Alehna's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 28 Nov 2024 23:40:19 -0800 60 Alehna's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple, #10)]]> 16333
When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she's looking for at Bertram's: traditional décor and impeccable service. But she senses an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric hotel guest makes his way to the airport one day late!

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "At Bertram's Hotel." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 223 Agatha Christie Alehna 0 3.72 1965 At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a human-centered planet]]> 55922802 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

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

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 293 John Green 1529109876 Alehna 0 to-read 4.30 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a human-centered planet
author: John Green
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution]]> 305826
"In order for all women to have real choices all along the line," Adrienne Rich writes, "we need fully to understand the power and powerlessness embodied in motherhood in patriarchal culture." Rich's investigation, in this influential and landmark book, concerns both experience and institution. The experience is her own - as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother - but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed in its many variations on all women everywhere. She draws on personal materials, history, research, and literature to create a document of universal importance.

One of our most distinguished poets, ADRIENNE RICH was born in Baltimore in 1929. Over the last forty years she has published more than seventeen volumes of poetry and five books of nonfiction prose, including Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Blood, Bread, and Poetry; and What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. She has received numerous awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Lambda Book Award, the National Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in California.]]> 322 Adrienne Rich 0393312844 Alehna 0 to-read 4.23 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.23
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Digital Fortress 257952 Alternate covers for ISBN 9780312263126 can be found:
here, here, and here


When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival--a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius...an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-cold war balance of power. Forever.]]> 384 Dan Brown Alehna 4 3.41 1998 Digital Fortress
author: Dan Brown
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/29
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]]> Cabal 103037 406 Clive Barker 0671685147 Alehna 0 3.78 1988 Cabal
author: Clive Barker
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: unread-books-on-my-bookshelf, currently-reading
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]]> Sula 11346 174 Toni Morrison 0452283868 Alehna 4 4.05 1973 Sula
author: Toni Morrison
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1973
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 Alehna 0 to-read 4.52 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics]]> 84259 280 Starhawk 0807010375 Alehna 0 to-read 3.93 1982 Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics
author: Starhawk
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> The Woman in Me 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 288 Britney Spears 1668009048 Alehna 4 3.83 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/12/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness]]> 43306206
The Courage to Be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It’s a philosophy that’s profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.

The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to Be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you.]]> 288 Ichiro Kishimi Alehna 4 3.89 2013 The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
author: Ichiro Kishimi
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1) 6149 Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.]]> 325 Toni Morrison Alehna 4 3.96 1987 Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)
author: Toni Morrison
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/13
date added: 2023/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Alehna 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/04
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]]> Selected Poems: 1950-2012 38212109 421 Adrienne Rich 039335511X Alehna 0 4.22 2018 Selected Poems: 1950-2012
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/01
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]]> <![CDATA[When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal]]> 60153064 Healing is not a one-time event.

It can begin with a one-time event � typically some form of sudden loss that disrupts our projection of what the future might be. However, the true work of healing is allowing that disruption to wake us from a deep state of unconsciousness, to release the personas we adapted into and begin consciously piecing together the full truth of who we were meant to be.

In her follow up collection to the international bestseller 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, Brianna Wiest shares 45+ new pieces that will help you find your inner sanctum and embark on the path of true transformation. Wiest's words are a balm for any soul on the journey of their own becoming.]]> 235 Brianna Wiest Alehna 0 currently-reading 4.25 2022 When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal
author: Brianna Wiest
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth]]> 347852 The Road Less Traveled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task." His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative.]]> 320 M. Scott Peck Alehna 4 4.07 1978 The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
author: M. Scott Peck
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1978
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/03/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom]]> 56626177
In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.

Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.

Here, Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.]]> 288 Derecka Purnell 1662600518 Alehna 0 to-read 4.45 2021 Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
author: Derecka Purnell
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Her Body and Other Parties: Stories]]> 33375622 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

The husband stitch --
Inventory --
Mothers --
Especially heinous --
Real women have bodies --
Eight bites --
The resident --
Difficult at parties]]> 248 Carmen Maria Machado 155597788X Alehna 0 3.85 2017 Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/06
shelves: unread-books-on-my-bookshelf, to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics]]> 36613747 Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness

When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into this extraordinary world and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. How to Change Your Mind is a report from what could very well be the future of human consciousness.]]> 480 Michael Pollan 0241294223 Alehna 0 currently-reading 4.25 2018 How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
author: Michael Pollan
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> All About Love: New Visions 17607 All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.]]> 240 bell hooks 0688168442 Alehna 0 currently-reading 4.06 1999 All About Love: New Visions
author: bell hooks
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence]]> 738965 32 Adrienne Rich 0906500079 Alehna 0 to-read 4.26 1980 Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> Woman at Point Zero 159604 108 Nawal El Saadawi Alehna 0 to-read 4.21 1975 Woman at Point Zero
author: Nawal El Saadawi
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X Alehna 0 to-read 4.33 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture]]> 58537332 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal� when it comes to health?

Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal� as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Co-written with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.]]> 576 Gabor Maté 0593083881 Alehna 0 to-read 4.30 2022 The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
author: Gabor Maté
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm]]> 57205027 He's a really nice person." It's clear that many white people do not understand systemic racism and cannot separate intentions from impact. In this insightful follow-up to her acclaimed bestseller White Fragility, sociologist Robin DiAngelo illuminates the subtle and insidious racial patterns of progressive white people, revealing how a culture of niceness actually protects racism.

Writing directly to white people as a white person, DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and explains how white people who see themselves as racially progressive can cause the most daily harm to people of color. These patterns include rushing to prove that we are "not racist," downplaying white advantage, pretending white segregation "just happens," co-opting indigenous and other groups' rituals, and allowing shame or personal trauma to immobilize and excuse inaction. She challenges the ideology of individualism and explains why it is appropriate to generalize about white people in order to challenge racism. She demonstrates how white people who experience other oppressions still benefit from systemic racism.

Writing candidly about her own missteps and struggles, and drawing on her insider's perspective, DiAngelo models a path forward, encouraging white readers to continually face their complicity and embrace courage, lifelong commitment, and accountability.]]> 220 Robin DiAngelo 0807074136 Alehna 0 to-read 3.95 2021 Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm
author: Robin DiAngelo
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> Thick: And Other Essays 40365093 Smart, humorous, and strikingly original thoughts on race, beauty, money, and more—by one of today's most intrepid public intellectuals

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the writer, professor, and acclaimed author of Lower Ed, now brilliantly shifts gears from running regression analyses on college data to unleashing another identity: a purveyor of wit, wisdom—and of course Black Twitter snark—about all that is right and much that is so very wrong about this thing we call society. In the bestselling tradition of bell hooks and Roxane Gay, McMillan Cottom’s freshman collection illuminates a particular trait of her tribe: being thick. In form, and in substance.

This bold compendium, likely to find its place on shelves alongside Lindy West, Rebecca Solnit, and Maggie Nelson, dissects everything from beauty to Obama to pumpkin spice lattes. Yet Thick will also fill a void on those very shelves: a modern black American female voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms in a style uniquely her own.

McMillan Cottom has crafted a black woman’s cultural bible, as she mines for meaning in places many of us miss and reveals precisely how—when you’re in the thick of it—the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.

Thick --
In the name of beauty --
Dying to be competent --
Know your whites --
Black is over (or, special black) --
The price of fabulousness --
Black girlhood, interrupted --
Girl 6 --
Notes]]> 248 Tressie McMillan Cottom 1620974363 Alehna 0 to-read 4.43 2019 Thick: And Other Essays
author: Tressie McMillan Cottom
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> The Chronology of Water 9214995 The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.]]> 310 Lidia Yuknavitch 0979018838 Alehna 0 to-read 4.24 2011 The Chronology of Water
author: Lidia Yuknavitch
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Alehna 0 to-read 4.18 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
author: Michael Pollan
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
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]]> <![CDATA[The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World]]> 41021145 304 Michael Pollan Alehna 0 to-read 4.07 2001 The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
author: Michael Pollan
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/20
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]]> Women Who Run With the Wolves 241823
In "Women Who Run With the Wolves," Dr Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairytales and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.]]> 537 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 0345409876 Alehna 3 4.12 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves
author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/02/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Road Less Traveled & Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety]]> 4442
With the rare combination of profound psychological insight and deep spirituality that has already spoken to millions of readers, Dr. Peck talks about decision making and the choices we make every day in business and at home, and the ethical choices that may affect the very survival of humankind. We learn the difference between good and evil, to overcome narcissism, to love and be loved, to live with paradox, to accept the consequences of our actions all through life, and to come to terms with dying and death.

Dr. Peck is a guide on the adventure that is life, learning, and spiritual growth—life’s greatest adventure. Building in depth from the very first chapter to its lyrical and poetic conclusion, The Road Less Traveled and Beyond is an adventure in itself.]]> 324 M. Scott Peck 0684835614 Alehna 0 to-read 4.15 1997 The Road Less Traveled & Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety
author: M. Scott Peck
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/02
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]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Alehna 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy]]> 52569124
Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how these emotional experiences influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships.

Polysecure is both a trailblaizing theoretical treatise and a practical guide. It provides nonmonogamous people with a new set of tools to navigate the complexities of multiple loving relationships, and offers radical new concepts that are sure to influence the conversation about attachment theory.]]> 268 Jessica Fern 1944934987 Alehna 5 4.36 2020 Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy
author: Jessica Fern
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/20
date added: 2022/10/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory]]> 25189315
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She describes how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures.

Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight. She demystifies death, leading us behind the black curtain of her unique profession. And she answers questions you didn’t know you had: Can you catch a disease from a corpse? How many dead bodies can you fit in a Dodge van? What exactly does a flaming skull look like?

Honest and heartfelt, self-deprecating and ironic, Caitlin's engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).]]> 254 Caitlin Doughty 0393351904 Alehna 4 4.24 2014 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
author: Caitlin Doughty
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/10/18
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]]> Les Guérillères 231873
"A delectable epic of sex warfare . . . an extraordinary leap of the imagination into the politics of oppression and revolt."
--Mary McCarthy]]> 144 Monique Wittig 0807063010 Alehna 0 to-read 3.93 1969 Les Guérillères
author: Monique Wittig
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/28
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]]> Three Women 42201100 A riveting true story about the sex lives of three real American women, based on nearly a decade of reporting.

Hailed as “a dazzling achievement� (Los Angeles Times) and “riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance� (The Washington Post), Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women has captivated readers, booksellers, and critics—and topped bestseller lists—worldwide.

In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, a homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down. Finally, in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, we meet Sloane—a gorgeous, successful, and refined restaurant owner—who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women.

Based on years of immersive reporting and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy. “A work of deep observation, long conversations, and a kind of journalistic alchemy� (Kate Tuttle, NPR), Three Women introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.]]> 306 Lisa Taddeo 1451642296 Alehna 0 to-read 3.72 2019 Three Women
author: Lisa Taddeo
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/28
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Alehna 3 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/21
date added: 2022/08/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race]]> 33606119
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.]]> 249 Reni Eddo-Lodge 140887055X Alehna 0 to-read 4.37 2017 Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
author: Reni Eddo-Lodge
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself]]> 36505071 507 Aziz Gazipura Alehna 0 to-read 3.97 2017 Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself
author: Aziz Gazipura
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning]]> 52845775
As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity.

Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship in a search to both uncover and speak the truth.]]> 209 Cathy Park Hong 1984820362 Alehna 0 to-read 4.20 2020 Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
author: Cathy Park Hong
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/29
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]]> My Dark Vanessa 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X Alehna 0 to-read 4.09 2020 My Dark Vanessa
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> The Idiot 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 Alehna 0 to-read 3.67 2017 The Idiot
author: Elif Batuman
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/25
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]]> Writers & Lovers 45289222 Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.]]> 320 Lily King Alehna 0 to-read 3.98 2020 Writers & Lovers
author: Lily King
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/23
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]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Alehna 0 to-read 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/23
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]]> Post-Traumatic 58684299 In this “deeply original� (Elif Batuman) and “violently funny� (Myriam Gurba) story, a young lawyer finally confronts her dark past so she can live in a more peaceful future.

To the outside observer, Vivian is a success story—a dedicated lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a New York City psychiatric hospital. Privately, Vivian contends with the memories and aftereffects of her bad childhood—compounded by the everyday stresses of being a Black Latinx woman in America. She lives in a constant state of hypervigilant awareness that makes even a simple subway ride into a heart-pounding drama.

For years, Vivian has self-medicated with a mix of dating, dieting, dark humor and smoking weed with her BFF, Jane. But after a family reunion prompts Vivian to take a bold step, she finds herself alone in new and terrifying ways, without even Jane to confide in, and she starts to unravel. Will she find a way to repair what matters most to her?

A debut from a stunning talent, Post-traumatic is a new kind of survivor narrative, featuring a complex heroine who is blazingly, indelibly alive. With razor-sharp prose and mordant wit, Chantal V. Johnson performs an extraordinary feat, delivering a psychologically astute story about the aftermath of trauma that somehow manages to brim with warmth, laughter, and hope.]]> 320 Chantal V. Johnson 0316264237 Alehna 0 to-read 3.70 2022 Post-Traumatic
author: Chantal V. Johnson
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve, #1)]]> 36546651 Eve Polastri (not a codename) is a former MI6 operative hired by the national security services for a singular task: to find and capture or kill the assassin responsible, and those who have aided her. Eve, whose quiet and otherwise unextraordinary life belies her quick wit and keen intellect, accepts the mission.
The ensuing chase will lead them on a trail around the world, intersecting with corrupt governments and powerful criminal organizations, all leading towards a final confrontation from which neither will emerge unscathed. Codename Villanelle is a sleek, fast-paced international thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction.]]> 220 Luke Jennings 0316512524 Alehna 4 3.44 2017 Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve, #1)
author: Luke Jennings
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/05/01
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]]> <![CDATA[¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons]]> 55711622 From popular LGBTQ advice columnist and writer John Paul Brammer comes a hilarious, heartwarming memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey growing up as a queer, mixed-race kid in America’s heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw� of his generation.

The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer “Papi� was on the popular gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for “hey, handsome.� Who doesn’t want to be called handsome? But then it happened again and again…and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi?

What started as a racialized moniker given to him on a hookup app soon became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!,� launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere—and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first—what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early 20s? Sometimes the best advice to dole outcomes from looking within, which is what JP has done in his column and book—and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and of course, a few laughs.

In ¡Hola Papi!, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America’s heartland, while attempting to answer some of life’s toughest questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he’s out of the closet? Questions we’ve all asked ourselves, surely.

¡Hola Papi! is for anyone—gay, straight, and everything in between—who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.]]> 214 John Paul Brammer 1982141492 Alehna 0 to-read 4.06 2021 ¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
author: John Paul Brammer
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/22
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]]> The Dark Child 123773 The Dark Child is a distinct and graceful memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea. Long regarded Africa's preeminent Francophone novelist, Laye (1928-80) herein marvels over his mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood, which is marked by animistic beliefs and bloody rituals of primeval origin. Eventually, he must choose between this unique place and the academic success that lures him to distant cities. More than autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions struggling against the encroachment of a modern world. A passionate and deeply affecting record, The Dark Child is a classic of African literature.]]> 192 Camara Laye 080901548X Alehna 0 to-read 3.76 1953 The Dark Child
author: Camara Laye
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/16
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]]> Wow, No Thank You.: Essays 49960031
Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "skinny, luminous peoples" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," and hides Entenmann's cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow.

Into the gross --
Girls gone mild --
Hung up! --
Late-1900s time capsule --
Love and marriage --
Are you familiar with my work? --
Hysterical! --
Lesbian bed death --
Body negativity --
Country crock --
A guide to simple home repairs --
We almost got a fucking dog --
Detachment parenting --
Season 1, episode 1 --
Hollywood summer --
$$$ --
Hello, 911? --
An extremely specific guide to publishing a book]]> 319 Samantha Irby 0525563482 Alehna 5 3.81 2020 Wow, No Thank You.: Essays
author: Samantha Irby
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/12
date added: 2022/03/12
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]]> Florida 44776662 275 Lauren Groff 1594634521 Alehna 0 to-read 3.77 2018 Florida
author: Lauren Groff
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/07
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]]> Nightbitch 55835474
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.]]> 256 Rachel Yoder 0385546815 Alehna 3 3.46 2021 Nightbitch
author: Rachel Yoder
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2021
rating: 3
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date added: 2022/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism]]> 55338982
What makes “cults� so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.� But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,� revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish� everywhere.]]> 309 Amanda Montell 0062993151 Alehna 4 3.82 2021 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
author: Amanda Montell
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/05
date added: 2022/02/05
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]]> Upright Women Wanted 45320365
Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing. They'll bring the fight to you.

In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity.]]> 176 Sarah Gailey 1250213584 Alehna 3 3.59 2020 Upright Women Wanted
author: Sarah Gailey
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/12
date added: 2022/01/12
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]]> To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Alehna 0 to-read 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Alehna 4 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/06
date added: 2022/01/06
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]]> The Bluest Eye 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]> 216 Toni Morrison Alehna 4 4.13 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/06
date added: 2022/01/06
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]]> Tender Is the Flesh 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 Alehna 4 3.75 2017 Tender Is the Flesh
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/05
date added: 2022/01/05
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]]> Know My Name 50196744
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.]]> 384 Chanel Miller 0735223718 Alehna 5 4.69 2019 Know My Name
author: Chanel Miller
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/03
date added: 2022/01/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke]]> 57876868
What have you done today to deserve your eyes?]]> 120 Eric LaRocca 1951658132 Alehna 0 to-read 2.93 2021 Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Alehna
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Hills of Hebron 1524111 The Hills of Hebron tells the story of a group of formerly enslaved Jamaicans as they attempt to create a new life and assert themselves against the colonial power. Strongly anti-colonial, the novel depicts Hebron as a Revivalist community embracing Afro-Caribbean religious practices and gives voice to the social forces of that period in Jamaican and Caribbean history. Based on the early twentieth century Bedwardism movement (a revivalist group led by Alexander Bedward), The Hills of Hebron was one of the first attempts to present the lives of black Jamaicans not as colonial subjects, but as independent human beings.]]> 320 Sylvia Wynter 0582785626 Alehna 0 to-read 4.27 1984 The Hills of Hebron
author: Sylvia Wynter
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays]]> 444808 272 Édouard Glissant 081391373X Alehna 0 to-read 4.28 1989 Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays
author: Édouard Glissant
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness]]> 6792458
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.]]> 290 Michelle Alexander Alehna 5 4.52 2010 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
author: Michelle Alexander
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/12
date added: 2021/12/12
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]]> Milk Fed 54304105 The Pisces and So Sad Today.

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.]]> 304 Melissa Broder 1982142499 Alehna 3 3.56 2021 Milk Fed
author: Melissa Broder
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/12/07
date added: 2021/12/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot]]> 36687229 267 Mikki Kendall Alehna 5 4.37 2020 Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
author: Mikki Kendall
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/05
date added: 2021/12/05
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]]> The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,� written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,� The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.]]> 106 James Baldwin 067974472X Alehna 5 4.55 1963 The Fire Next Time
author: James Baldwin
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear]]> 24453082 Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.]]> 276 Elizabeth Gilbert 1594634718 Alehna 4 3.95 2015 Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/29
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]]> Heavy 29430746 In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.]]> 241 Kiese Laymon 1501125656 Alehna 5 4.48 2018 Heavy
author: Kiese Laymon
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/17
date added: 2021/11/17
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Can’t express enough, how moving and wonderfully written this book is
]]> <![CDATA[South and West: From a Notebook]]> 32842454 The Year of Magical Thinking two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks--writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles--and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through.

And from a different notebook: the "California Notes" that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From.]]> 160 Joan Didion 1524732796 Alehna 3 3.69 2017 South and West: From a Notebook
author: Joan Didion
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> Don't Call Us Dead 33375618 Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces," Smith writes, some of us all at once. Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--"Dear White America"--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.]]> 96 Danez Smith 1555977855 Alehna 5 4.47 2017 Don't Call Us Dead
author: Danez Smith
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/11/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America]]> 53056522 From the author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, a history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically

After the election of Donald Trump, and the escalation of white male rage and increased hostility toward immigrants that came with him, New York Times-bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo found herself in conversation with Americans around the country, pondering one central question: How did we get here?

In this ambitious survey of the last century of American history, Oluo answers that question by pinpointing white men's deliberate efforts to subvert women, people of color, and the disenfranchised. Through research, interviews, and the powerful, personal writing for which she is celebrated, Oluo investigates the backstory of America's growth, from immigrant migration to our national ethos around ingenuity, from the shaping of economic policy to the protection of sociopolitical movements that fortify male power. In the end, she shows how white men have long maintained a stranglehold on leadership and sorely undermined the pursuit of happiness for all.]]> 278 Ijeoma Oluo 1580059511 Alehna 4 4.40 2020 Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
author: Ijeoma Oluo
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/12
date added: 2021/11/12
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]]> Salvador 7823 112 Joan Didion Alehna 0 to-read 3.74 1983 Salvador
author: Joan Didion
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/10/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism]]> 250792 Ain't I a Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women's movement, and black women's involvement with feminism.]]> 205 bell hooks 089608129X Alehna 5 4.51 1981 Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
author: bell hooks
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/26
date added: 2021/10/26
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]]> To Paradise 57739876 From the author of the classic A Little Life, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.

These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love � partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens � and the pain that ensues when we cannot.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385547935 Alehna 0 to-read 3.74 2022 To Paradise
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World]]> 56354
Starting with women in pre-history the author looks beyond the myth of â€Man the Hunterâ€� to reveal women’s central role in the survival and evolution of the human race. She follows their progress from the days when God was a woman through to the triumphs of the Amazons and Assyrian war queens: she looks at the rise of organised religion and the growing oppression of women: she charts the long slow struggle for women’s rights culminating in the twentieth century women’s movements: and finally she presents a vision of women breaking free.

This brilliant and absorbing book turns the spotlight on the hidden side of history to present a fascinating new view of the world, overturning our preconceptions to restore women to their rightful place at the centre of the worldwide story of revolution, empire, war and peace.

Spiced with tales of individual women who have shaped history, celebrating the work and lives of the unsung female millions, distinguished by a wealth of research, The Women’s History of the World redefines the concept of historical reality.]]> 352 Rosalind Miles 0609806955 Alehna 0 to-read 3.82 1989 Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World
author: Rosalind Miles
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/10/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Alehna 5 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/08
date added: 2021/10/08
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]]> Our Men Do Not Belong To Us 28367423 Our Men Do Not Belong to Us is the opening noise of a poet who has already gained a significant amount of praise for her poetry. Warsan Shire’s poems are direct, but they are works of such delicate construction and layered insight that one quickly realizes what seems “direct� is necessarily wholly indirect, questioning, uncertain, and vulnerable. Her poems are about how women deal with the violence of all kinds of exploitation, but they are never didactic or simplistic. Shire fills her poems with the effects of her complex sense of identity in transcultural Africa.

—Kwame Dawes
]]> 28 Warsan Shire 1940646561 Alehna 0 to-read 4.23 2014 Our Men Do Not Belong To Us
author: Warsan Shire
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches]]> 32951
Notes from a trip to Russia
Poetry is not a luxury
The transformation of silence into language and action
Scratching the surface : some notes on barriers to women and loving
Uses of the erotic : the erotic as power
Sexism : an American disease in blackface
An open letter to Mary Daly
Man child : a black lesbian feminist's response
An interview : Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich
The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house
Age, race, class, and sex : women redefining difference
The uses of anger : women responding to racism
Learning from the 60s
Eye to eye : black women, hatred, and anger
Grenada revisited : an interim report]]> 190 Audre Lorde 0895941414 Alehna 5 4.54 1984 Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
author: Audre Lorde
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century]]> 97869 784 0684842319 Alehna 0 to-read 4.37 1970 Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century
author: Boston Women's Health Book Collective
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/14
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]]> <![CDATA[For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women]]> 24455
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English has never lost faith in science itself, but insist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides today’s readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.]]> 432 Barbara Ehrenreich 1400078008 Alehna 0 to-read 3.96 1976 For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (Contemporary Classics)]]> 112884 Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English document the tradition of American sexism in medicine before and after the turn of the century. Citing vivid examples, including numerous "treatments" and "rest cures" perpetrated on women through the decades, the authors analyze the biomedical rationale used to justify the wholesale sex discrimination throughout our culture-in education, in jobs, and in public life.

Ever since Hippocrates, male medics have treated women as the "weaker" sex. By the late 19th century, when the authority of religious documents had waned, the ultimate rationale for sex discrimination became solely biomedical. In this intriguing pamphlet, the authors raise the difficult "How sick-or well-are women today?" They assert that feminists today want more than "more": "We want a new style, and we want a new substance of medical practice as it relates to women."]]> 96 Barbara Ehrenreich 0912670207 Alehna 0 to-read 4.13 1974 Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (Contemporary Classics)
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers]]> 24453 48 Barbara Ehrenreich 0912670134 Alehna 0 to-read 4.03 1972 Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.�

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Alehna 5 4.52 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference]]> 8031168
Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy, and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain� and a “female brain,� Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.

Delusions of Gender provides us with a much-needed corrective to the belief that men’s and women’s brains are intrinsically different--a belief that, as Fine shows with insight and humor--all too often works to the detriment of ourselves and our society.]]> 338 Cordelia Fine 0393068382 Alehna 4 4.07 2010 Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
author: Cordelia Fine
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/15
date added: 2021/08/15
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]]> The Argonauts 22929741
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.

Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.]]> 160 Maggie Nelson 1555977073 Alehna 4 4.04 2015 The Argonauts
author: Maggie Nelson
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/31
date added: 2021/07/31
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]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Alehna 0 to-read 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/22
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]]> The End of Policing 35403039 The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.

This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.

In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative justice, and harm reduction—has led to a decrease in crime, spending, and injustice. The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing.]]> 272 Alex S. Vitale 1784782912 Alehna 5 4.18 2017 The End of Policing
author: Alex S. Vitale
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/22
date added: 2021/07/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Selected Works of Audre Lorde]]> 50489367 A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Among the essays included here are:
� "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
� "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"
� "I Am Your Sister"
� Excerpts from the American Book Award–winning A Burst of Light

The poems are drawn from Lorde’s nine volumes, including The Black Unicorn and National Book Award finalist From a Land Where Other People Live. Among them are:
� "Martha"
� "A Litany for Survival"
� "Sister Outsider"
� "Making Love to Concrete"]]> 367 Audre Lorde 1324004614 Alehna 0 4.63 2020 The Selected Works of Audre Lorde
author: Audre Lorde
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/15
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]]> The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 37380 359 Carson McCullers 0618084746 Alehna 0 3.99 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
author: Carson McCullers
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/15
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Alehna 0 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
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]]> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 51496 139 Robert Louis Stevenson 0451528956 Alehna 0 3.84 1886 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1886
rating: 0
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]]> Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Alehna 0 4.02 1818 Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
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]]> Night Shift 10628
This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive. A world where madness and blind panic become the only reality.

Listening Length: 10 hours and 33 minutes]]> 409 Stephen King Alehna 0 unread-books-on-my-bookshelf 4.04 1978 Night Shift
author: Stephen King
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass]]> 17722
Countless scholars have tried to define the charm of the Alice books--with those wonderfully eccentric characters the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, Mock Turtle, the Mad Hatter et al.--by proclaiming that they really comprise a satire on language, a political allegory, a parody of Victorian children's literature, even a reflection of contemporary ecclesiastical history.

Perhaps, as Dodgson might have said, Alice is no more than a dream, a fairy tale about the trials and tribulations of growing up--or down, or all turned round--as seen through the expert eyes of a child.]]> 234 Lewis Carroll Alehna 0 3.99 1871 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1871
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]]> Naked 4138 Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.]]> 304 David Sedaris Alehna 0 4.10 1997 Naked
author: David Sedaris
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
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]]> The War of the Worlds 8909
Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels,The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published.]]> 192 H.G. Wells 0375759239 Alehna 0 3.84 1898 The War of the Worlds
author: H.G. Wells
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1898
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]]> Doomed (Damned, #2) 17262208 Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the afterlife adventure begun in Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller Damned. Just as that novel brought us a brilliant Hell that only he could imagine, Doomed is a dark and twisted apocalyptic vision from this provocative storyteller.

The bestselling Damned chronicled Madison’s journey across the unspeakable (and really gross) landscape of the afterlife to confront the Devil himself. But her story isn’t over yet. In a series of electronic dispatches from the Great Beyond, Doomed describes the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil.

After a Halloween ritual gone awry, Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or, as mortals like you and I know it, Earth. She can see and hear every detail of the world she left behind, yet she’s invisible to everyone who’s still alive. Not only do people look right through her, they walk right through her as well. The upside is that, no longer subject to physical limitations, she can pass through doors and walls. Her first stop is her parents� luxurious apartment, where she encounters the ghost of her long-deceased grandmother. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate with Nana Minnie and her grandfather, Papadaddy. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months (including a disturbing and finally fatal meeting in a rest stop’s fetid men’s room, in which . . . well, never mind), her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. Satan has had Madison in his sights from the very beginning: through her and her narcissistic celebrity parents, he plans to engineer an era of eternal damnation. For everyone.

Once again, our unconventional but plucky heroine must face her fears and gather her wits for the battle of a lifetime. Dante Alighieri, watch your back; Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.]]> 336 Chuck Palahniuk 0385533039 Alehna 0 3.31 2013 Doomed (Damned, #2)
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Alehna
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2013
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]]> Existentialism is a Humanism 51985
The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence�). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind.

This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture.]]> 122 Jean-Paul Sartre 0300115466 Alehna 0 4.04 1946 Existentialism is a Humanism
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1946
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]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Alehna 0 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Alehna 0 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
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]]> In Cold Blood 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 Alehna 0 4.08 1966 In Cold Blood
author: Truman Capote
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
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]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Alehna 0 4.44 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Alehna
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
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]]>