Rosy's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:42:32 -0700 60 Rosy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times]]> 206207049
In Fully Alive, popular podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield uses the seven deadly sins as a framework to explore questions such

· How can I move from sloth to attention in order to make the most of my short life and stop getting distracted by trivialities?
· Is it possible to move from wrath to peacemaking? How do I become a depolarizing person in an age of outrage, tribalism, and division?
· What might it look like to move from gluttony to awe, finding transcendence in expansive, life-giving ways--not in a tub of ice cream or a bottle of wine?
· How can I move from pride to connection, overcoming the disconnection that keeps me from intimacy, community, and ultimately the divine?

Oldfield shows why, in a world heavy on judgment, she still finds the concept of sin liberating--and how, to her surprise, she keeps finding in her Christian faith ways to feel fully alive. Deeply serious yet amusingly relatable, this book helps us develop spiritual strength for when things fall apart.]]> 271 Elizabeth Oldfield 1493446975 Rosy 0 currently-reading 4.47 Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times
author: Elizabeth Oldfield
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Tar Baby 6582903 A ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary reinvention of the love story by the legendaryNobel Prize winnerJadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.]]> 307 Toni Morrison Rosy 4 4.13 1981 Tar Baby
author: Toni Morrison
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: 20th-century, african-american, bad-language, book-club, colonialism, feminism, psychology, social-history, toni-morrison
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom]]> 6596 The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.]]> 152 Miguel Ruiz 1878424505 Rosy 1
I think the four agreements are excellent advice that, as another Shelfarian pointed out, can be gained from the front flap of this book. I also agree that we need to die to ourselves and enter into a resurrection, and that Love is the key--even the source--of healing and redemption. But although this author nods to a "Creator," his book teaches extreme isolationism and self-reference (as another Shelfarian pointed out, similar to EST of the 70s and The Forum of the 80s). This is attractive to everyone at first glance because it makes you answerable only to yourself, not to any outside being. On page 31, after acknowledging that "religions talk about sin and sinners," he makes up an arbitrary definition of the word sin, adopting the word for his own purpose, and what he says makes some sense. But since he has already claimed 95 percent of what we have perceived is a lie, what authority does he have to make this change? Why is his voice, his "domestication" any different from the thousands of others we are dreaming?

By the end, he has led us to a place where "there is really no reason to suffer...If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find." (p. 129) May this be true for you. For the person whose little child dies slowly of leukemia or starvation or whose home is destroyed by disaster, or the person whose greatest desire is to be married but cannot find the right person--at least for those people, reality exists outside themselves--they are not dreaming it up and do not have the power to change it. This 'dreamed reality' is a lie. It makes you God, which, unless you physically created yourself and your environment, you are not.

For the healing and restoration that Ruiz describes to take place, we need to be reconciled with the Creator who made, designed, and loves us. Therein is the power to change destinies and there is the source of eternal love. I recommend that you return, as Ruiz suggests, to the words (and actions) of Jesus. I suggest starting with the Gospel of John, cited by Ruiz. And I suggest you take it personally.]]> 4.20 1997 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
author: Miguel Ruiz
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: 20th-century, philosophy, religion, psychology, ancient, latin-american, native-american
review:
I see how popular this book is, but so many truths entangled with so many lies amount to a deception that I'm afraid will lead people away from true love and healing.

I think the four agreements are excellent advice that, as another Shelfarian pointed out, can be gained from the front flap of this book. I also agree that we need to die to ourselves and enter into a resurrection, and that Love is the key--even the source--of healing and redemption. But although this author nods to a "Creator," his book teaches extreme isolationism and self-reference (as another Shelfarian pointed out, similar to EST of the 70s and The Forum of the 80s). This is attractive to everyone at first glance because it makes you answerable only to yourself, not to any outside being. On page 31, after acknowledging that "religions talk about sin and sinners," he makes up an arbitrary definition of the word sin, adopting the word for his own purpose, and what he says makes some sense. But since he has already claimed 95 percent of what we have perceived is a lie, what authority does he have to make this change? Why is his voice, his "domestication" any different from the thousands of others we are dreaming?

By the end, he has led us to a place where "there is really no reason to suffer...If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find." (p. 129) May this be true for you. For the person whose little child dies slowly of leukemia or starvation or whose home is destroyed by disaster, or the person whose greatest desire is to be married but cannot find the right person--at least for those people, reality exists outside themselves--they are not dreaming it up and do not have the power to change it. This 'dreamed reality' is a lie. It makes you God, which, unless you physically created yourself and your environment, you are not.

For the healing and restoration that Ruiz describes to take place, we need to be reconciled with the Creator who made, designed, and loves us. Therein is the power to change destinies and there is the source of eternal love. I recommend that you return, as Ruiz suggests, to the words (and actions) of Jesus. I suggest starting with the Gospel of John, cited by Ruiz. And I suggest you take it personally.
]]> Road-side Dog 223074 208 Czesław Miłosz 0374526230 Rosy 3
I do appreciate seeing the thoughts of a real, nonstereotypical Berkley professor of the late twentieth century.]]> 3.94 1997 Road-side Dog
author: Czesław Miłosz
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: ambition-and-survival-track, 20th-century, 21st-century, american, art, christianity, creativity, european, faith, from-my-list, library-book, nobel-prize, philosophy, poet, poetry, psychology, religion, writing
review:
The most interesting part of this for me is that Hubby picked it up and is also reading it. But this is also an interesting delve into the mind and perhaps heart of a Name artist. I wanted to say valuable as well, and I’m sure this pleasing little book has value, but my problem is that I don’t pay attention well, and I don’t THINK I will remember any of these ideas for long. Maybe Hubby will.

I do appreciate seeing the thoughts of a real, nonstereotypical Berkley professor of the late twentieth century.
]]> The Magic Mountain 88077
The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.]]> 706 Thomas Mann Rosy 0 to-read 4.12 1924 The Magic Mountain
author: Thomas Mann
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Women 126918788 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 472 Kristin Hannah Rosy 4 4.71 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: 20th-century, 21st-century, america, american, book-club, historical-fiction, kindle, social-history, the-sixties-and-seventies, violent
review:

]]> To Serve Them All My Days 8256476 608 R.F. Delderfield Rosy 4 4.40 1972 To Serve Them All My Days
author: R.F. Delderfield
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Rosy 4 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 20th-century, 21st-century, american, america, book-club, historical-fiction, new-york-city
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ultimate Prizes (Starbridge book 3)]]> 10761771 Praise for Ultimate Prizes“I did not want to put the book down. . . . [Howatch] is a skilled storyteller who makes the reader wonder and care about her people.�—The Washington Post Book World“Thoughtful and thought-provoking . . . Almost every newspaper carries an article or two on the scandalous private lifeof a public figure. . . . Ultimate Prizesoffers a look at both the sacred and profane aspects of religious life as it is lived on the front lines—the story just behind the front page.�—Chicago Tribune“Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind. . . . Everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern. . . . You’ll want to have tea with this wise, witty woman.�—New Woman“Vibrant . . . The author of Glittering Images and Glamorous Powers scores a hat trick with this third novel in her series set amidst the ‘cut-and-thrust battles� and ‘sheer Machiavellian skulduggery� of the Church of England.�—Kirkus Reviews]]> 484 Susan Howatch Rosy 4 4.41 1989 Ultimate Prizes (Starbridge book 3)
author: Susan Howatch
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2)]]> 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Rosy 5 4.37 1928 The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2)
author: A.A. Milne
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: aa-milne, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, british, childrens-book, classic, short-stories
review:
I expect you to know this already, but if you haven't read Pooh, you really haven't read. Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six should be in every library. The perfect pick-me-up to dip into when feeling low, and the perfect read-aloud for when any young child visits. But please don't go near the abomination of Disneyfication. What a hijack!
]]> <![CDATA[The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757]]> 1933709 The Last of the Mohicans contains the classic portrait of the man of moral courage who severs all connections with a society whose values he can no longer accept. Despite his chosen exile, Hawk-eye (Natty Bumppo0, the frontier scout, risks his life to escort two sisters through hostile Indian country. On the dangerous journey he enlists the aid of the Mohican Chingachgook. And in the challenging ordeal that follows, in their encounters with deception, brutality, and the death of loved ones, the friendship between the two men deepens--the scout and the Indian, each with a singular philosophy of independence that has been nurtured and shaped by the silent, virgin forest.]]> 432 James Fenimore Cooper 0451525035 Rosy 3 3.32 1826 The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757
author: James Fenimore Cooper
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1826
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 18th-century, 19th-century, american, classic, america, adventure, countryside, exploration
review:

]]> Mexican Gothic 57800389
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 301 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 052562080X Rosy 2 3.71 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Shakespearean Tragedy 437318 Shakespearean Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

Approaching the tragedies as drama, wondering about their characters as he might have wondered about people in novels or in life, Bradley is one of the most liberating in the line of distinguished Shakespeare critics. His acute yet undogmatic and almost conversational critical method has—despite fluctuations in fashion—remained enduringly popular and influential. For, as John Bayley observes, these lectures give us a true and exhilarating sense of "the tragedies joining up with life, with all our lives; leading us into a perspective of possibilities that stretch forward and back in time, and in our total awareness of things."]]> 480 A.C. Bradley Rosy 3 4.14 1904 Shakespearean Tragedy
author: A.C. Bradley
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1904
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:

]]> King Lear 1401380 344 William Shakespeare 0140707247 Rosy 3 3.93 1605 King Lear
author: William Shakespeare
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1605
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: 16th-century, drama, play, poetry, psychology
review:

]]> Under the Greenwood Tree 18907175 278 Thomas Hardy Rosy 3 3.80 1872 Under the Greenwood Tree
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1872
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
review:

]]> A Month in the Country 18187473 135 J.L. Carr 1590176839 Rosy 3 4.25 1980 A Month in the Country
author: J.L. Carr
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
review:

]]> A Handful of Dust 19166268 Selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the century, this "absolutely delightful" novel (New York Times) movingly and comically chronicles the breakdown of a marriage and the disintegration of English society in the years after World War I. After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last has grown bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. In a novel that combines tragedy, comedy, and savage irony, Evelyn Waugh indelibly captures the irresponsible mood of the "crazy and sterile generation" between the wars.]]> 288 Evelyn Waugh Rosy 3 3.92 1934 A Handful of Dust
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:

]]> My Name Is Barbra 105584138
Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl (musical and film) to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.

No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most iconic figures in music and film, the only recording artist in history to have earned #1 albums over six consecutive decades. She has received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, the National Medal of Arts, France’s Légion d’Honneur, and America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She founded The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai, helping to raise awareness and push for more research into women’s heart disease, the leading cause of death among women. Through the Streisand Foundation, which she established in 1986, she has supported national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues, and nuclear disarmament. In 2021 she launched the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA, a forward-thinking institution dedicated to finding solutions to the most vital social issues.]]> 1040 Barbra Streisand 0525429522 Rosy 4 4.13 2023 My Name Is Barbra
author: Barbra Streisand
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: 21st-century, 20th-century, american, book-club, creativity, art, autobiography, library-book, memoir, music, new-york-city, theatre
review:
Does anyone have the (or a) recipe for "peas with sugar and breadcrumbs"? My book club is intrigued.
]]> Mansfield Park 208803 Mansfield Park appears in some ways to continue where Pride and Prejudice left off, it is, as Kathryn Sutherland shows in her illuminating Introduction, a much darker work, which challenges 'the very values (of tradition, stability, retirement and faithfulness) it appears to endorse'. This new edition provides an accurate text based, for the first time since its original publication, on the first edition of 1814.]]> 473 Jane Austen 0192547038 Rosy 4 4.05 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: 18th-century, 19th-century, british, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, england
review:
Not Pride and Prejudice, but still a good read. Fanny Price is a little too perfect, but we like her anyway. My real gripe is that Austen seemed to be in a hurry to finish this novel. After waiting the length of the book for it, I wanted to read a bit more about the change in Edmund's affection for Fanny! Austen would have done a great job of describing his falling in love...
]]> <![CDATA[The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild]]> 6898874
In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.

The Elephant Whisperer is a heartwarming, exciting, funny, and sometimes sad memoir of Anthony's experiences with these huge yet sympathetic creatures. Set against the background of life on an African game reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, Anthony's unrelenting efforts at animal protection and his remarkable connection with nature will inspire animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.]]> 384 Lawrence Anthony 031256578X Rosy 4 4.46 2009 The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild
author: Lawrence Anthony
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2017/12/04
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: from-my-list, 21st-century, africa, animals, current-events, library-book, memoir, social-commentary
review:

]]> Macbeth 8852
This shocking tragedy - a violent caution to those seeking power for its own sake - is, to this day, one of Shakespeare’s most popular and influential masterpieces.]]> 249 William Shakespeare 0743477103 Rosy 0 3.90 1623 Macbeth
author: William Shakespeare
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1623
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: 17th-century, british, classic, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, college-lit, literature, high-school-lit, drama, play, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Home at the End of the World]]> 2137 A Home at the End of the World masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today.]]> 342 Michael Cunningham 0312424086 Rosy 0 to-read 3.93 1990 A Home at the End of the World
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eyes of Prometheus, vol. 1: 2nd Edition]]> 23575244 82 Richard Alan 1631923943 Rosy 0 4.50 2014 Eyes of Prometheus, vol. 1: 2nd Edition
author: Richard Alan
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2015/01/04
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Rapeseed 17882184 "A novel of resilience and heart, of teenaged indiscretions and marital discontentment, humor... and boundless compassion." -- Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea
"Funny, engaging, and painfully true" -- Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning author of The Shadow Tracer
"A tender and evocative novel about the slippery nature of home and inheritance... Nancy Freund writes with authority and charm." -- Nick Dybek, author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man
"A smart, sharply observed debut." -- Steve Himmer, author of The Bee-Loud Glade
"... at times heartbreaking... Rapeseed works to answer the age-old questions of what it means to be a family." -- Myfanwy Collins, author of Echolocation
Praise for Nancy Freund's "Marcus," winner of the 2013 Geneva Fiction "A full and rich and startling story." -- Bret Lott, Oprah book club author of Jewel]]> 320 Nancy Freund 0988708418 Rosy 3 4.50 2013 Rapeseed
author: Nancy Freund
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2016/06/14
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: 21st-century, american, bad-language, england, shelfari-plan-to-read-list, kindle
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Rosy 4 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/24
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 20th-century, 21st-century, america, american, book-club, california, read-while-travelling, social-history, the-eighties, the-fifties, the-sixties-and-seventies
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake]]> 56108283
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose gave this sack filled with a few precious items to her daughter, Ashley, as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley’s survival as well. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose’s wish that “It be filled with my Love always.� Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving new book inspired by Rose’s gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records and draws on objects and art, to follow the paths of their lives—and the lives of so many women like them—in a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.

All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women against steep odds. It honors the creativity and fierce resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties even when official systems refused to do so.]]> 385 Tiya Miles 1984854992 Rosy 3 3.94 2021 All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
author: Tiya Miles
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 18th-century, 19th-century, 20th-century, african-american, america, american, book-club, feminism, history, slavery, social-commentary, social-history
review:

]]> Hamnet 48677123 A thrilling departure: A short, piercing, deeply moving new novel from the acclaimed author of I Am, I Am, I Am, about the death of Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in fifteenth-century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play.

England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.

A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.]]> 310 Maggie O'Farrell 0525657606 Rosy 3 4.18 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/18
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 16th-century, 21st-century, book-club, england, historical-fiction, shakespeare
review:
Definitely 4 stars if it turns out to be memorable or if the book club discussion tips the scale. I enjoyed it more as I went along, and really enjoyed the final chapter. Now to read Hamlet and imagine all that behind it.
]]> Horse 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]> 401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 Rosy 4 4.17 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/18
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 19th-century, america, american, african-american, book-club, historical-fiction, sports, slavery, social-history
review:

]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Rosy 4 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 20th-century, 21st-century, american, book-club
review:

]]> Leaving Time 36680980 417 Jodi Picoult Rosy 3 4.20 2014 Leaving Time
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 21st-century, africa, america, american, animals, from-my-list
review:

]]> People of the Book 1379961 The New Yorker) novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war.
Inspired by a true story, "People of the Book" is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author.
Called "a tour de force" by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain.

When it falls to Australian rare book expert Hanna Heath to conserve this priceless work, the tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—a butterfly wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock the book’s deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
]]> 372 Geraldine Brooks 067001821X Rosy 3 4.02 2008 People of the Book
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: 16th-century, 17th-century, 18th-century, 19th-century, 20th-century, art, book-club, books, creativity, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dictionary of Concise Writing: 10,000 Alternatives to Wordy Phrases]]> 632827 412 Robert Hartwell Fiske 0966517660 Rosy 0 20th-century 4.00 1996 The Dictionary of Concise Writing: 10,000 Alternatives to Wordy Phrases
author: Robert Hartwell Fiske
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: 20th-century
review:

]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 5215 464 Gabriel García Márquez 0060740450 Rosy 4 3.92 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: 20th-century, classic, shelfari-plan-to-read-list, latin-american, magical-realism, world-war-ii, 19th-century, book-club, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, kindle, postmodern, translation, turn-of-the-century
review:
Upgrading to 4 stars because of the writing (even in translation!) and the closing, which provided poetically a shape and purpose and artistic completeness that I was missing from time to time while reading the book.
]]> <![CDATA[Bolsa Chica: Its History From Prehistoric Times to the Present]]> 7298661 253 David M. Carlberg 1934379921 Rosy 0 to-read 4.25 2009 Bolsa Chica: Its History From Prehistoric Times to the Present
author: David M. Carlberg
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Around The World In 80 Days 881624 Jules Verne 1595400427 Rosy 0 19th-century 3.69 1872 Around The World In 80 Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: 19th-century
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Autobiographies (The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 3)]]> 1058642
This volume provides a vivid series of personal accounts of a wide range of figures, and it describes Yeats's work as poet and playwright, as a founder of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, his involvement with Irish nationalism, and his fascination with occultism and visions.

This book is most compelling as Yeats's own account of the growth of his poetic imagination. Yeats thought that a poet leads a life of allegory, and that his works are comments upon it.

Autobiographies enacts his ruling belief in the connections and coherence between the life that he led and the works that he wrote. It is a vision of personal history as art, and so it is the one truly essential companion to his poems and plays.

Edited by William H. O'Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, this volume is available for the first time with invaluable explanatory notes and includes previously unpublished passages from candidly explicit first drafts.]]> 560 W.B. Yeats 0684853388 Rosy 4 3.81 1926 Autobiographies (The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 3)
author: W.B. Yeats
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: ambition-and-survival-track, art, creativity, history, ireland, irish, memoir, poet, theatre, romantic, nobel-prize, turn-of-the-century, writing, yeats
review:

]]> Othello 12996 319 William Shakespeare Rosy 4 3.89 1603 Othello
author: William Shakespeare
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1603
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: books-i-have-read-more-than-once, british, classic, drama, high-school-lit, play
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Rosy 0 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: 20th-century, african-american, america, book-club, social-history, transient-book
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]> 912 J.K. Rowling Rosy 4 4.50 2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Hamlet (Shakespeare, Pelican) 859460
Great pains have been taken to follow Shakespeare's intentions with regard to the act and scene division and the exact form of speech. The editing has been done from the quarto or folio texts, depending on which is considered more authoritative, and the ideal has been to reproduce the chosen texts with as few alterations as possible. In order to help the reader and student as much as possible, the quotations have been arranged on the relevant pages, providing an easily accessible and indispensable source of information.
(back cover)]]> 192 William Shakespeare 0140714057 Rosy 0 4.11 1601 Hamlet (Shakespeare, Pelican)
author: William Shakespeare
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1601
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: 17th-century, british, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, college-lit, drama, play, shakespeare
review:

]]> The Physicists 595358
The world’s greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Möbius, is in a madhouse, haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon. He is kept company by two other equally deluded one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton. It soon becomes evident, however, that these three are not as harmlessly lunatic as they appear. Are they, in fact, really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game, with the world as the stake? For Möbius has uncovered the mystery of the universe—and therefore the key to its destruction—and Einstein and Newton are vying for this secret that would enable them to rule the earth.

Added to this treacherous combination is the world-renowned psychiatrist in charge, the hunchbacked Mathilde von Zahnd, who has some diabolical plans on her own. . . . With wry, penetrating humor, The Physicists probes beneath the surface of modern existence and, like Marat/Sade, questions whether it is the mad who are the truly insane.]]> 96 Friedrich Dürrenmatt 0802150888 Rosy 0 drama, hubbys-book, play 4.01 1962 The Physicists
author: Friedrich Dürrenmatt
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: drama, hubbys-book, play
review:

]]> The Great Believers 53430792 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A NEW YORK TIMES Selection for BEST 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK
A PICK FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S 2018 BEST BOOKS
THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT FOR READERS

“A page turner...An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis. "�The New York Times Book Review

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster.]]> 431 Rebecca Makkai Rosy 0 4.44 2018 The Great Believers
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Mr Peacock's Possessions 39297580 Oceania 1879. A family of settlers from New Zealand are the sole inhabitants of a remote volcanic island.

For two years they have struggled with the harsh reality of trying to make this unforgiving place a paradise they can call their own. At last, a ship appears. The six Pacific Islanders on board have travelled eight hundred miles across the ocean in search of work and new horizons. Hopes are high for all, until a vulnerable boy vanishes. In their search for the lost child, settlers and newcomers together uncover far more than they were looking for. The island¹s secrets force them all to question their deepest convictions.]]> 432 Lydia Syson Rosy 3 3.71 2018 Mr Peacock's Possessions
author: Lydia Syson
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/12
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Let Us Descend 87556695
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X Rosy 3 3.68 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language]]> 12870068 252 Mark Forsyth Rosy 0 4.25 2011 The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
author: Mark Forsyth
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves:
review:

]]> A Passage to India 45195 A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world.

In his introduction, Pankaj Mishra outlines Forster's complex engagement with Indian society and culture. This edition reproduces the Abinger text and notes, and also includes four of Forster's essays on India, a chronology and further reading.]]> 376 E.M. Forster 014144116X Rosy 0 to-read 3.69 1924 A Passage to India
author: E.M. Forster
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather]]> 153791822
The story of Willa Cather is defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early; yet Cather was the opposite. She took her time and transformed herself by stages. The writer who leapt into the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) was already well into middle age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal—literary immortality.

Unlike Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, her idealism was unironic, and she stood alone among the great modern authors—at odds with the fashionable attitudes of her time. Combining intricate analysis with an empathetic, lyrical voice, Benjamin Taylor uncovers the reality of Cather’s artistic development, from modest beginnings to the triumphs of her mature years. His book is simultaneously an homage to her character, a warm consideration of her work, and a case being made to read Cather with renewed vigor.]]> 192 Benjamin Taylor 0593298829 Rosy 0 to-read 3.62 Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather
author: Benjamin Taylor
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul]]> 112974900
“A vulnerable, honest look at a life lived in a country still struggling with its evils...Hopeful...Beautiful and haunting.� —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again

In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the “din of human division and strife.� With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking—personal, documentary, and spiritual—to understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another.

In Smith’s own words, “To write a book about Black strength, Black continuance, and the powerful forms of belief and community that have long bolstered the soul of my people, I used the generations of my own patrilineal family to lean backward toward history, to gather a fuller sense of the lives my own ancestors led, the challenges they endured, and the sources of hope and bolstering they counted on. What this process has led me to believe is that all of us, in the here and now, can choose to work alongside the generations that precede us in tending to America’s oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.�

To Free the Captives touches down in Sunflower, Alabama, the red-dirt town where Smith’s father’s family comes from, and where her grandfather returned after World War I with a hero’s record but difficult prospects as a Black man. Smith considers his life and the life of her father through the lens of history. Hoping to connect with their strength and continuance, she assembles a new terminology of American life.

Bearing courageous witness to the terms of Freedom afforded her as a Black woman, a mother, and an educator in the twenty-first century, Smith etches a portrait of where we find ourselves four hundred years into the American experiment. Weaving in an account of her growing spiritual practice, she argues that the soul is not merely a private site of respite or transcendence, but a tool for fulfilling our duties to each other, and a sounding board for our most pressing collective Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?]]> 288 Tracy K. Smith 059353476X Rosy 0 to-read 3.99 2023 To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul
author: Tracy K. Smith
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> House of Sand and Fog 38311414 Boston Globe), a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold on to her home in California. But this becomes contested territory when a recent immigrant from the Middle East—a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force—becomes determined to restore his family’s dignity through buying the house. When the woman’s lover, a married cop, intervenes, he goes to extremes to win her love. Andre Dubus III’s unforgettable characters—people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on—careen toward inevitable conflict. An “affecting, subtle portrait of two hostile but equally fragile camps� (The New Yorker), their tragedy paints a shockingly true picture of the country we still live in today, two decades after this book’s first publication.]]> 384 Andre Dubus III 0393356345 Rosy 4 3.97 1999 House of Sand and Fog
author: Andre Dubus III
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: 20th-century, america, american, psychology, sex, social-history, the-eighties, transient-book
review:

]]> <![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 Rosy 4 A very Good read. 4.18 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
author: Michael Pollan
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: 21st-century, american, america, book-club, cooking, food, food-writing, health-fitness, social-commentary
review:
A very Good read.
]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Rosy 4
What an impressive person: Intelligent (literary and scientific!), wise, honest, phenomenally hardworking, and with all that, so very human: loving, kind and considerate. Apart from being gutwrenched by the end, I am tempted to go back and start over right away, to absorb the insights and the literary references and to share once again in the harrowing story of this family's experience. (What is it about human nature that causes most of us to enjoy these illness-and-death memoirs? It isn't just me, is it?) The most moving passage (of many) to me is Kalanithis's note of gratitude to his baby daughter at the very end of his own section (his wife completed the book), for sustaining him during the last months of his life: "Do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing."]]> 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/27
date added: 2024/02/14
shelves: 21st-century, american, kindle, medical, memoir, philosophy, literature, shelfari-plan-to-read-list
review:
I had just begun to pick up the buzz about this book when I was privileged, at work, to read the transcript of an interview with Paul Kalanithi's oncologist. The interview was only incidentally about the book (also incidentally, the oncologist's real name is not used in the book), but she talked about how she enjoyed and pondered reading her patient's account of the conversations that they had, and how valuable it was to get that perspective. This experience tipped the scale for me and I read the book almost immediately.

What an impressive person: Intelligent (literary and scientific!), wise, honest, phenomenally hardworking, and with all that, so very human: loving, kind and considerate. Apart from being gutwrenched by the end, I am tempted to go back and start over right away, to absorb the insights and the literary references and to share once again in the harrowing story of this family's experience. (What is it about human nature that causes most of us to enjoy these illness-and-death memoirs? It isn't just me, is it?) The most moving passage (of many) to me is Kalanithis's note of gratitude to his baby daughter at the very end of his own section (his wife completed the book), for sustaining him during the last months of his life: "Do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing."
]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Rosy 4 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/14
shelves: 20th-century, book-club, indian, social-history
review:

]]> The Latecomer 57833152 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings � Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally � feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer� play in this fractured family?

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.]]> 441 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250790778 Rosy 0 4.24 2022 The Latecomer
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/09
date added: 2024/01/09
shelves:
review:

]]> The Choir 1439072
As the rift widened into Machiavellian dimensions, many others found themselves caught in the schism--Leo Beckford, brilliant but wayward organist, repelling the adoration of the Dean's dreadful daughter--the gentle, left-wing Bishop, trying to soothe the angry protagonists--Sally Ashworth, mother of the leading chorister, fighting loneliness and an erring and absent husband. Each frail and human dilemma took its part in the greater turmoil of Chapter and Close and the final battle for the survival of the Choir.]]> 336 Joanna Trollope 0425157180 Rosy 4
Third time around is my postmoving read and toss, but also the Christmas time cozy read, for which this book is perfect.]]> 3.44 1988 The Choir
author: Joanna Trollope
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: 20th-century, british, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, churchy, england, brain-candy, the-eighties, cathedrals
review:
Ahhh. Like a nice cup of tea.

Third time around is my postmoving read and toss, but also the Christmas time cozy read, for which this book is perfect.
]]> The Sentence 57576425 In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.]]> 382 Louise Erdrich 0062671146 Rosy 3 4.09 2021 The Sentence
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2023/12/10
shelves:
review:
I really need goodreads to provide half stars. I'll have to do my usual "if I remember it well in a year or so I'll add the fourth star."
]]> In This House of Brede 749634 The communal strength of the sisters - each alike in faith and ritual, all prone to such human frailties as jealousy, envy, love and despair, and every one full of surprises - guided by the intelligent compassion of their Abbess, overcomes many crises of the heart and conscience that mushroom in a small, tight world of ninety women.
Hidden from the common view, Philippa reaches her Calvary - in the need to forgive and forget the past ....]]> 432 Rumer Godden 0330026410 Rosy 4
How satisfying, after writing the above, to scroll through the reviews and see the exact same comments: rereading, and not knowing why it’s so good other than its being so well written.]]> 4.56 1969 In This House of Brede
author: Rumer Godden
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.56
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves:
review:
My third or fourth time for this comfort-read recommended by my mum in my teens. Not sure really what recommends it, but it must be well written as it is a place for me to go as a refuge in times of change � in this case, moving. Whether there is a next time will be a test of all that, however, as this was the “read and toss� of my ancient paperback.

How satisfying, after writing the above, to scroll through the reviews and see the exact same comments: rereading, and not knowing why it’s so good other than its being so well written.
]]> Demon Copperhead 61106504
“Kingsolver is a writer who can help us understand and navigate the chaos of these times.�--Minneapolis Star Tribune

From the New York Times bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behavior, a brilliant novel which enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity.

”Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.�

Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 22 Barbara Kingsolver Rosy 3 4.34 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[If You Want to Write : A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit]]> 567785 179 Brenda Ueland 0915308940 Rosy 4 20th-century 4.12 2012 If You Want to Write : A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
author: Brenda Ueland
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves: 20th-century
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid]]> 10538
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century�1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.]]> 288 Bill Bryson 076791936X Rosy 3 20th-century 3.92 2006 The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
author: Bill Bryson
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/10/09
shelves: 20th-century
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 7241179
Ishiguro’s dazzling novel is a sad and humorous love story, a meditation on the condition of modern man, and an elegy for England at a time of acute change.]]> 226 Kazuo Ishiguro Rosy 3
I found this different approach unexpected given the reviews I've read on Shelfari. I didn't expect the book to revolve so completely around the single character's musings--which, really, is all there is. And as he reveals his character to us, he begins to get glimpses of it himself, which makes it different from a Shakespearian soliloquy in that those characters reveal the truth either unintentionally or wholly deliberately...(does that make sense?).

Certainly a heroless book: not a single character fulfils his or her potential or 'steps up to the plate.' A wasted life? A life not lived? Certainly the latter--except that he had enjoyed a relatively privileged position and had taken whatever pleasure he was capable of from his work...I think I'm still trying to figure this out. [I just reread some of the reviews on this site, and the following words from dianecipa capture part of this much better: "It was such a tragedy and yet the simple joys of living within a self-imposed code of values were profound."]

But it's an effective book--depressing!

Update on 7/7/08: My husband just finished reading this, and he thinks highly of it. This definitely affects my opinion, inclining me to have even more respect for what is accomplished. I might move it up to 4 stars--but it should wait until I read it again for that.]]> 4.40 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2008/06/07
date added: 2023/10/06
shelves: folio-society, 20th-century, british, history, england, historical-fiction, world-war-ii
review:
Three and a half stars, because I find merit simply in the original style and idea of this book. Not a 'great' novel, but certainly a notch above my three-star bucketful.

I found this different approach unexpected given the reviews I've read on Shelfari. I didn't expect the book to revolve so completely around the single character's musings--which, really, is all there is. And as he reveals his character to us, he begins to get glimpses of it himself, which makes it different from a Shakespearian soliloquy in that those characters reveal the truth either unintentionally or wholly deliberately...(does that make sense?).

Certainly a heroless book: not a single character fulfils his or her potential or 'steps up to the plate.' A wasted life? A life not lived? Certainly the latter--except that he had enjoyed a relatively privileged position and had taken whatever pleasure he was capable of from his work...I think I'm still trying to figure this out. [I just reread some of the reviews on this site, and the following words from dianecipa capture part of this much better: "It was such a tragedy and yet the simple joys of living within a self-imposed code of values were profound."]

But it's an effective book--depressing!

Update on 7/7/08: My husband just finished reading this, and he thinks highly of it. This definitely affects my opinion, inclining me to have even more respect for what is accomplished. I might move it up to 4 stars--but it should wait until I read it again for that.
]]> Food in History 8452282
Packed with absorbing anecdotes and surprising insights, Food in History looks at our relationship with food and its far-reaching effects from as far back as the Neolithic era: how agricultural as opposed to hunter-gatherer societies changed the relationship between the sexes; how the spice trade made and toppled empires; why the cow became sacred in India; and how a new kind of plough helped to spark off the Crusades. Tannahill explores both the exotic tastes of our wealthy ancestors (peacock eggs and roast thrush), and the unvarying diets of the poorer mass of humanity (grain paste and bread). In times of famine, practically all communities, she claims, would resort to cannibalism, called variously ‘long pig�, ‘two-legged mutton� and ‘tlacatlaolli� (maize-and-man stew).

No less compelling are the observations that Food in History makes on how we eat today. What soon becomes clear is that there is nothing new in human experience. In the late Bronze Age, olive and vine cash crops led to devastating deforestation and the agricultural collapse of Greece, a reminder that the food we eat has always had an impact far beyond hearth and home.]]> 416 Reay Tannahill Rosy 0 to-read 5.00 1973 Food in History
author: Reay Tannahill
name: Rosy
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Quantum Physics in Minutes 31934685
Contents Schrodinger's cat, inside the atom, the particle zoo, the Higgs boson, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, God playing dice, relativity, the Big Bang, dark energy and matter, black holes, the fate of the Universe, the Theory of Everything, quantum gravity, string theory, the multiverse, instant communication, quantum computing and cryptography, superconductivity, quantum biology, quantum consciousness, and much more.

Written as a series of mini essays with 200 simple diagrams to help understanding, there can be no easier guide to this notoriously confusing subject. At last it's possible for non-specialists to understand quantum theory and its central role in the birth of the universe and the very existence of life.]]> 416 Gemma Lavender 1681441748 Rosy 0 3.88 2017 Quantum Physics in Minutes
author: Gemma Lavender
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2023/09/30
shelves:
review:
It was months ( in the loo), not minutes, but I read all the words.
]]> The Tenants 3072 The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel's attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.]]> 256 Bernard Malamud 0374521026 Rosy 3 3.67 1971 The Tenants
author: Bernard Malamud
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2023/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories]]> 392745 304 Robert Louis Stevenson 0140431179 Rosy 0 19th-century 3.67 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/29
shelves: 19th-century
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Irrelevant English Teacher]]> 4237554 Book by Morse, J.Mitchell 152 J. Mitchell Morse 0877220328 Rosy 3 4.50 1974 The Irrelevant English Teacher
author: J. Mitchell Morse
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1974
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/02
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves: 20th-century, art, criticism, english-language, old-book, literature, writing
review:

]]> Cranford 182381
Cranford depicts the lives and preoccupations of the inhabitants of a small village - their petty snobberies, appetite for gossip, and loyal support for each other in times of need This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty, But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reapparance of long-lost relatives. to Lady Glenmire, who shocks everyone by marrying the doctor. When men do appear, such as 'modern' Captain Brown or Matty's suitor from the past, they bring disruption and excitement to the everyday life of Cranford.

In her introduction, Patricia Ingham places the novel in its literary and historical context, and discusses the theme of female friendship and Gaskell's narrative technique. This edition also contains an account of Gaskell's childhood in Knutsford, on which Cranford is based, appendices on fashion and domestic duties supplemented by illustrations, a chronology of Gaskell's life and works, suggestions for further reading, and explanatory notes.]]> 257 Elizabeth Gaskell 0141439882 Rosy 0 to-read 3.85 1853 Cranford
author: Elizabeth Gaskell
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1853
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Castle 333538 Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman

Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.]]> 328 Franz Kafka 0805211063 Rosy 0 to-read 3.97 1926 The Castle
author: Franz Kafka
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Trial 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Rosy 0 to-read 4.00 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tin Drum 35743 580 Günter Grass 0099483505 Rosy 0 to-read 3.96 1959 The Tin Drum
author: Günter Grass
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How It Is 789824 How It Is is a novel in three parts, written in short paragraphs, which tell (abruptly, cajolingly, bleakly) of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating his life as he hears it uttered - or remembered - by another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and vague about all else therein or beyond.

Together with Molloy, How It Is counts for many readers as Beckett's greatest accomplishment in the novel form. It is also his most challenging narrative, both stylistically and for the pessimism of its vision, which continues the themes of reduced circumstance, of another life before the present, and the self-appraising search for an essential self, which were inaugurated in the great prose narratives of his earlier trilogy.]]> 111 Samuel Beckett 0802150667 Rosy 0 to-read 3.98 1961 How It Is
author: Samuel Beckett
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pnin 30593 Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.

Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.

Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.]]> 184 Vladimir Nabokov 1400041988 Rosy 0 to-read 3.89 1957 Pnin
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Office of Historical Corrections]]> 51777605 The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history.

Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and x-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief—all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history—about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.

In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.]]> 269 Danielle Evans 1594487332 Rosy 3 4.15 2020 The Office of Historical Corrections
author: Danielle Evans
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/24
date added: 2023/08/24
shelves:
review:
Four stars if it stays in my memory.
]]> <![CDATA[The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition]]> 176972 Annotated Alice, first published in 1959, has over half a million copies in print around the world and is beloved by both families and scholars—for it was Gardner who first decoded many of the mathematical riddles and wordplay that lay ingeniously embedded in Carroll's two classic stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Forty years after this groundbreaking publication, Norton is proud to publish the Definitive Edition of The Annotated Alice, a work that combines the notes of Gardner's 1959 edition with his 1990 volume, More Annotated Alice, as well as additional discoveries drawn from Gardner's encyclopedic knowledge of the texts. Illustrated with John Tenniel's classic, beloved art—along with many recently discovered Tenniel pencil sketches�The Annotated Alice will be Gardner's most beautiful and enduring tribute to Carroll's masterpieces yet.]]> 312 Lewis Carroll 0393048470 Rosy 3 4.44 1871 The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1871
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/19
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves: 19th-century, british, childrens-book, classic, fantasy, humor, poems, satire
review:
Glad to have finally read Alice, as I never had before, and very glad to also read all these notes, which I’d like to scan again for a couple of interesting or memory-provoking references l noticed in passing. Also somewhat interested in the 1933 Paramount movie, which Gardner cited several times.
]]> <![CDATA[A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year]]> 17573670 A witty and addictively readable day-by-day literary companion.

At once a love letter to literature and a charming guide to the books most worth reading, A Reader's Book of Days features bite-size accounts of events in the lives of great authors for every day of the year. Here is Marcel Proust starting In Search of Lost Time and Virginia Woolf scribbling in the margin of her own writing, "Is it nonsense, or is it brilliance?" Fictional events that take place within beloved books are also included: the birth of Harry Potter’s enemy Draco Malfoy, the blood-soaked prom in Stephen King’s Carrie.

A Reader's Book of Days is filled with memorable and surprising tales from the lives and works of Martin Amis, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Roberto Bolano, the Brontë sisters, Junot Díaz, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Keats, Hilary Mantel, Haruki Murakami, Flannery O’Connor, Orhan Pamuk, George Plimpton, Marilynne Robinson, W. G. Sebald, Dr. Seuss, Zadie Smith, Susan Sontag, Hunter S. Thompson, Leo Tolstoy, David Foster Wallace, and many more. The book also notes the days on which famous authors were born and died; it includes lists of recommended reading for every month of the year as well as snippets from book reviews as they appeared across literary history; and throughout there are wry illustrations by acclaimed artist Joanna Neborsky.

Brimming with nearly 2,000 stories, A Reader's Book of Days will have readers of every stripe reaching for their favorite books and discovering new ones.]]> 448 Tom Nissley 0393239624 Rosy 0 shelf 3.77 2013 A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year
author: Tom Nissley
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/12
shelves: shelf
review:

]]> Understanding Poetry 668953 602 Cleanth Brooks 0030769809 Rosy 0 to-read 4.06 1938 Understanding Poetry
author: Cleanth Brooks
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behind the Queen's Smile: A Professional Athlete's Journey of Success, Abuse, and Healing From the Inside Out]]> 144492387
While the backdrop is an unbelievable 25-year career rising to the top of her field and highlighting many achievements in the sports world; the emphasis of Behind the Queen's Smile is on the very personal and raw retelling of behind-the-scenes happenings that led to a heart wrenching darkness of the soul.

Honest. Humorous. Captivating. Challenging. This book deals with subjects such as child abuse, addictions, suicide, and forgiveness.

While working through her struggle, Rosie finds answers to many questions that are relevant in today's world. How do we find an identity that won't come crashing down when we're not welcomed with applause everyday...when fame and achievement disappear...when we lose our jobs...when divorce happens...when our children leave the nest? How do we build again after being broken?

Rosie's book is about restoration and transformation, growing faith and a hope that will never fail.]]> 306 Rosie Black Schoepf 1953183255 Rosy 4 4.67 Behind the Queen's Smile: A Professional Athlete's Journey of Success, Abuse, and Healing From the Inside Out
author: Rosie Black Schoepf
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/03
date added: 2023/08/03
shelves:
review:

]]> The Voyage Out 834554
Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique--with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters' inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound--that are the signature of Woolf's fiction.

Rachel Vinrace, Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who desires to teach Rachel "how to live."Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. E. M. Forster praised The Voyage Out as "a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights , though by a different path."

This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Cunningham, bestselling author of The Hours . Cunningham at once unfolds an engaging short essay of Woolf's early life and career, an insightful exploration of the themes to which Woolf returns again and again in her fiction, and a spirited defense of the relevance and lasting importance of her art. Katherine Anne Porter wrote of "The world of arts was her native territory; she ranged freely under her own sky, speaking her mother tongue fearlessly."]]> 448 Virginia Woolf 0375757279 Rosy 0 20th-century 3.78 1915 The Voyage Out
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: 20th-century
review:

]]> Miracle on the River Kwai 1494772 Book by Gordon, Ernest 0 Ernest Gordon 000633265X Rosy 4
In the Epilogue, some of the descriptions of the world this POW came back to in the late 1940s are discouragingly familiar right now. A sad reflection of how humanity often needs the worst crises to meet its best potential.]]> 4.14 1962 Miracle on the River Kwai
author: Ernest Gordon
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/23
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves: 20th-century, christian, christianity, faith, history, memoir, from-my-list, social-history, world-war-ii
review:
Not riveting, but spiritually refreshing with an invaluable dose of perspective.

In the Epilogue, some of the descriptions of the world this POW came back to in the late 1940s are discouragingly familiar right now. A sad reflection of how humanity often needs the worst crises to meet its best potential.
]]> <![CDATA[Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, Complete and Unabridged]]> 3139997 1340 James Strong 0801081084 Rosy 0 20th-century 4.43 1890 Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, Complete and Unabridged
author: James Strong
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves: 20th-century
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home]]> 23281896 An exquisite memoir about how food connects us toourselves, our lives, and each other.

At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.

Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth,Stiris a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished."

Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight.For readersof M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan,Stiris sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen]]> 271 Jessica Fechtor 1594631328 Rosy 3 4.01 2015 Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
author: Jessica Fechtor
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/10
date added: 2023/07/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 57684325
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride�) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.]]> 400 Bonnie Garmus Rosy 0 4.47 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/13
date added: 2023/07/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Free on the Inside: Finding God Behind Bars]]> 32779671 156 Sr Greta Ronningen 1539522938 Rosy 3 3.00 Free on the Inside: Finding God Behind Bars
author: Sr Greta Ronningen
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/25
date added: 2023/06/25
shelves: 21st-century, american, faith, inspiration, religion, spirituality
review:

]]> Eddie's War 11237738 Ellisville: where the big news stories are gophers in the graveyard and the new bank alarm. But then America joins the war and Eddie's brother Thomas goes off to fly a bomber. Suddenly the war doesn't seem so far away. And Eddie faces more grown-up problems at home: A fire at the Strothers' place, and his gypsy friend accused of arson. Grampa Rob, all stubborn and mean. Grama Lucy with her secrets. And that redhead Sarah, who definitely likes him-unless maybe she hates him. Somehow Eddie's in the middle of it all, trying to figure out what's right. Let Thomas fight World War II. Eddie's war is right here in Ellisville.

Eddie's War is a lyrical collection of verse vignettes linking Eddie, his family, and a small-town cast of Ellisvillians. Poignant and funny, this World War II story tells how a distant war affects the life of one boy in the Heartland.

______

Learn more about Eddie's War at , including background, discussion questions, a list of characters, and resources for teachers, including Common Core correlates.

]]> 204 Carol Fisher Saller 1608981096 Rosy 0 to-read 3.90 2011 Eddie's War
author: Carol Fisher Saller
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daniel Deronda 304
The strange young man is Daniel Deronda, brought up with his own origins shrouded in mystery, searching for a compelling outlet for his singular talents and remarkable capacity for empathy. Deronda's destiny will change the lives of many.]]> 796 George Eliot 037576013X Rosy 0 to-read 3.85 1876 Daniel Deronda
author: George Eliot
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1876
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mister God, This is Anna 50807 298 Fynn 0345441559 Rosy 4 4.15 1974 Mister God, This is Anna
author: Fynn
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/31
date added: 2023/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Flush: A Biography 897035 118 Virginia Woolf 1903155452 Rosy 0 to-read 3.80 1933 Flush: A Biography
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> David Copperfield [Audible] 32337659
This epic, exuberant novel is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories in literature, chronicling David Copperfield's extraordinary journey through life as he encounters villains, saviors, eccentrics, and grotesques - including the wicked Mr. Murdstone, stouthearted Peggotty, formidable Betsey Trotwood, impecunious Micawber, and the odious Uriah Heep. Dickens' great novel (based, in part, on his own boyhood and which he described as a "favorite child") is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.

Listen to Richard Armitage bring Dickens' words to life, and you'll understand why Virginia Woolf called David Copperfield "the most perfect of all the Dickens novels".]]> Charles Dickens Rosy 4 19th-century, charles-dickens
]]> 4.19 1850 David Copperfield [Audible]
author: Charles Dickens
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1850
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/17
date added: 2023/05/17
shelves: 19th-century, charles-dickens
review:
Four stars for the experience I had with Richard Armitage's performance in my first ever Audible book. But beware of rank Victorian sentimentality!


]]> <![CDATA[The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood]]> 133803 245 Sy Montgomery 0345496094 Rosy 3 3.97 2006 The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2011/01/06
date added: 2023/04/21
shelves: 20th-century, american, 21st-century, shelfari-plan-to-read-list, memoir, kindle, animals, new-england
review:
A lovely warm after-Christmas read.
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 77262337 An alternative cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry 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.]]> 418 Gabrielle Zevin Rosy 4 4.22 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/15
date added: 2023/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> The Waves 63839009
Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase. Some critics see Woolf's friend E. M. Forster as an inspiration for him.

Louis is an outsider who seeks acceptance and success. Some critics see in him aspects of T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well.

Neville, who may be partly based on another of Woolf's friends, Lytton Strachey, seeks out a series of men, each of whom becomes the present object of his transcendent love.

Jinny is a socialite whose world view corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty. There is evidence that she is based on Woolf's friend Mary Hutchinson.

Susan flees the city, preferring the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood. Some aspects of Susan recall Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.

Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and depression, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude. She echoes Shelley's poem "The Question". Rhoda resembles Virginia Woolf in some respects ...]]> 193 Virginia Woolf 396484375X Rosy 4 4.29 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1931
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/06
date added: 2023/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> A Short History of Time 2242098
A Short History of Time was first published as The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction in 2005 by Oxford University Press. This edition is published by arrangement with Oxford University Press.]]> 137 Leofranc Holford-Strevens Rosy 2
It offers a lot of potentially interesting information on many methods of counting time, but I think it's too compact and the information is all you get -- not to mention the undeniably dry style.

I was so looking forward to early people observing the movement of the sun and the changing length of days; to courtiers competing in the style and accuracy of timepieces; to astronomers at their telescopes. This is not that book.]]> 3.11 2005 A Short History of Time
author: Leofranc Holford-Strevens
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2013/07/13
date added: 2023/04/06
shelves: 21st-century, british, history, shelfari-plan-to-read-list, folio-society
review:
This little book is lovely to hold and to look at (a Folio freebie), but sadly, it's a bit of a yawner.

It offers a lot of potentially interesting information on many methods of counting time, but I think it's too compact and the information is all you get -- not to mention the undeniably dry style.

I was so looking forward to early people observing the movement of the sun and the changing length of days; to courtiers competing in the style and accuracy of timepieces; to astronomers at their telescopes. This is not that book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood]]> 36594400 240 Sy Montgomery Rosy 3 4.40 2006 The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/03/24
shelves:
review:
A lovely warm after-Christmas read.
]]> The Age of Illumination 33238868 Steven Runciman Rosy 4 4.00 The Age of Illumination
author: Steven Runciman
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/21
date added: 2023/03/21
shelves: 12th-century, 13th-century, 14th-century, art, british, cathedrals, churchy, england, europe, folio-society, from-my-list, gothic, history, medieval, middle-ages, reference
review:
A treasure was lurking in my bookshelves! Might have to keep this one.
]]> Gothic art and civilisation 52901034 201 George Henderson Rosy 3 3.00 1967 Gothic art and civilisation
author: George Henderson
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/21
date added: 2023/03/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)]]> 77661 206 Josephine Tey Rosy 0 to-read 3.89 1951 The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)
author: Josephine Tey
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Couch 21332399
"Delightfully lighthearted writing. . . . Occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the enthusiastic prose carries readers through sporadic dark moments . . . Parzybok’s quirky humor recalls the flaws and successes of early Douglas Adams."—Publishers Weekly

"The book succeeds as a conceptual art piece, a literary travelogue, and a fantastical quest."—Willamette Week

"Hundreds of writers have slavishly imitated—or outright ripped off—Tolkien in ways that connoisseurs of other genres would consider shameless. What Parzybok has done here in adapting the same old song to a world more familiar to the reader is to revive the genre and make it relevant again"—The Stranger

A Spring Summer Indie Next Reading List Top 10 Reading Group Suggestions"Couch follows the quirky journey of Thom, Erik, and Tree as they venture into the unknown at the behest of a magical, orange couch, which has its own plan for their previously boring lives. Parzybok's colorful characters, striking humor, and eccentric magical realism offer up an adventuresome read."—Christian Crider, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

A January 2009 Indie Next List Pick

"This funny novel of furniture moving gone awry is a magical realism quest for modern times. Parzybok's touching story explores the aimlessness of our culture, a society of jobs instead of callings, replete with opportunities and choices but without the philosophies and vocations we need to make meaningful decisions."—Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA

"A lot of people are looking for magic in the world today, but only Benjamin Parzybok thought to check the sofa, which is, I think, the place it’s most likely to be found. Couch is a slacker a gentle, funny book that ambles merrily from Coupland to Tolkien, and gives couch-surfing (among other things) a whole new meaning.”—Paul La Farge

"One of the strangest road novels you'll ever read. It's a funny and fun book, and it's also a very smart book. Fans of Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore should enjoy this."—Handee Books"It is an upholstered Odyssey unlike any other you are likely to read. It is funny, confusing in places, wild and anarchic. It is part Quixote, part Murakami, part Tom Robbins, part DFS showroom. It has cult hit written all over it."—Scott, Me and My Big Mouth

Benjamin Parzybok on

In this exuberant and hilarious debut reminiscent of The Life of Pi and Then We Came to the End, an episode of furniture moving gone awry becomes an impromptu quest of self-discovery, secret histories, and unexpected revelations.

Thom is a computer geek whose hacking of a certain Washington-based software giant has won him a little fame but few job prospects. Erik is a smalltime con man, a fast-talker who is never quite quick enough on his feet. Their roommate, Tree, is a confused clairvoyant whose dreams and prophecies may not be completely off base. After a freak accident fl oods their apartment, the three are evicted—but they have to take their couch with them.]]> 256 Benjamin Parzybok Rosy 4 3.22 2008 Couch
author: Benjamin Parzybok
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/28
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: 21st-century, adventure, american, bad-language, fantasy, kindle, postmodern
review:
Weird but surprisingly entertaining.
]]> The Phantom Tollbooth 10374117 A PARADE BEST KIDS BOOK OF ALL TIME

“Comes up bright and new every time I read it . . . it will continue to charm and delight for a very long time yet.� --Phillip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of His Dark Materials

With almost 5 million copies sold in the 60 years since it was published, generations of readers have journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic.

Enriched by Jules Feiffer’s splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster’s offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever. For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason.

Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!]]> 133 Norton Juster 0375985298 Rosy 3 4.40 1961 The Phantom Tollbooth
author: Norton Juster
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/20
date added: 2023/02/22
shelves: 20th-century, american, adventure, childrens-book, classic, fantasy, kindle
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Byzantine art and civilisation]]> 51112791 184 Steven Runciman Rosy 3 3.00 1975 Byzantine art and civilisation
author: Steven Runciman
name: Rosy
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/18
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves:
review:
I’m getting some education and enjoying it!
]]> The Midnight Library 53568397
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559485 Rosy 3 4.16 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/27
date added: 2023/02/12
shelves: 21st-century, book-club, british, kindle, philosophy, magical-realism
review:

]]> Mere Christianity 253062 Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour and Beyond Personality. Thus are gathered together for the first time at a popular price Dr Lewis' modern revaluations of Christian apologetics, ethics and theology - in fact all the central problems of belief and of conduct which face Christians today.]]> 189 C.S. Lewis 0006245706 Rosy 5 Yes, I’m adding a star. I found it more helpful, clearer, of greater personal value this third or fourth time around, certainly than the last time. Resisting the distraction of, and the temptation to be embarrassed by, the obvious cultural clashes caused now by Lewis’s language and material worldview to follow his thinking about the truth I know has been illuminating, reassuring and challenging � and, I realize, a small step in the exercise of setting aside the add-ons in pursuit of what is real and holy that he advocates.

These trains of thought require deep honesty and clear thinking, but because they arise from Lewis’s own gifted efforts to apply both, guidance and support (and reminders to keep it simple!) are inherent.

Highly recommended, but with no promises that it won’t provoke antagonism in many, at least before a reader adjusts to following this scholar’s observations on his own fair and generous terms.

I.
First, I believe this is a worthy book for every library. Second, if you are not already familiar with it or with Lewis, you will certainly find the style of the book dated in many ways (written in England during the Second World War--by a white male academic!). But its lasting popularity indicates the reason I recommend it: this is an intelligently considered but simply essential introduction to Christianity. In his personal account, Lewis articulates some of the most generally held Christian answers to some of the most common questions--one person's perspective cannot reasonably do more.]]> 4.22 1952 Mere Christianity
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Rosy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/11
date added: 2023/02/11
shelves: apologetics, books-i-have-read-more-than-once, c-s-lewis, christianity, classic, faith, philosophy
review:
II.
Yes, I’m adding a star. I found it more helpful, clearer, of greater personal value this third or fourth time around, certainly than the last time. Resisting the distraction of, and the temptation to be embarrassed by, the obvious cultural clashes caused now by Lewis’s language and material worldview to follow his thinking about the truth I know has been illuminating, reassuring and challenging � and, I realize, a small step in the exercise of setting aside the add-ons in pursuit of what is real and holy that he advocates.

These trains of thought require deep honesty and clear thinking, but because they arise from Lewis’s own gifted efforts to apply both, guidance and support (and reminders to keep it simple!) are inherent.

Highly recommended, but with no promises that it won’t provoke antagonism in many, at least before a reader adjusts to following this scholar’s observations on his own fair and generous terms.

I.
First, I believe this is a worthy book for every library. Second, if you are not already familiar with it or with Lewis, you will certainly find the style of the book dated in many ways (written in England during the Second World War--by a white male academic!). But its lasting popularity indicates the reason I recommend it: this is an intelligently considered but simply essential introduction to Christianity. In his personal account, Lewis articulates some of the most generally held Christian answers to some of the most common questions--one person's perspective cannot reasonably do more.
]]>