. And now, she's been commanded to marry a king she’s never met.

When hideous spider-wolves attack her on the journey to meet her husband-to-be, she is once again rescued—but this time, by twelve eerily similar-looking masked huntsmen. Soon, she has to contend with near-constant attempts on her life, a talking lion that sets bewildering gender tests, and a king who can't recognize his true love when she puts on a pair of trousers. And all the while, she has to fight her growing attraction to not only one of the huntsmen, but also her fiancé’s extremely attractive sister.

If Melilot can't unravel the mysteries and rescue herself from peril, kingdoms will fall. Worse, she could end up married to someone she doesn’t love.]]> 416 Ry Herman 0593733088 Patty 0 to-read 4.26 2025 This Princess Kills Monsters: The Misadventures of a Fairy-Tale Stepsister
author: Ry Herman
name: Patty
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
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