en-US Sun, 09 Mar 2025 13:03:48 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 18247597
There is only one place left to run. The tower of the swallow is waiting...]]> 448 Andrzej Sapkowski 1473211565 Michael 3 sf-fantasy 4.17 1997
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 49933576 'Highly stimulating ... Kraftwerk is a pleasure to read' Jon Savage, New Statesman

The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape

'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their D端sseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, modernist Bauhaus aesthetics and Rhineland industrialisation - even human and machine - to change the course of modern music. This is the story of Kraftwerk the cultural phenomenon, who turned electronic music into avant-garde concept art and created the soundtrack to our digital age.]]> 336 Uwe Sch端tte 0141986751 Michael 0 currently-reading, music 3.65 2018
author: Uwe Sch端tte
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: currently-reading, music
review:

]]> 48467 This is an alternate-cover edition for ISBN 9780374530631)

The American short story master Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.]]> 256 Flannery O'Connor 0374530637 Michael 4 literature 3.84 1952
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Michael
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 60747213
The brilliant Shimada Kiyoshi arrives on the scene, but as he investigates the seemingly impossible events of that evening, death strikes again, and again...

Can Shimada get to the truth before the killer gets to him? And can you solve the mystery of the Mill House Murders before he does?]]> 253 Yukito Ayatsuji 1782278338 Michael 4 3.63 1988
author: Yukito Ayatsuji
name: Michael
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 6043781 The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher.
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf.

Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil.

As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all - and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Witcher returns in this sequel to The Last Wish, as the inhabitants of his world become embroiled in a state of total war.]]> 398 Andrzej Sapkowski Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.05 1994
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 344623 304 Jo Walton 0765349094 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.85 2003
author: Jo Walton
name: Michael
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 15818498
Now, for the first time, their story is told by one of their own. In Unknown Pleasures, founding member and bass player Peter Hook recounts how four young men from Manchester and Salisbury, with makeshift instruments and a broken-down van, rose from the punk scene to create a haunting, atmospheric music that would define a generation. Peter talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis; the band's friendships and fallouts; the evolution of their sound and image; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend, including Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and producer Martin Hannett. Told with surprising humor and vivid detail, Unknown Pleasures is the book Joy Division fans have awaited for decades.]]> 416 Peter Hook 0062222562 Michael 4 music 4.13 2012
author: Peter Hook
name: Michael
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: music
review:

]]> 18656031 The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher

The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a protector of those in need, a defender against powerful and dangerous monsters that prey on men in dark times.

But now that dark times have fallen upon the world, Geralt is helpless until he has recovered from his injuries.

While war rages across all of the lands, the future of magic is under threat and those sorcerers who survive are determined to protect it. It's an impossible situation in which to find one girl - Ciri, the heiress to the throne of Cintra, has vanished - until a rumor places her in the Niflgaard court, preparing to marry the Emperor.

Injured or not, Geralt has a rescue mission on his hands.

The Witcher returns in this action-packed sequel to The Time of Contempt.]]> 349 Andrzej Sapkowski 0316219185 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.21 1996
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 30338791 One of T.S. Eliot���s earliest, and most significant works.

A great achievement of modernist literature, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock takes the form of the complex musings of the titular Prufrock as he considers life and his role in it. The poem draws heavily on allusion to classical works, including Dante���s [ Comedy' (1320)|6656] and Shakespeare���s [ (1601)|1589254].

[ Elliot|18540] was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Born in 1888 in St. Louis (MO, USA), he is considered one of the 20th century's major poets, and a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry."In ten years' time," wrote Edmund Wilson in [ Castle (1931)|350271], "Elliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English." In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Price "for his work as a trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry."]]> 67 T.S. Eliot 1551999218 Michael 5 poetry 4.30 1915
author: T.S. Eliot
name: Michael
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1915
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 60567943
This place is shrouded in folklore���old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who was not quite a child.

Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed.

Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something.

Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds���and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.

As the truth comes to the surface and the darkness moves in, Pearl must rethink everything she knew���and risk what she holds most dear.]]> 408 C.J. Cooke 0008515905 Michael 4 horror 3.93 2022
author: C.J. Cooke
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 45448133
Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep���s utopian influence���until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seep-tech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.

Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina chases after a young boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind.]]> 203 Chana Porter 1641290862 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.64 2020
author: Chana Porter
name: Michael
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 76740
Ben Reichs heads a huge 24th century business empire, spanning the solar system. He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.

]]> 250 Alfred Bester Michael 3 sf-fantasy 3.98 1953
author: Alfred Bester
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Michael 3 childrens-books 4.37 1928
author: A.A. Milne
name: Michael
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: childrens-books
review:

]]> 54578544
Woods play a crucial and recurring role in horror, fantasy, the Gothic and the weird. They are places in which strange things happen, where it is easy to lose your way. Supernatural creatures thrive in the thickets. Trees reach into underworlds of pagan myth and magic. Forests are full of ghosts.

Lining the path through this realm of folklore and fear are twelve stories from across Britain, telling tales of whispering voices and maddening sights from deep in the Yorkshire Dales to the ancient hills of Gwent and the eerie quiet of the forests of Dartmoor. Immerse yourself in this collection of classic tales celebrating the enduring power of our natural spaces to enthral and terrorise our senses.]]> 238 John Miller 0712353429 Michael 3 horror 3.51 2020
author: John Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 386372
Death is the Grim Reaper of the Discworld, a black-robed skeleton with a scythe who ushers souls into the next world. He is also fond of cats and endlessly baffled by humanity. Soon Death is yearning to experience what humanity really has to offer, but to do that, he'll need to hire some help.

It's an offer Mort can't refuse. As Death's apprentice he'll have free board, use of the company horse���and being dead isn't compulsory. It's a dream job���until Mort falls in love with Death's daughter, Ysabell, and discovers that your boss can be a killer on your love life���]]> 243 Terry Pratchett 0061020680 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.24 1987
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 14781491 The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher
Geralt is a witcher: guardian of the innocent; protector of those in need; a defender, in dark times, against some of the most frightening creatures of myth and legend. His task, now, is to protect Ciri. A child of prophecy, she will have the power to change the world for good or for ill -- but only if she lives to use it.

A coup threatens the Wizard's Guild.
War breaks out across the lands.
A serious injury leaves Geralt fighting for his life...
... and Ciri, in whose hands the world's fate rests, has vanished...

The Witcher returns in this sequel to Blood of Elves.


The Witcher series
The Last Wish
The Sword of Destiny
Blood of Elves
The Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire

The Malady and Other Stories: An Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler (e-only)]]> 331 Andrzej Sapkowski 0316219134 Michael 3 sf-fantasy 4.10 1995
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 55711617
That���s not the only thing that���s getting carved up, though ��� this, Jade knows, is the start of a slasher. But what kind? Who���s wearing the mask? Jade���s got an encyclopedic recall of every horror movie on the shelf, but��� will that help her survive? Can she get a final girl trained enough to stop all this from happening? Does she even want to?

Isn���t a slasher exactly what her hometown deserves?

This new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones, called ���one of our most talented living writers��� by Tommy Orange, explores the changing landscape of the West through his distinct voice of sharp humor and prophetic violence.

Go up the mountain to Proofrock. See if you���ve got what it takes ��� see if your heart, too, might be a chainsaw.]]> 405 Stephen Graham Jones 1982137630 Michael 4 horror 3.52 2021
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a na誰ve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women ��� and how they might be improved.

Collects:
���The Yellow Wallpaper
���Three Thanksgivings
���The Cottagette
���T顎姻稼艶糸
���Making a Change
���If I Were a Man
���Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Michael 5 literature 4.05 1892
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 34506 277 Terry Pratchett 0061020702 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.98 1986
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 2122
This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand���s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction���that man���s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...

���A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.������The New York Times]]> 704 Ayn Rand Michael 2 literature 3.87 1943
author: Ayn Rand
name: Michael
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1943
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 133793
Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story���which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album���is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.]]> 304 Helen Prejean 0679751319 Michael 4 other-nonfiction 4.14 1993
author: Helen Prejean
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: other-nonfiction
review:

]]> 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange���s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Michael 4 horror 3.69 2020
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 18077752
Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X���what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X���and who may have been corrupted by it?

In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound���or terrifying.]]> 341 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104115 Michael 3 sf-fantasy 3.66 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Michael
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 29127 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451450524

She was magical, beautiful beyond belief���and completely alone...

The unicorn had lived since before memory in a forest where death could touch nothing. Maidens who caught a glimpse of her glory were blessed by enchantment they would never forget. But outside her wondrous realm, dark whispers and rumours carried a message she could not ignore: "Unicorns are gone from the world."

Aided by a bumbling magician and an indomitable spinster, she set out to learn the truth. but she feared even her immortal wisdom meant nothing in a world where a mad king's curse and terror incarnate lived only to stalk the last unicorn to her doom...]]> 294 Peter S. Beagle Michael 3 sf-fantasy 4.16 1968
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: Michael
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers���but it���s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.79 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Michael
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 18077769 The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X���a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization���has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

John Rodr鱈guez (aka "Control") is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he's pledged to serve.

In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Area X's most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.]]> 341 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104107 Michael 3 sf-fantasy 3.54 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Michael
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 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, Tan辿 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 Michael 5 sf-fantasy 4.18 2019
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Michael
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 78130090 An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want

Kathleen Hanna���s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like ���Rebel Girl��� and ���Double Dare Ya��� are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna���s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul足tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk ���girl band��� in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful���and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.]]> 326 Kathleen Hanna 0062825232 Michael 4 music 4.40 2024
author: Kathleen Hanna
name: Michael
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: music
review:

]]> 40603587
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4]]> 400 Andrzej Sapkowski Michael 4 sf-fantasy, rhetoric 4.12 1993
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: sf-fantasy, rhetoric
review:

]]> 17800 Alternate cover edition here.

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.]]> 393 Haruki Murakami 0099448769 Michael 4 literature 4.06 1988
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 268437 368 John M. Ford Michael 3 sf-fantasy 3.75 1983
author: John M. Ford
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 259836 This Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy adventure is the first installment in the beloved Dragonlance Chronicles, set in the magical world of Krynn.

Once merely creatures of legend, the dragons have returned to Krynn. But with their arrival comes the departure of the old gods���and all healing magic. As war threatens to engulf the land, lifelong friends reunite for an adventure that will change their lives and shape their world forever . . .

When Tanis, Sturm, Caramon, Raistlin, Flint, and Tasslehoff see a woman use a blue crystal staff to heal a villager, they wonder if it's a sign the gods have not abandoned them after all. Fueled by this glimmer of hope, the Companions band together to uncover the truth behind the gods' absence���though they aren't the only ones with an interest in the staff. The Seekers, a new religious order, wants the artifact for their own ends, believing it will help them replace the gods and overtake the continent of Ansalon. Now, the Companions must assume the unlikely roles of heroes if they hope to prevent the staff from falling into the hands of darkness.

Lifelong friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales of strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their secrets. Not then. Not until a chance encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman, who bears a magical crystal staff, draws the companions deeper into the shadows, forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.

No one expected them to be heroes.

Least of all, them.]]> 444 Margaret Weis 0786915749 Michael 2 sf-fantasy 4.01 1984
author: Margaret Weis
name: Michael
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:
This is enjoyable enough, but the writing is poorly executed. After finishing this, I'm in no hurry to find the second volume of the series.
]]> 34507 240 Terry Pratchett 0060855908 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.06 1987
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/30
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 57224204
Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka���s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a ���thrilling satire��� (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]> 386 Shehan Karunatilaka 1908745908 Michael 4 literature 3.89 2022
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 28209634 Autonomous features a rakish female pharmaceutical pirate named Jack who traverses the world in her own submarine. A notorious anti-patent scientist who has styled herself as a Robin Hood heroine fighting to bring cheap drugs to the poor, Jack���s latest drug is leaving a trail of lethal overdoses across what used to be North America���a drug that compels people to become addicted to their work.

On Jack���s trail are an unlikely pair: an emotionally shut-down military agent and his partner, Paladin, a young military robot, who fall in love against all expectations. Autonomous alternates between the activities of Jack and her co-conspirators, and Elias and Paladin, as they all race to stop a bizarre drug epidemic that is tearing apart lives, causing trains to crash, and flooding New York City.]]> 303 Annalee Newitz 0765392070 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.52 2017
author: Annalee Newitz
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Michael 4 literature 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 285092
Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it���even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behaves as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can't move on. He's stuck in a really deep groove���and it's called Laura. Soon, Rob's asking himself some big questions: about love, about life���and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.]]> 323 Nick Hornby 1573225517 Michael 4 literature 3.92 1995
author: Nick Hornby
name: Michael
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience���she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us���and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now���and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Michael 4 other-nonfiction 4.21 2023
author: Naomi Klein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: other-nonfiction
review:

]]> 59593576
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it���s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we���re never getting them back.

Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker���s last-known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s���a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state���Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they���re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?]]> 336 Ned Beauman 1641294124 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.77
author: Ned Beauman
name: Michael
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 38787
As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro P叩ramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel Garc鱈a M叩rquez. To read Pedro P叩ramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.]]> 124 Juan Rulfo 0802133908 Michael 5 literature 4.06 1955
author: Juan Rulfo
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he���ll enroll in Oxford University���s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation���also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working���the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars���has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.17 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/12
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 60581087
Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.]]> 385 Cormac McCarthy 0593535227 Michael 4 cormac-mccarthy, literature 3.58 2022
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Michael
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/17
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: cormac-mccarthy, literature
review:

]]> 17717
Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn from various books of his published over the years. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan, and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography.]]> 260 Jorge Luis Borges 0811200124 Michael 4 literature 4.48 1962
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Michael
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 44055880 #1 International and New York Times bestselling author Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything, makes the case for a Green New Deal--explaining how bold climate action can be a blueprint for a just and thriving society.

For more than twenty years, Naomi Klein has been the foremost chronicler of the economic war waged on both people and planet--and an unapologetic champion of a sweeping environmental agenda with justice at its center. In lucid, elegant dispatches from the frontlines of contemporary natural disaster, she pens surging, indispensable essays for a wide public: prescient advisories and dire warnings of what future awaits us if we refuse to act, as well as hopeful glimpses of a far better future. On Fire gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of our immediate political and economic choices.

These long-form essays show Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one, as well. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of "perpetual now," to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of "climate barbarism," this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink.

With reports spanning from the ghostly Great Barrier Reef, to the annual smoke-choked skies of the Pacific Northwest, to post-hurricane Puerto Rico, to a Vatican attempting an unprecedented "ecological conversion," Klein makes the case that we will rise to the existential challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis.

An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal.]]> 320 Naomi Klein 0735279225 Michael 4 environmental-writings 4.17 2019
author: Naomi Klein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/16
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: environmental-writings
review:

]]> 39926 368 Naomi Wolf 0060512180 Michael 4 other-nonfiction 3.90 1990
author: Naomi Wolf
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/05
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: other-nonfiction
review:

]]> 50157589
A startling and boundary-pushing novel, Untold Night and Day tells the story of a young woman���s journey through Seoul over the course of a night and a day. It���s 28-year-old Ayami���s final day at her box-office job in Seoul���s audio theater. Her night is spent walking the sweltering streets of the city with her former boss in search of Yeoni, their missing elderly friend, and her day is spent looking after a mysterious, visiting poet. Their conversations take in art, love, food, and the inaccessible country to the north.

Almost immediately, in the heat of Seoul at the height of the summer, order gives way to chaos as the edges of reality start to fray, with Ayami becoming an unwitting escort into a fever-dream of increasingly tangled threads, all the while images of the characters��� overlapping realities repeat, collide, change, and reassert themselves in this masterful work that upends the very structure of fiction and narrative storytelling and burns itself upon the soul of the reader.

By one of the boldest and most innovative voices in contemporary Korean literature, and brilliantly realized in English by International Man Booker足���winning translator Deborah Smith, Bae Suah���s hypnotic and wholly original novel asks whether more than one version of ourselves can exist at once, demonstrating the malleable nature of reality as we know it.]]> 160 Bae Suah 1419744380 Michael 5 literature 3.51 2013
author: Bae Suah
name: Michael
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 156534
But why are he and his faithful companion, the often testy male monkey Ampersand, still alive? He sets out to find the answer (and his girlfriend), while running from angry female Republicans (now running the government), Amazon wannabes that include his own sister (seemingly brainwashed), and other threats.]]> 130 Brian K. Vaughan 1563899809 Michael 3
I suppose if we're trying to put ourselves in the head of an early-nineties comic book reading teen, this might feel innovative. Unfortunately, I find that innovative in the world of comics is pretty much Iron Age for the rest of literature. How does Vaughan manage to make a series with gender issues at its center so bizarrely sexist?

Example: In a world where all men are dead except for one, and the death of that one man will mean the end of humanity, VIOLENT CULTS OF FEMINISTS SPRING UP TO TRY AND HUNT DOWN MEN AND MALE SYMPATHIZERS. What is the motive here? There sure isn't one written into the plot, other than the one speech about social inequality between the sexes--and how the only way to escape this inequality is to KILL ALL MEN.

Characterwise, I was exceptionally not impressed. Even the main character has vague motivations. As for the women, pretty much none of them function as anything but placeholders: the token love interest, the sister who has gone astray, the protective mother. IN A WORLD WHERE ONLY ONE MAN SURVIVED...apparently the world still revolves around that man.

And here's where the cultural rant starts...

This is a symptom of thinking that is still prevalent in most of popular culture, although not to as great an extent in literature. F'rinstance, lets talk about movies: movies are a great medium for making political statements. Statements about social injustices, such as the way that women are objectified, sexualized, expected to live up to some bleached, shaved, makeup-smeared, surgically modified yet waifishly thin ideal that has been developed over centuries of patriarchal society...and how this objectification upon women is psychologically damaging--to men.



This poor guy above has been so mentally warped by Hollywood and advertising that he's incapable of developing a physical attraction to any of the normal girls he knows in real life. Let's take a moment to pitty him.



Okay, we done? Good. Fortunately, a blonde porn star moves in next door, and immediately falls for him, even though he's intensely dorky, because, you know, it's what's on the inside that counts. But, I'm not just cherry-picking films here. I could point to this one:



Another example of an attractive woman with a *cough cough* career who ends up with a loser whose only redeeming trait is that he's willing to "raise" the baby...if sleazy frat boys without jobs can be said to raise babies.

But surely this is a phenomenon in teen comedies?

Well, look at "romances."



Here's a fairly recent romantic comedy where a successful, relatively well-balanced woman who is portrayed as HORRIBLY DESPARATE for being interested in a neighbor....meanwhile, the character played by Gerard Butler mudwrestles with models on television, and has no interest in anything but one-night stands, yet this is understandable because of his childhood. This is a ROMANCE.

End rant.

Okay, BUT, regardless of how inadequately this comic deals with gender issues, it at least TRIES to grapple with them, and it does a better job than any of the movies mentioned above. Perhaps by the end of the series, the author's portrayals of gender issues will become more interesting and sophisticated. This was an entertaining comic, and I plan on continuing it for at least a little longer...but I'll admit that I'm highly confused by the acclaim it has gotten.]]> 4.08 2003
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: graphic-novels, most-popular-reviews
review:
In typical comic book male-centric fashion, this series wonders what life would be like if all men died spontaneously...except for one.

I suppose if we're trying to put ourselves in the head of an early-nineties comic book reading teen, this might feel innovative. Unfortunately, I find that innovative in the world of comics is pretty much Iron Age for the rest of literature. How does Vaughan manage to make a series with gender issues at its center so bizarrely sexist?

Example: In a world where all men are dead except for one, and the death of that one man will mean the end of humanity, VIOLENT CULTS OF FEMINISTS SPRING UP TO TRY AND HUNT DOWN MEN AND MALE SYMPATHIZERS. What is the motive here? There sure isn't one written into the plot, other than the one speech about social inequality between the sexes--and how the only way to escape this inequality is to KILL ALL MEN.

Characterwise, I was exceptionally not impressed. Even the main character has vague motivations. As for the women, pretty much none of them function as anything but placeholders: the token love interest, the sister who has gone astray, the protective mother. IN A WORLD WHERE ONLY ONE MAN SURVIVED...apparently the world still revolves around that man.

And here's where the cultural rant starts...

This is a symptom of thinking that is still prevalent in most of popular culture, although not to as great an extent in literature. F'rinstance, lets talk about movies: movies are a great medium for making political statements. Statements about social injustices, such as the way that women are objectified, sexualized, expected to live up to some bleached, shaved, makeup-smeared, surgically modified yet waifishly thin ideal that has been developed over centuries of patriarchal society...and how this objectification upon women is psychologically damaging--to men.



This poor guy above has been so mentally warped by Hollywood and advertising that he's incapable of developing a physical attraction to any of the normal girls he knows in real life. Let's take a moment to pitty him.



Okay, we done? Good. Fortunately, a blonde porn star moves in next door, and immediately falls for him, even though he's intensely dorky, because, you know, it's what's on the inside that counts. But, I'm not just cherry-picking films here. I could point to this one:



Another example of an attractive woman with a *cough cough* career who ends up with a loser whose only redeeming trait is that he's willing to "raise" the baby...if sleazy frat boys without jobs can be said to raise babies.

But surely this is a phenomenon in teen comedies?

Well, look at "romances."



Here's a fairly recent romantic comedy where a successful, relatively well-balanced woman who is portrayed as HORRIBLY DESPARATE for being interested in a neighbor....meanwhile, the character played by Gerard Butler mudwrestles with models on television, and has no interest in anything but one-night stands, yet this is understandable because of his childhood. This is a ROMANCE.

End rant.

Okay, BUT, regardless of how inadequately this comic deals with gender issues, it at least TRIES to grapple with them, and it does a better job than any of the movies mentioned above. Perhaps by the end of the series, the author's portrayals of gender issues will become more interesting and sophisticated. This was an entertaining comic, and I plan on continuing it for at least a little longer...but I'll admit that I'm highly confused by the acclaim it has gotten.
]]> 56179364 The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.]]> 384 Thomas Olde Heuvelt 1250780934 Michael 5 horror 3.71 2013
author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt
name: Michael
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/30
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 148765491
'...a must-read ' - Eliot Higgins, author of We Are Bellingcat

'A timely and frighteningly revealing book' - Richard Kerbaj, author of The Secret History of the Five Eyes

The internationally bestselling author of Going the secret social lives of extremists (A Telegraph Book of the Year) returns to explore why radical ideas are increasingly infiltrating politics, popular culture and our everyday lives.

Incels. Anti Vaxxers. Conspiracy theorists. Neo-Nazis. Once, these groups all belonged on the fringes of the political spectrum. Today, accelerated by a pandemic, global conflict and rapid technological change, their ideas are becoming more QAnon proponents run for U.S. Congress, neo-fascists win elections in Europe, and celebrity influencers spread dangerous myths to millions. Going Mainstream asks the What is happening here?

Going undercover online and in person, UK counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner reveals how, united by a shared sense of grievance and scepticism about institutions, radicalised individuals are influencing the mainstream as never before. Hidden from public scrutiny, they leverage social media to create alternative information ecosystems and build sophisticated networks funded by dark money.

Ebner's candid conversations with extremists offer a nuanced and gripping insight into why people have turned to the fringes. She explores why outlandish ideas have taken hold and disinformation is spreading faster than ever. And she speaks to the activists and educators who are fighting to turn the tide.

Going Mainstream is a dispatch from the darkest front of the culture wars, and a vital wake-up call.]]> 249 Julia Ebner 1804183148 Michael 0 to-read 3.77
author: Julia Ebner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29751398 The Power the world is a recognizable place: There's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; and a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: They can cause agonizing pain and even death. With this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.]]> 341 Naomi Alderman 0670919985 Michael 0 to-read 3.75 2016
author: Naomi Alderman
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123163147 The bestselling, award-winning author of��The Power delivers��a dazzling tour de force��where��a handful of friends��plot��a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.

When Martha Einkorn fled her father���s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now she���s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father���s fox and rabbit sermon���once a parable to her���are starting to come true, how much future is actually left?

Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She���s cornered, desperate and���worst of all���might die without ever knowing what's going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future?

Martha and Zhen���s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha���s relentless drive and Zhen���s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.]]> 432 Naomi Alderman 166802568X Michael 0 to-read 3.82 2023
author: Naomi Alderman
name: Michael
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6952
The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes.

A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.]]> 222 Laura Esquivel Michael 3 literature 3.96 1989
author: Laura Esquivel
name: Michael
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 50520939
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person���s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality���an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society���s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 376 Olivie Blake Michael 3 sf-fantasy 3.56 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: Michael
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 15819523
From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. His father died when he was seven, and at seventeen he left his mother and sister behind and headed for New York City, place of limitless possibilities. He arrived penniless with the idea of becoming a poet; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, starting such seminal bands as Television, the Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids���whose song "Blank Generation" remains the defining anthem of the era. Hell was significantly responsible for creating CBGB as punk ground zero; his Voidoids toured notoriously with the Clash, and Malcolm McLaren would credit Hell as inspiration for the Sex Pistols. There were kinetic nights in New York's club demi-monde, descent into drug addiction, and an ever-present yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art.

"We lived in the suburbs in America in the fifties," Hell writes. "My roots are shallow. I'm a little jealous of people with strong ethnic and cultural roots. Lucky Martin Scorsese or Art Spiegelman or Dave Chappelle. I came from Hopalong Cassidy and Bugs Bunny and first grade at ordinary Maxwell Elementary." How this legendary downtown artist went from a prosaic childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting a movement that would take over New York's and London's restless youth cultures���and spawn the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Debbie Harry���is just part of the fascinating story Hell tells. With stunning powers of observation, he delves into the details of both the world that shaped him and the world he shaped.

An acutely rendered, unforgettable coming-of-age story, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp evokes with feeling, clarity, and piercing intelligence that classic journey: the life of one who comes from the hinterlands into the city in search of art and passion.]]> 248 Richard Hell 0062190857 Michael 3 music 3.63 2013
author: Richard Hell
name: Michael
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves: music
review:

]]> 4703581
Borl炭 must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel���s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borl炭 is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman���s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]> 312 China Mi辿ville 0345497511 Michael 4 china-mieville, sf-fantasy
While the body was found in the city of Beszel, Borlu realises the murder was done in the city of Ul Quoma. Ul Quoma is a city which occupies the same physical space as Beszel, but is 'unseen' by Beszel citizens. Likewise, those in Ul Quoma unsee the buildings and the people of Beszel. Anyone in Beszel caught interacting with Ul Quoma has committed breach, and will be taken by Breach, a silent and invisible police unbeholden to either city. No one comes back from breach.

As Borlu continues to investigate the murder, he discovers the woman was involved with unificationists who want to unite the two cities into one. She also was fascinated by Orciny, a theoretical third city hidden in the forgotten areas between Beszel and Ul Quoma. As he continues to dig deeper, he is pulled deeper and deeper into an elaborate conspiracy.

This isn't as convoluted as I've probably made it sound. Mieville's city fetish goes totally crazy this time around, and he's ended up with something very innovative.

After hearing the synopsis of this book, I thought the idea sounded cool but I didn't think he'd really be able to pull it off. He does, and it's fascinating. The book remains a murder mystery throughout, while still being an exploration of the strange bi-city, although the mystery of the murder lags behind the mystery of what's really going on in the city (and the city and the city). You end up with something a little closer stylistically to The Bourne Identity than Sherlock Holmes for much of the book. That's not a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing.

Is it as good as the Bas Lag books? No. The characters are underdone and the conclusion lacks the savory finish of Perdido Street Station or The Scar. I don't feel it's QUITE a four-star book because the plot and the characters lag so far behind the setting. The story here is nothing the least bit new, and the main character has very little personality. The word 'detective' alone probably conjures everything you need to know about this guy. So, without the setting, this book would be utterly blah.

But the setting is, like I said, innovative and brilliant. If you're new to Mieville, I wouldn't suggest starting here. But, if you're already a fan, this is Mieville doing what he's good at. And his creativity is off the chain, as usual.]]> 3.90 2009
author: China Mi辿ville
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/09
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: china-mieville, sf-fantasy
review:
Inspector Borlu of Beszel's Extreme Crime Squad investigates the murder of a woman whose body was found naked at a park, a mattress thrown on top of it. At first he believes it to be a local prostitute. However, as he investigates, things quickly get more complicated, and more dangerous for Borlu.

While the body was found in the city of Beszel, Borlu realises the murder was done in the city of Ul Quoma. Ul Quoma is a city which occupies the same physical space as Beszel, but is 'unseen' by Beszel citizens. Likewise, those in Ul Quoma unsee the buildings and the people of Beszel. Anyone in Beszel caught interacting with Ul Quoma has committed breach, and will be taken by Breach, a silent and invisible police unbeholden to either city. No one comes back from breach.

As Borlu continues to investigate the murder, he discovers the woman was involved with unificationists who want to unite the two cities into one. She also was fascinated by Orciny, a theoretical third city hidden in the forgotten areas between Beszel and Ul Quoma. As he continues to dig deeper, he is pulled deeper and deeper into an elaborate conspiracy.

This isn't as convoluted as I've probably made it sound. Mieville's city fetish goes totally crazy this time around, and he's ended up with something very innovative.

After hearing the synopsis of this book, I thought the idea sounded cool but I didn't think he'd really be able to pull it off. He does, and it's fascinating. The book remains a murder mystery throughout, while still being an exploration of the strange bi-city, although the mystery of the murder lags behind the mystery of what's really going on in the city (and the city and the city). You end up with something a little closer stylistically to The Bourne Identity than Sherlock Holmes for much of the book. That's not a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing.

Is it as good as the Bas Lag books? No. The characters are underdone and the conclusion lacks the savory finish of Perdido Street Station or The Scar. I don't feel it's QUITE a four-star book because the plot and the characters lag so far behind the setting. The story here is nothing the least bit new, and the main character has very little personality. The word 'detective' alone probably conjures everything you need to know about this guy. So, without the setting, this book would be utterly blah.

But the setting is, like I said, innovative and brilliant. If you're new to Mieville, I wouldn't suggest starting here. But, if you're already a fan, this is Mieville doing what he's good at. And his creativity is off the chain, as usual.
]]> 50736031
Breasts and Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.

It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko���s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations.

On another hot summer���s day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.]]> 430 Mieko Kawakami 1609455878 Michael 3 literature 3.87 2019
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: Michael
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 18952403 With the invasion of Dara complete, and the Wall of Storms breached, the world has opened to new possibilities for the gods and peoples of both empires as the sweeping saga of the award-winning Dandelion Dynasty continues in this third book of the ���magnificent fantasy epic��� (NPR).

Princess Th辿ra, once known as Empress ��na of Dara, entrusted the throne to her younger brother in order to journey to Ukyu-Gond辿 to war with the Lyucu. She has crossed the fabled Wall of Storms with a fleet of advanced warships and ten thousand people. Beset by adversity, Th辿ra and her most trusted companions attempt to overcome every challenge by doing the most interesting thing. But is not letting the past dictate the present always possible or even desirable?

In Dara, the Lyucu leadership as well as the surviving Dandelion Court bristle with rivalries as currents of power surge and ebb and perspectives spin and shift. Here, parents and children, teachers and students, Empress and P辿kyu, all nurture the seeds of plans that will take years to bloom. Will tradition yield to new justifications for power?

Everywhere, the spirit of innovation dances like dandelion seeds on the wind, and the commoners, the forgotten, the ignored begin to engineer new solutions for a new age.

Ken Liu returns to the series that draws from a tradition of the great epics of our history from the Aeneid to the Romance on the Three Kingdoms and builds a new tale unsurpassed in its scope and ambition.]]> 1008 Ken Liu 1481424335 Michael 5 sf-fantasy 4.14 2021
author: Ken Liu
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 46041168 A New York Times Notable Book (2020)
A Guardian Best Book of 2020
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse���by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals���propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

Like Roberto Bolano���s 2666油or Faulkner���s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology and violence���real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it���s a world that becomes more terrifying and more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it.]]> 224 Fernanda Melchor 0811228037 Michael 5 literature 3.93 2017
author: Fernanda Melchor
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/08
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 30780005 The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.]]> 281 Ahmed Saadawi 0143128795 Michael 4 literature 3.65 2013
author: Ahmed Saadawi
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 17810
From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psycho-thriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this shocking, hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo���s sex industry.]]> 217 Ry笛 Murakami 014303569X Michael 4 literature 3.63 1997
author: Ry笛 Murakami
name: Michael
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 55596771 The conclusion to Ken Liu's chronicle of the Dandelion Dynasty.

雨一霞顎-赫看稼糸辿.
Stalked by foes and dogged by betrayal, Princess Th辿ra is pursued across a continent vaster than she could ever have imagined, to the hidden valleys of the World's Edge Mountains, into the barrows and subterranean halls of the City of Ghosts, across the ice floes of the far north. She breached the Wall of Storms intent on taking war to the Lyucu homelands, but how do you conquer the unconquerable?

Dara.
Empress Jia, Prince Phyro and P辿kyu Tanvanaki find themselves bound to paths they never would have chosen. Amid atrocity and subterfuge, they will discover that the Courage of Brutes is no substitute for the Grace of Kings, and that little separates the Grace of Kings from the Madness of Tyrants.

On both sides of the Wall of Storms, defeat's bitter tears mix with the fruits of knowledge new and ancient as two empires bound by blood and bone, by writ and iron, by time and custom, face a whirlwind that threatens to utterly consume them.

The teeth, as they say, are on the board.]]> 1047 Ken Liu 1982148977 Michael 5 sf-fantasy 4.54 2022
author: Ken Liu
name: Michael
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/05
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 95144 40 Maurice Sendak 0099417472 Michael 4 childrens-books
I have a confession to make, goodreads. You might want to sit down.













































I've been seeing other literary social cataloguing websites.

No, wait, put that plate down. It wasn't because I really wanted to see anyone else. . . it was for my grade. *dodges plate* Wait, wait, let me explain! The thing is, I'm doing a big project on book reviews.

I'm analyzing the rhetorical differences between online book reviews and those published in print.

From meta-reviews to highly negative reviews, to reviews that are discussing the process of reading the book instead of the actual book itself, I'm searching for every kind of trend that's developing. Including the brilliant one-sentence reviews.

How many have I been seeing? Uh, like four. Probably six by the end of the week. *dodges a lamp* But I'm not reviewing with them, goodreads! I'm just there for the . . . well, you know . . . if I want my project to say anything, I need to know the lay of the land, don't I?

But, more than just literary social cataloguing websites, I'm also looking at other parts of the internet: online-only reviewers, amazon.com book reviews, and on and on. The project itself will be specifically about reviews on goodreads, but I'm going to do some comparisons to see why our reviews are better than theirs. Because they are, and I love you the best.

I'm saying all this because it would just be the cat's pajamas if anyone knows a website I should check out, article I should read, or even a specific review that you think of as a "must read."

And I raise the question: is it even a book review if the book is never mentioned, nor any issue about the book's subject matter raised?

]]> 3.99 1970
author: Maurice Sendak
name: Michael
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/16
shelves: childrens-books
review:


I have a confession to make, goodreads. You might want to sit down.













































I've been seeing other literary social cataloguing websites.

No, wait, put that plate down. It wasn't because I really wanted to see anyone else. . . it was for my grade. *dodges plate* Wait, wait, let me explain! The thing is, I'm doing a big project on book reviews.

I'm analyzing the rhetorical differences between online book reviews and those published in print.

From meta-reviews to highly negative reviews, to reviews that are discussing the process of reading the book instead of the actual book itself, I'm searching for every kind of trend that's developing. Including the brilliant one-sentence reviews.

How many have I been seeing? Uh, like four. Probably six by the end of the week. *dodges a lamp* But I'm not reviewing with them, goodreads! I'm just there for the . . . well, you know . . . if I want my project to say anything, I need to know the lay of the land, don't I?

But, more than just literary social cataloguing websites, I'm also looking at other parts of the internet: online-only reviewers, amazon.com book reviews, and on and on. The project itself will be specifically about reviews on goodreads, but I'm going to do some comparisons to see why our reviews are better than theirs. Because they are, and I love you the best.

I'm saying all this because it would just be the cat's pajamas if anyone knows a website I should check out, article I should read, or even a specific review that you think of as a "must read."

And I raise the question: is it even a book review if the book is never mentioned, nor any issue about the book's subject matter raised?


]]> 53223710
These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.

Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.]]> 192 Mieko Kawakami 1609456211 Michael 4 literature 3.80 2009
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: Michael
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 42201962 Yetu holds the memories for her people.

Her people, the wajinru ��� water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers ��� live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one. Save the historian.

Yetu remembers for all the wajinru, and the memories ��� painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories and the expectations and the responsibilities ��� and discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past ��� and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they���ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identities ��� and own who they really are.

Inspired by the hit song by clipping. (comprised of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes), The Deep will resonate long after the last page is turned.]]> 166 Rivers Solomon 1534439862 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.78 2019
author: Rivers Solomon
name: Michael
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 56179372 Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

A spirited young Englishwoman, Abitha, arrives at a Puritan colony betrothed to a stranger ��� only to become quickly widowed when her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. All alone in this pious and patriarchal society, Abitha fights for what little freedom she can grasp onto, while trying to stay true to herself and her past.

Enter Slewfoot, a powerful spirit of antiquity newly woken ... and trying to find his own role in the world. Healer or destroyer? Protector or predator? But as the shadows walk and villagers start dying, a new rumor is whispered: Witch.

Both Abitha and Slewfoot must swiftly decide who they are, and what they must do to survive in a world intent on hanging any who meddle in the dark arts.

Complete with 8 pages of Brom���s mesmerizing full-color artwork and chapter illustrations throughout, his latest book is sure to delight.]]> 305 Brom 125062200X Michael 4 horror 4.23 2021
author: Brom
name: Michael
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/05
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 4772110
A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turning from the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring taste in music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . A struggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failing marriage of a couple he���s only just met . . . A gifted, underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe that plastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whose tutor promises to ���unwrap��� his talent . . .

Passion or necessity���or the often uneasy combination of the two���determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, in one way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment of reckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes just eluding their grasp.

An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguro���s acclaimed works of fiction.]]> 221 Kazuo Ishiguro 0307397874 Michael 4 literature 3.52 2009
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2023/09/07
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 18952381
But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara���s savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.]]> 880 Ken Liu 1784973254 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 4.34 2016
author: Ken Liu
name: Michael
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/02
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 18852 The Years is a savage indictment of British society at the turn of the century, edited with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson in Penguin Modern Classics.

The Years is the story of three generations of the Pargiter family - their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs - mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London's streets during the first decades of the twentieth century. Growing up in a typically Victorian household, the Pargiter children must learn to find their footing in an alternative world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing-room to the air-raid shelter. A work of fluid and dazzling lucidity, The Years eschews a simple line of development in favour of a varied and constantly changing style, emphasises the radical discontinuity of personal experiences and historical events. Virginia Woolf's penultimate novel celebrates the resilience of the individual self and, in her dazzlingly fluid and distinctive voice, she confidently paints a broad canvas across time, generation and class.]]> 444 Virginia Woolf 0141185325 Michael 3 literature 3.77 1937
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Michael
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/27
date added: 2023/08/27
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 24344283 Breaking Negative Thinking Patterns is the first schema-mode focused resource guide aimed at schema therapy patients and self-help readers seeking to understand and overcome negative patterns of thinking and behaviour.


Represents the first resource for general readers on the mode approach to schema therapy Features a wealth of case studies that serve to clarify schemas and modes and illustrate techniques for overcoming dysfunctional modes and behavior patterns Offers a series of exercises that readers can immediately apply to real-world challenges and emotional problems as well as the complex difficulties typically tackled with schema therapy Includes original illustrations that demonstrate the modes and approaches in action, along with 20 self-help mode materials which are also available online Written by authors closely associated with the development of schema therapy and the schema mode approach]]> 208 Hannie van Genderen 1118877713 Michael 4 other-nonfiction 4.04 2012
author: Hannie van Genderen
name: Michael
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/21
date added: 2023/08/21
shelves: other-nonfiction
review:

]]> 18952341 640 Ken Liu 1481424270 Michael 4 sf-fantasy 3.77 2015
author: Ken Liu
name: Michael
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/02
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 46105 224 Virginia Woolf 015611870X Michael 4 3.65 1941
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1941
rating: 4
read at: 2011/06/02
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: literature, goodest-reads-2011-a-sad-year
review:

]]> 248954 179 Brenda Ueland 1555972608 Michael 4 on-writing 4.13 2012
author: Brenda Ueland
name: Michael
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/24
shelves: on-writing
review:
I read this one when I was 21 or 22, and I found it very empowering. I wonder what I'd think of it now...
]]> 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Michael 4 literature 4.01 1987
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Michael
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/23
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 29537167
Hygge is a feeling of belonging and warmth, a moment of comfort and contentment. This beautiful little book will help you to find hygge and embrace it every day. Make a pot of coffee, relax in your favourite chair and discover for yourself how life is better with hygge.

'Best [book] for the philosophy of hygge' You Magazine

'...a philosophy for mindful living' The Guardian

���Her book is a thing of beauty��� Irish Examiner]]> 192 Louisa Thomsen Brits 1785034464 Michael 3 philosophy 3.28 2016
author: Louisa Thomsen Brits
name: Michael
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/20
date added: 2023/07/20
shelves: philosophy
review:

]]> 49011 126 Angela Carter 014017821X Michael 4 literature 3.96 1979
author: Angela Carter
name: Michael
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/03
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 43982054 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her���but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he���s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia���s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he���s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram���s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children���the violent and capricious separation of families���and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today���s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.]]> 416 Ta-Nehisi Coates Michael 4 literature 4.03 2019
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Michael
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/03
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 42107352
束������仂于舒 仗����仆�晛 ��� 亟��舒仄舒-��亠�������� 于 ������仂�� 亟������. ��'������, ��仂 ����舒仍舒 ��亠亟亠于��仂仄 ��从��舒��仆����从仂�� 亟��舒仄舒������亞����, 仆舒仗亳��舒仆仂 于 1911 ��仂����. 丕仗亠����亠 仗仂����舒于仍亠仆仂 ���� 仆舒 ����亠仆�� 22 仍亳����仂仗舒亟舒 1918 ��仂从�� 于 ��亳��于����从仂仄�� 亟��舒仄舒��亳��仆仂仄�� ��亠舒������. 丐于���� �� 仂亟仆亳仄 ��亰 仗亠����亳�� 仗��仂仂弍��舒亰��于 ��亠仆��亠亰�� 于 ��从��舒��仆����从��亶 仍����亠��舒��������. 丶亠 ��仗亠����舒仍��仆亠 于亳亟舒仆仆�� 仗��亳��于����亠仆亠�� 于����仂于仂仄�� ��亠仍��亰�� 仗仂于仆仂仄亠����舒亢仆仂亞仂 仄��仍��������仍��仄�� 束��舒于从舒. ������仂于舒 仗����仆�晛, 亰舒仗仍舒仆仂于舒仆仂仄�� 仆舒 2020 ����从. 弌�ﾐ勤却� 仄��仍��������仍��仄��, ��仂 弍��亟亠 亰��仂亰��仄��仍亳亶 ��亳��仂从��亶 舒��亟亳��仂������ �� 于����仂仄�� ��于������, 于仂亟仆仂��舒�� 仄������亳���� 仂��亳亞��仆舒仍��仆�������� ��舒 ��舒����于仆�������� ��从��舒��仆����从仂�� 舒����亠仆��亳从亳 亶 仗仂亟舒������ 亞仍�磲舒��舒仄 亰������������ 亰 仆仂于亳仄, 亟仂���� 仆亠 亰仆舒仆亳仄 ��于����仂仄, �磻亳亶 ��亠 仆亠 弍��仍仂 ��仂亰从��亳��仂 �� ��于����仂于��亶 舒仆��仄舒������. ��仂��仂��仍亳�� 于��仆 亰舒����从舒于亳���� ��仆��于亠����舒仍��仆�������� ��于仂���� ��亠仄, 舒 亟����亠亶 ��� 仗��亳亞仂亟舒仄亳 ��舒 亞��仄仂��仂仄. ����仍��������仍��仄 ����于仂���ﾑ� 于��亟仂仄舒 ��从��舒��仆����从舒 ������亟���� Animagrad, �磻舒 于��仂亟亳���� 亟仂 c从仍舒亟�� 从��仆仂从仂仄仗舒仆���� FILM.UAGroup.]]> 256 Lesia Ukrainka 6176602866 Michael 0 to-read 4.28 1911
author: Lesia Ukrainka
name: Michael
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42366547
For ten years, Yona has been stuck behind a desk as a coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specializing in vacation packages to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change. Her work life is uneventful until trouble arises in the form of a predatory colleague.

To forestall any disruption of business-as-usual, Jungle makes Yona a proposition: a paid "vacation" to the desert island of Mui. But Yona must pose as a tourist and assess whether Jungle should continue their partnership with the unprofitable destination.

Yona travels to the remote island, whose major attraction is an underwhelming sinkhole, a huge disappointment to the customers who've paid a premium. Soon Yona discovers the resort's plan to fabricate a catastrophe in the interest of regaining their good standing with Jungle--and the manager enlists Yona's help. Yona must choose between the callous company to whom she's dedicated her life, or the possibility of a fresh start in a powerful new position. As she begins to understand the cost of the manufactured disaster, Yona realizes that the lives of Mui's citizens are in danger--and so is she.

In The Disaster Tourist, Korean author Yun Ko-eun grapples with the consequences of our fascination with disaster, and questions an individual's culpability in the harm done by their industry.]]> 200 Yun Ko-eun 1640094164 Michael 4 literature 3.37 2013
author: Yun Ko-eun
name: Michael
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/25
date added: 2023/06/25
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> 604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 Michael 5 sf-fantasy 4.40 2010
author: Liu Cixin
name: Michael
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/17
date added: 2023/06/17
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:

]]> 12948
A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

Excerpt:
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days - found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.]]> 121 Henry James 0140620613 Michael 4 literature 3.42 1898
author: Henry James
name: Michael
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1898
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/11
date added: 2023/06/17
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 76776
The only god living in Green Town, Illinois, that Douglas Spaulding knew of.

The facts about John Huff, aged twelve, are simple and soon stated.

��� He could pathfind more trails than any Choctaw or Cherokee since time began.
��� Could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine.
��� Could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream.
��� Could hit baseballs into apple trees, knocking down harvests.
��� Could jump six-foot orchard walls.
��� Ran laughing.
��� Sat easy.
��� Was not a bully.
��� Was kind.
��� Knew the words to all the cowboy songs and would teach you if you asked.
��� Knew the names of all the wild flowers and when the moon would rise or set and when the tides came in or out.

He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of.

���[Ray] Bradbury is an authentic original.������ Time]]> 239 Ray Bradbury 0553277537 Michael 2 sf-fantasy
What I did like, though, is the eerie section somewhere near the middle that is unconnected with the rest of the book. I won't give you details in case you read it, but there's a creepy short story buried in here. ]]> 4.13 1957
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Michael
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1957
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/06/14
shelves: sf-fantasy
review:
This book was very different from the others I've read by Bradbury, in that it was dull as hell. The whole thing was a reverie for a lost childhood. I'm not a nostalgic person in the least, despite the number of children's books I read. So, maybe I just didn't see the point of all this.

What I did like, though, is the eerie section somewhere near the middle that is unconnected with the rest of the book. I won't give you details in case you read it, but there's a creepy short story buried in here.
]]> 138110 176 Tarjei Vesaas 0720611229 Michael 4 literature 3.89 1963
author: Tarjei Vesaas
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/05
date added: 2023/06/05
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 50892288 A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle���s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel.

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she���s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle���s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker���only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts���and the more you fear them, the stronger they become.]]> 341 T. Kingfisher 1534451129 Michael 3 horror 3.76 2020
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Michael
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/05
date added: 2023/06/05
shelves: horror
review:

]]> 42086795 Britain has lost the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding.

Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda���s assistance, he co-designs Adam���s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever ��� a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan���s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.]]> 306 Ian McEwan 1787331679 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.52 2019
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/26
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 21965107
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is an expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.

But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jack doesn't leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case - as well as her crumbling marriage - tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.]]> 221 Ian McEwan 0385539703 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.69 2014
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/07
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 7140754
When Michael���s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man���s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world���s great writers.]]> 287 Ian McEwan Michael 3 literature, ian-mcewan 3.28 2010
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2013/03/01
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6873
A two-timing pornographer becomes an unwilling object in the fantasies of one of his victims. A jaded millionaire buys himself the perfect mistress and plunges into a hell of jealousy and despair. And in the course of a weekend with his teenage daughter, a guilt-ridden father discovers the depths of his own blundering innocence.

Don���t miss Ian McEwan���s new novel, Lessons .]]> 160 Ian McEwan 0679749837 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.33 1977
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2013/04/21
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 3526 First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by Clive Barker or Stephen King, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity that compel us to confront our secret kinship with the horrifying.]]> 165 Ian McEwan 0679750193 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.66 1975
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2013/04/03
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6871
Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encounter forty years earlier - a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time.

In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilisation's darkest moods - its black dogs - with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.]]> 149 Ian McEwan 0385494327 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.45 1992
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2017/01/03
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony���s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Michael 5 3.94 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2012/12/10
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: goodest-reads-2012, literature, ian-mcewan
review:
Wow, this was definitely one of my best reads this year. I'll be writing a review of this one, and soon.
]]> 5015
Later, as Perowne makes his way through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, a minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance as the Perowne family gathers for a reunion, that Henry's fears seem about to be realised.]]> 289 Ian McEwan 1400076196 Michael 3 literature, ian-mcewan 3.64 2005
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2013/06/26
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 815309
It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence���s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence���s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.

Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan���a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.]]> 166 Ian McEwan 0224081187 Michael 5 literature, ian-mcewan 3.61 2007
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/21
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 1201248 153 Ian McEwan 0671242881 Michael 3 literature, ian-mcewan 3.56 1978
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2013/02/04
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6872 128 Ian McEwan 0679749845 Michael 3 literature, ian-mcewan 3.44 1981
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2017/03/19
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6862 Amsterdam is��"a dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned" ( The New York Times ) from the bestselling author of Atonement.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen���

Don���t miss Ian McEwan���s new novel, Lessons .]]> 208 Ian McEwan 0385494246 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan
]]> 3.46 1998
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2013/02/14
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:
This is a morality tale, and the moral is OH MY GOD, EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD IS CORRUPT!


]]> 6869 The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.]]> 263 Ian McEwan 0385497520 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.60 1987
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/14
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 6870 Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in de-familiarisation. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --Alex Freeman

]]> 245 Ian McEwan 0099481243 Michael 4 literature, ian-mcewan 3.65 1997
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/22
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, ian-mcewan
review:

]]> 13478156 242 Cormac McCarthy Michael 4 literature, cormac-mccarthy
I really enjoy the work of this author. But, this is an earlier and weaker offering than what I've read by him before.


]]> 4.16 1968
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Michael
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature, cormac-mccarthy
review:
There were some elements of this book I liked quite a bit. The characters stumble through a dangerous world peopled by eccentrics who are, often as not, dangerous. The book builds to a surprising and dark conclusion that, in my opinion, disappointed.

I really enjoy the work of this author. But, this is an earlier and weaker offering than what I've read by him before.



]]> 61948975 By the bestselling author of Storyland.

Sheer cliffs, salt spray, explosive sea spume, thunderous clouds, icy waves, whales with mountains on their backs, sleet, bitter winds, bleak, impenetrable marshes, howling wolves, forests, the unceasing cries of birds and the death grip of subterranean vaults that have never seen the these are wild landscapes of a world almost familiar.

In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys - on foot and through medieval texts - from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world. From the Old English elegies to the englynion and immrama of the Celtic world - stories that largely represent figures whose voices are not generally heard in the corpus of medieval women, outcasts, animals.

Illustrated with original wood engravings, evoking an atmospheric world of whales, wolves, caves, cuckoos and reeds, Tales From Early Medieval Britain will leave readers feeling 'westendream': delight in the wilderness.]]> 240 Amy Jeffs 1529424240 Michael 3 literature 3.90 2022
author: Amy Jeffs
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/31
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: literature
review:

]]> 21347471 480 Mick Middles Michael 3 music 4.00 1996
author: Mick Middles
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/02
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: music
review:

]]>