Jana's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 11 May 2025 12:02:49 -0700 60 Jana's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Judith und Hamnet 55763723 415 Maggie O'Farrell 3492070361 Jana 0 currently-reading 4.08 2020 Judith und Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Jana
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Krieg und Frieden. 4 Bde. 2822580 Krieg und Frieden von Leo Tolstoi hat es nie gegeben! Es existieren nur verschiedene Fassungen, von denen die uns bekannte eine (mehr oder weniger bunte) Mischung ist: Der Text stammt aus den ersten beiden Ausgaben von 1868/69, vermischt mit den Korrekturen und der Kapiteleinteilung der dritten Ausgabe von 1873.

Erstmals aber hatte Tolstoi sein Mammut-Epos 1866 für beendet erklärt und dann doch noch mit Änderungen versehen, die das Opus auf das Doppelte des ursprünglichen Umfangs anschwellen ließen. Zahlreiche Exkurse zur Geschichtsphilosophie und Zeitpolitik wurden aufgenommen, die Napoleon-Begeisterung der Urfassung zugunsten einer politisch legitimeren Darstellung geglättet. Das hat Krieg und Frieden zum einen sicher interessanter und fassettenreicher, zum anderen aber auch vom Erzählstil etwas träger und von der Figurenzeichnung etwas einseitiger werden lassen. Denn viele satirische und groteske Züge kommen in den späteren Druckfassungen nicht mehr zum Tragen.

Was Krieg und Frieden verlor und was es durch die Überarbeitungen gewann, kann nun jeder in der laut Verlagswerbung mühsam "rekonstruierten Urfassung" nachlesen -- wobei das Attribut schon ankündigt, dass es sich dabei keineswegs um die einzig autorisierte Urfassung handeln muss. Dennoch bekommt man einen schnellen, überraschenden und ebenfalls nicht gerade dünnen Roman zu lesen, der nicht nur einen klareren Einblick gibt in die Tolstoi'sche Psyche, sondern auch aufwartet mit einem neuen (also eigentlich ja alten) Schluss. Mehr wird aber nicht verraten. --Thomas Köster

]]> 0 Leo Tolstoy 3257219709 Jana 0 currently-reading 3.80 1869 Krieg und Frieden. 4 Bde.
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Jana
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Belle de jour 394162
Severine Serizy is a wealthy and beautiful Parisian housewife, who loves her husband, but she cannot share physical intimacy with him, and her vivid sadomasochistic fantasies drive her to seek employment at a brothel. By day, she enacts her customers' wildest fantasies under the pseudonym "Belle de Jour"; in the evenings, she returns home to her chaste marriage and oblivious husband. Famous for its unflinching eroticism, Joseph Kessel's novel continues to offer an eye-opening glance into a unique female psyche.]]> 188 Joseph Kessel 1585679089 Jana 0 to-read 3.71 1928 Belle de jour
author: Joseph Kessel
name: Jana
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian]]> 22598048 223 Vartkes Yeghiayan Jana 0 to-read 4.38 2006 The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian
author: Vartkes Yeghiayan
name: Jana
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nutcracker and Mouse King / The Tale of the Nutcracker]]> 506128 The original stories behind everyone's favorite Christmas ballet

It wasn't until the 1950s that seeing The Nutcracker at Christmastime became an American tradition. But the story itself is much older and its original intent more complex. This eye-opening new volume presents two of the tale's earliest versions, both in new translations: E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker and Mouse King (1816), in which a young girl is whisked away to the Land of Toys to help her animated nutcracker defeat the Mouse King, and Alexandre Dumas's 1845 adaptation, The Tale of the Nutcracker, based on Hoffmann's popular work. Irresistible tales of magic, mystery, and childhood adventure, these timeless delights and fresh interpretations about the importance of imagination will captivate readers of all ages.]]> 192 E.T.A. Hoffmann 0143104837 Jana 0 to-read 3.73 Nutcracker and Mouse King / The Tale of the Nutcracker
author: E.T.A. Hoffmann
name: Jana
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement � a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and � like millions of readers the world round � you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X Jana 0 to-read 3.81 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Jana
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Waters: The true story of Giulia Tofana]]> 65094452
But sometimes a matrimonial mess needs to be fixed. Permanently.

Giulia Tofana saw firsthand the horrors of bad marriages and the cruelties therein.

There was a way to free oneself, but it was only for the wives in the very worst of relationships.
It was a secret and it was used to kill hundreds of 'bad' husbands.

Giulia was real and her story is compelling.]]> 126 Jennifer L. McKeighan 1647646049 Jana 0 to-read 4.27 Dark Waters: The true story of Giulia Tofana
author: Jennifer L. McKeighan
name: Jana
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Much Ado About Nothing 12957 Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.]]> 249 William Shakespeare Jana 0 to-read 4.06 1598 Much Ado About Nothing
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jana
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1598
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)]]> 58527403 423 Jessa Hastings 1737281198 Jana 0 to-read 3.67 2021 Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)
author: Jessa Hastings
name: Jana
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Days of Abandonment 77810 The Days of Abandonment shocked and captivated its Italian public when first published. It is the gripping story of a woman's descent into devastating emptiness after being abandoned by her husband with two young children to care for. When she finds herself literally trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.]]> 188 Elena Ferrante 1933372001 Jana 0 to-read 3.92 2002 The Days of Abandonment
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Jana
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tram 83 25712965
Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a youth friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State.

Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as, sometimes, comic and colorfully exotic. It's an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. It could be described as an African-rap or rhapsody novel or puzzle-novel hammered by rhythms of jazz.]]> 210 Fiston Mwanza Mujila 1925106942 Jana 0 to-read 3.34 2014 Tram 83
author: Fiston Mwanza Mujila
name: Jana
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Castle in the Clouds 44281041
Way up in the Swiss mountains, there's an old grand hotel steeped in tradition and faded splendor. Once a year, when the famous New Year's Eve Ball takes place and guests from all over the world arrive, excitement returns to the vast hallways.

Sophie, who works at the hotel as an intern, is busy making sure that everything goes according to plan. But unexpected problems keep arising, and some of the guests are not who they pretend to be. Very soon, Sophie finds herself right in the middle of a perilous adventure―and at risk of losing not only her job, but also her heart.]]> 336 Kerstin Gier 1250300193 Jana 0 to-read 3.78 2017 A Castle in the Clouds
author: Kerstin Gier
name: Jana
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Greenlights 52838315 From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.�

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter. To life.

It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights - and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.

Good luck.]]> 289 Matthew McConaughey 0593139135 Jana 0 to-read 4.21 2020 Greenlights
author: Matthew McConaughey
name: Jana
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Poems, 1962-2012 13538874
Even when collected, Louise Glück’s poetry resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape—Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain—persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, while at the same time are shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made.
From the outset (�Come here / Come here, little one�), Gluck’s voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we “do not see the intervening fathoms.”�

From within the earth’s
bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness

my friend the moon rises:
she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?

To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.]]> 656 Louise Glück 0374126089 Jana 0 to-read 4.47 2012 Poems, 1962-2012
author: Louise Glück
name: Jana
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Der Donnerstagsmordclub (Die Mordclub-Serie, #1)]]> 57664725 464 Richard Osman 347136014X Jana 0 to-be-read 3.82 2020 Der Donnerstagsmordclub (Die Mordclub-Serie, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Jana
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made By Women]]> 42204119
Movies with a female perspective: You may have heard the term “male gaze,� coined in the 1970s to talk about what happens to viewers when the majority of art and entertainment has been made by the one gender perspective. So, what about the opposite? Women have been making movies since the very beginning of cinema. What does the world look like through the “female gaze�?

Movies made by women: The Female Gaze comprises of a list detailing the essential movies from the past and present made by women. It delves into what the female perspective gives to each of the films.

A collection of fascinating biographies: Discover brilliantly talented and accomplished women filmmakers, both world renowned and obscure, who have shaped the film industry in ways rarely fully acknowledged. Learn about the hidden figures of filmmaking and about the acclaimed luminaries of the past and present.

Readers will learn:

The accomplishments of numerous women in film such as Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Kathryn Bigelow, Lady Bird’s Greta Gerwig and more
The lives of these women and the struggles they faced carving a place for themselves in the film industry
How these women’s unique voices shaped the films they made and influenced all the film world
An essential movie list by women: The Female Gaze contains multiple mini-essays written by a variety of diverse female film critics, about a woman or a movie made by women that they love.

A guidebook for movie lovers who want to support women in film!]]> 236 Alicia Malone 1633538370 Jana 0 to-read 3.98 2018 The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made By Women
author: Alicia Malone
name: Jana
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words]]> 217116262 256 Marya E. Gates 084784661X Jana 0 to-read 4.88 Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words
author: Marya E. Gates
name: Jana
average rating: 4.88
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Neuschnee 49387574 Winter in den schottischen Highlands: Neun Freunde verbringen den Jahreswechsel in einer abgelegenen Berghütte. Sie feiern ausgelassen, erkunden die eindrucksvolle Landschaft und gehen auf die Jagd � doch was als ein unbeschwerter Ausflug beginnt, wird bitterer Ernst, als heftiger Schneefall das Anwesen von der Außenwelt abschneidet. Nicht nur das Gerücht von einem umherstreifenden Serienmörder lässt die Stimmung immer beklemmender werden, auch innerhalb der Gruppe suchen sich lang begrabene Geheimnisse ihren gefährlichen Weg ans Licht. Dann wird einer der Freunde tot draußen im Schnee gefunden. Und die Situation in der Hütte eskaliert …]]> 432 Lucy Foley 3328104925 Jana 0 to-be-read 3.54 2018 Neuschnee
author: Lucy Foley
name: Jana
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Upstream: Selected Essays 29358559 Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing.

As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world.

This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.]]> 178 Mary Oliver 1594206708 Jana 0 to-read 4.17 2016 Upstream: Selected Essays
author: Mary Oliver
name: Jana
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Manhattan Transfer 126587 Manhattan Transfer is an "expressionistic picture of New York" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.

More than seventy-five years after its first publication, Manhattan Transfer still stands as "a novel of the very first importance" (Sinclair Lewis). It is a masterpiece of modern fiction and a lasting tribute to the dual-edged nature of the American dream.]]> 342 John Dos Passos 0618381864 Jana 0 to-read 3.67 1925 Manhattan Transfer
author: John Dos Passos
name: Jana
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA["Woman's Hour" from Joyce Grenfell to Sharon Osbourne]]> 1019179 Jenni Murray 071956381X Jana 0 to-be-read 3.55 2006 "Woman's Hour" from Joyce Grenfell to Sharon Osbourne
author: Jenni Murray
name: Jana
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Das Netz (Reykjavik Noir Trilogy, #1)]]> 49129229 Die junge Mutter Sonja hat bei einer schmutzigen Scheidung das Sorgerecht für ihren Sohn verloren. Sie setzt alles daran, ihn zurückzubekommen, kann sich aber nicht mal einen Anwalt leisten. Verzweifelt lässt sie sich darauf ein, Kokain nach Island zu schmuggeln. Nur ein paarmal, sagt sie sich.
Agla, einst eine hochrangige Bankerin, hat ganz andere Probleme: Sie muss sich nach dem isländischen Finanzcrash unbequeme Fragen zu ihrer Rolle in einigen dubiosen Deals gefallen lassen. Kein Grund, nervös zu werden � denkt sie.
Als sich Bragis, Sonjas und Aglas Wege kreuzen, entspinnt sich ein komplexes Netz der Kriminalität. Und bei jedem Versuch, sich daraus zu befreien, verstricken sie sich nur noch tiefer …]]> 360 Lilja Sigurðardóttir 3832165193 Jana 0 to-be-read 3.63 2015 Das Netz (Reykjavik Noir Trilogy, #1)
author: Lilja Sigurðardóttir
name: Jana
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Taste 58837734 320 Stanley Tucci 0241501008 Jana 0 to-be-read 4.21 2021 Taste
author: Stanley Tucci
name: Jana
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Time of White Horses: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)]]> 26512505 Through the lives of Mahmud, chief elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled's grandson Naji, we enter the lives of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another.
Khaled's remarkable white mare, Hamama, and her descendants feel and share the family's struggles and as a siege grips Hadiya, it falls to Khaled to save his people from a descending tyranny.
]]> 664 Ibrahim Nasrallah 9774167570 Jana 4 arabic-literature

Free Palestine ]]> 4.00 2007 Time of White Horses: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)
author: Ibrahim Nasrallah
name: Jana
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: arabic-literature
review:
"They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"


Free Palestine
]]> <![CDATA[Inkheart / Inkspell / Inkdeath (The Inkheart Trilogy, #1-3)]]> 3334563 1152 Cornelia Funke 1905294964 Jana 5 fantasy, german-literature 4.21 2008 Inkheart / Inkspell / Inkdeath (The Inkheart Trilogy, #1-3)
author: Cornelia Funke
name: Jana
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: fantasy, german-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)]]> 37442 Alternative cover edition of ISBN 9780060987107

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

]]> 406 Gregory Maguire Jana 0 to-read 3.52 1995 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Jana
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret]]> 37732
But none of them can believe Margaret doesn’t have religion, and that she isn’t going to the Y or the Jewish Community Center. What they don’t know is Margaret has her own very special relationship with God. She can talk to God about everything—family, friends, even Moose Freed, her secret crush.

Margaret is funny and real, and her thoughts and feelings are oh-so-relatable—you’ll feel like she’s talking right to you, sharing her secrets with a friend.]]> 149 Judy Blume 0689841582 Jana 0 to-read 3.93 1970 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
author: Judy Blume
name: Jana
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mexican Gothic 60007818
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 1529402689 Jana 4 spooky-gothic 3.68 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Jana
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/20
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: spooky-gothic
review:

]]> Conclave 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Jana 0 to-read 4.03 2016 Conclave
author: Robert Harris
name: Jana
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[William Shakespeare in seiner Zeit]]> 26250801 Rare Book 471 Hans-Dieter Gelfert 3406659195 Jana 0 to-be-read 4.00 2014 William Shakespeare in seiner Zeit
author: Hans-Dieter Gelfert
name: Jana
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Gespenster 57288467 384 Dolly Alderton 3455011098 Jana 0 to-be-read 3.85 2020 Gespenster
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Jana
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Of Human Bondage 31548
Marked by countless similarities to Maugham’s own life, his masterpiece is “not an autobiography,� as the author himself once contended, “but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inexorably mingled; the emotions are my own.”]]> 684 W. Somerset Maugham 0451530179 Jana 0 to-read 4.13 1915 Of Human Bondage
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Jana
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Useless Magic: Lyrics, Poetry and Sermons]]> 51058138 335 Florence Welch 0241983827 Jana 0 to-be-read 4.43 2018 Useless Magic: Lyrics, Poetry and Sermons
author: Florence Welch
name: Jana
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Woman on the Other Shore 1401908 writer.

Sayoko, a thirty-five-year-old homemaker with a three-year-old child, begins working for Aoi, a free-spirited, single career woman her own age who runs a travel agency-housekeeping business. Timid and unable to connect with other mothers in her neighborhood, Sayoko finds herself drawn to Aoi's
independent lifestyle and easygoing personality. The two hit it off from the start, beginning a friendship that is for Sayoko also a reaffirmation of what living is about.

Aoi, meanwhile, has not always been the self-confident person she appears to be. Severe classroom bullying in junior high had forced her to change schools, uprooting her and her family to the countryside; and at her new school, she was so afraid of again becoming the object of her classmates'
cruelties that she spent most of her time steering clear of those around her.

The present-day friendship between Sayoko and Aoi on the one hand, and Aoi's painful high school past on the other, form a gripping two-tier narrative that converges in the final chapter. The book touches on a broad range of issues of concern to women today, from marriage and childrearing to being
single and working for oneself. It is a universal story about both the fear and the joy of opening up to others.]]> 271 Mitsuyo Kakuta 4770030436 Jana 0 to-read 3.70 2004 Woman on the Other Shore
author: Mitsuyo Kakuta
name: Jana
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Halloween Tree 761381
Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween.]]> 145 Ray Bradbury 0375803017 Jana 0 to-read 3.81 1972 The Halloween Tree
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Jana
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?]]> 214946449
Juno schreibt online mit Männern, die Frauen online ihre Liebe gestehen und so versuchen, sie um ihr Geld zu bringen. Doch statt darauf hereinzufallen, werden genau diese Männer zu einer Form von Freiheit für Juno. In den Gesprächen kann sie sein, wer sie will und sagen, was sie will � und das vermeintlich ohne Konsequenzen. Ganz im Gegensatz zu ihrem sonstigen Leben, in dem sie immer unterwegs, immer besorgt um Jupiter, immer beschäftigt und eingebunden ist. Also flüchtet Juno ab und zu vor ihrem Alltag ins Internet und spielt dort Spielchen mit Männern, die sie anlügen. Sie selbst wird zur Lügnerin. Aber ist es nicht so, dass man sich beim Lügen zuallererst selbst belügt? Eines Tages trifft Juno auf Benu, der ihre Behauptungen ebenso durchschaut wie sie seine. Und trotz der Entfernung zwischen ihnen entsteht eine Verbindung. »Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir« ist ein tiefgehender Roman, aber so leichtfüßig wie eine Komödie.]]> 224 Martina Hefter 3608988262 Jana 0 to-read 3.42 2024 Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?
author: Martina Hefter
name: Jana
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir]]> 78292253 Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before

WernerHerzogwas born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in theSecondWorldWar. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids,Herzog’s mother took him and his older brothertoa remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhoodhungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there,as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.

Until age 11,Herzogdid not even know of the existence of cinema. His interest in films began at age 15, but since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory. He started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17, and his first film in 1961 at age 19. The wildlyproductive working life that followed—spanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction—was an adventure as grand andotherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films.

Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory,Herzoguntangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling his story for the first and only time.]]> 367 Werner Herzog 0593490290 Jana 0 to-read 4.25 2022 Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir
author: Werner Herzog
name: Jana
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Here to the Great Unknown]]> 204880158
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 284 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733894 Jana 0 to-read 4.39 2024 From Here to the Great Unknown
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Jana
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

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

A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.]]> 222 Laura Esquivel Jana 0 to-read 3.96 1989 Like Water for Chocolate
author: Laura Esquivel
name: Jana
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mill House Murders (House Murders, #2)]]> 60747213
The brilliant Shimada Kiyoshi arrives on the scene, but as he investigates the seemingly impossible events of that evening, death strikes again, and again...

Can Shimada get to the truth before the killer gets to him? And can you solve the mystery of the Mill House Murders before he does?]]> 253 Yukito Ayatsuji 1782278338 Jana 0 to-read 3.63 1988 The Mill House Murders (House Murders, #2)
author: Yukito Ayatsuji
name: Jana
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)]]> 60657589
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X Jana 0 to-read 3.98 2023 Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Jana
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Regrettably, I am About to Cause Trouble]]> 63946988 370 Amie McNee 0645190535 Jana 0 to-read 3.89 2022 Regrettably, I am About to Cause Trouble
author: Amie McNee
name: Jana
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> POPism: The Warhol Sixties 130940 POPism is Warhol’s personal view of the Pop phenomenon in New York in the 1960s and a look back at the relationships that made up the scene at the Factory, including his rela­tionship with Edie Sedgewick, focus of the upcoming film Factory Girl. In the detached, back-fence gossip style he was famous for, Warhol tells all—the ultimate inside story of a decade of cultural revolution.
]]> 416 Andy Warhol 0156031116 Jana 0 to-read 4.09 1980 POPism: The Warhol Sixties
author: Andy Warhol
name: Jana
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> ٰԱäܴڱ 50403754 386 Khaled Hosseini 383330149X Jana 0 to-be-read 4.44 2003 ٰԱäܴڱ
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Jana
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Maschas Glück 8468158

Unglückliche Ehen und glückliche Mesalliancen, falsche Mütter und untergeschobene Söhne, mal heiter, mal wolkig � Ljudmila Ulitzkaja erzählt vom ganz normalen Leben in Russland. Und von Frauen, die ihrem Leben an einem scheinbar aussichtslosen Punkt eine unerwartete Wendung geben. Die Erzählungen bestechen durch scharfe Beobachtungsgabe, verschmitzten Humor, leise Töne und Zwischentöne sowie die liebevolle Sympathie der Autorin für ihre Figuren.]]> 240 Lyudmila Ulitskaya 3423138092 Jana 0 to-be-read 3.50 2000 Maschas Glück
author: Lyudmila Ulitskaya
name: Jana
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Die Taube 902607
]]> 100 Patrick Süskind 325721846X Jana 0 to-be-read 3.77 1987 Die Taube
author: Patrick Süskind
name: Jana
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Die Kleptomanin (Hercule Poirot, #30)]]> 32953193 237 Agatha Christie 345565133X Jana 0 to-be-read 3.81 1955 Die Kleptomanin (Hercule Poirot, #30)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Jana
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> Pnin (rororo Taschenbücher) 93927 298 Vladimir Nabokov 3499225441 Jana 0 to-be-read 3.84 1957 Pnin (rororo Taschenbücher)
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Jana
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-be-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Die Sage Von Sleepy Hollow Und Andere Unheimliche Geschichten]]> 9402461 157 Washington Irving 3458351515 Jana 3 3.32 1820 Die Sage Von Sleepy Hollow Und Andere Unheimliche Geschichten
author: Washington Irving
name: Jana
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1820
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: screen-adaptation, spooky-gothic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories]]> 49011 126 Angela Carter 014017821X Jana 0 to-read 3.96 1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
author: Angela Carter
name: Jana
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> August Blue 62039277 The Man Who Saw Everything and The Cost of Living.

At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson―former child prodigy, now in her thirties―walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance.

Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history.

So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double. A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, Deborah Levy’s August Blue uncovers the ways in which we attempt to revise our oldest stories and make ourselves anew.]]> 208 Deborah Levy Jana 0 to-read 3.63 2023 August Blue
author: Deborah Levy
name: Jana
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> No Longer Human 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world � suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, � but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]> 176 Osamu Dazai Jana 0 to-read 3.99 1948 No Longer Human
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Jana
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> They're Going to Love You 59721793 A magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles

Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.

Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life--literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle's aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James' world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.

Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.]]> 288 Meg Howrey 038554877X Jana 0 to-read 4.06 2022 They're Going to Love You
author: Meg Howrey
name: Jana
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Jana 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Jana
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Jana 3 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Jana
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: screen-adaptation, classics, french-literature
review:

]]> Hamlet 1097177 This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

The searing tragedy of young student Hamlet, tormented by his father's death and confronting each of us with the mirror of our own mortality in an imperfect world.

]]> 399 William Shakespeare 3423124830 Jana 4 classics 4.13 1601 Hamlet
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jana
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1601
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: classics
review:
Hamlet remains a relatable teenage twink
]]> Burning Blue 13510479
When Nicole Castro, the most beautiful girl in her wealthy New Jersey high school, is splashed with acid on the left side of her perfect face, the whole world takes notice. But quiet loner Jay Nazarro does more than that--he decides to find out who did it. Jay understands how it feels to be treated like a freak, and he also has a He's a brilliant hacker. But the deeper he digs, the more danger he's in--and the more he falls for Nicole. Too bad everyone is turning into a suspect, including Nicole herself.

Award-winning author Paul Griffin has written a high-stakes, soulful mystery about the meaning--and dangers--of love and beauty.]]> 288 Paul Griffin 0803738153 Jana 0 to-read 3.80 2012 Burning Blue
author: Paul Griffin
name: Jana
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hours 11899 The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that became a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.]]> 230 Michael Cunningham 0312305060 Jana 0 to-read 3.95 1998 The Hours
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Jana
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Franny and Zooey 5113 ‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.�

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny� and ‘Zooey� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey�, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]> 201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Jana 0 to-read 3.97 1957 Franny and Zooey
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Jana
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Penance 62898932 Do you know what happened already?
Did you know her?
Did you see it on the internet?
Did you listen to a podcast?
Did the hosts make jokes?

Did you see the pictures of the body?

Did you look for them?

It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.

That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.

The only question is: how much of it is true?]]> 336 Eliza Clark 0571371795 Jana 0 to-read 3.87 2023 Penance
author: Eliza Clark
name: Jana
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sleepwalking 195590 The debut novel from New York Times–bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, a story of three college students� shared fascination with poetry and death, and how one of them must face difficult truths in order to leave her obsession behind.

Published when she was only twenty-three and written while she was a student at Brown, Sleepwalking marks the beginning of Meg Wolitzer’s acclaimed career. Filled with her usual wisdom, compassion and insight, Sleepwalking tells the story of the three notorious “death girls,� so called on the Swarthmore campus because they dress in black and are each absorbed in the work and suicide of a different poet: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Wolitzer’s creation Lucy Asher, a gifted writer who drowned herself at twenty-four. At night the death girls gather in a candlelit room to read their heroines� work aloud.

But an affair with Julian, an upperclassman, pushes sensitive , struggling Claire Danziger—she of the Lucy Asher obsession-–to consider to what degree her “death girl� identity is really who she is. As she grapples with her feelings for Julian, her own understanding of herself and her past begins to shift uncomfortably and even disturbingly. Finally, Claire takes drastic measures to confront the facts about herself that she has been avoiding for years.]]> 224 Meg Wolitzer 0380682214 Jana 0 to-read 3.45 1982 Sleepwalking
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Jana
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bloater 2408042 158 Rosemary Tonks 0370006534 Jana 0 to-read 3.45 1968 The Bloater
author: Rosemary Tonks
name: Jana
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)]]> 19494 212 John Le Carré Jana 0 to-read 4.07 1963 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)
author: John Le Carré
name: Jana
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seaplane on Final Approach]]> 58537370
Mira is a loner, a drop out, an obsessive fascinated by the concept of sleaze. She wants two to move to Alaska and find the tattooed fisherman that’s the object of her desire. Her single-mindedness takes her to the remote Kodiak Archipelago, where she finds work at a homestead-turned-tourist-lodge offering a carousel of meticulously scripted Alaskan experiences.

But the lodge is failing and, as life on Lavender Island becomes increasingly claustrophobic and strange, Mira’s plans for her future become more elaborate and perverse.

Part meditation on unhinged longing, part biting commentary on eco-tourism and the mythology of the American West, and part yearning portrayal of people at the end of their tether,The Seaplane on Final Approachis wholly original, “a perfect blend of deep, dark humor, sadness, and (of course), adolescent horniness (Literary Hub).”]]> 288 Rebecca Rukeyser 0593314026 Jana 0 to-read 3.22 2022 The Seaplane on Final Approach
author: Rebecca Rukeyser
name: Jana
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Her First Palestinian 60294575
Saeed Teebi’s intense, engrossing stories plunge into the lives of characters grappling with their experiences as Palestinian immigrants to Canada. A doctor teaches his girlfriend about his country, only for her to fall into a consuming obsession with the Middle East conflict. A math professor risks his family’s destruction by slandering the king of a despotic, oil-rich country. A university student invents an imaginary girlfriend to fit in with his callous, womanizing roommates. A lawyer takes on the impossible mission of becoming a body smuggler. A lonely widower travels to Russia in search of a movie starlet he met in his youth in historical Jaffa. A refugee who escaped violent circumstances rebels against the kindness of his sponsor. These taut and compelling stories engage the immigrant experience and reflect the Palestinian diaspora with grace and insight.]]> 256 Saeed Teebi 1487010877 Jana 0 to-read 4.35 2022 Her First Palestinian
author: Saeed Teebi
name: Jana
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Girl Juice 62039160 A hilarious slice of twentysomething life in the twenty-first century

Welcome to the Girl Juice House, home of only the hottest gang in town. Benji Nate’s stylish and rambunctious sense of humor lovingly takes digs at the young and tragically hip–reserved and introspective Nana, comically hypersexual Bunny, fledgling U-tuber Tula, and Designated Mom� Sadie–as they navigate life, love, and the pursuit of a good time.

Girl Juice flaunts the gloriously messy and hilariously self-indulgent day-to-day hijinks of four young women doing the most. Watch them bicker over making rent and come up with creative solutions for getting there! Cringe as they attend an adult prom! Split your sides as they try their hand at camping! Cower as they confront their mommy issues, and cheer as they battle inner demons that feed off attention-seeking behavior!

Nate’s colorful attention to detail and gift balancing for graphic hyperbole with subtle comedy are a deep, much-needed breath of fresh air. With front-facing cameras ever at the ready, Girl Juice is a snappy reminder that the time of your life is always just a text away.]]> 176 Benji Nate 1770466630 Jana 0 to-read 3.93 2023 Girl Juice
author: Benji Nate
name: Jana
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Jana 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Jana
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Jana 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Jana
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Jana 0 to-read 3.66 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Jana
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Verführt: Januar/Februar/März (Calendar Girl, #1-3)]]> 30324267 368 Audrey Carlan 3548288847 Jana 2 3.45 2015 Verführt: Januar/Februar/März (Calendar Girl, #1-3)
author: Audrey Carlan
name: Jana
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2021/09/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The Lost Daughter 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Jana 0 to-read 3.70 2006 The Lost Daughter
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Jana
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Perfect Timing 58167098
Jess thinks she met a cheating liar one night a year ago, but much to her chagrin, she can’t seem to stop thinking about him. When she finally decides to take it upon herself to tell Tom’s girlfriend what happened that night, she finds out that the truth isn’t quite what she thought it was. But by then it’s too late—she’s headed to the other side of the world to launch her comedy career.

As the years go by, Tom and Jess are never far from each other’s thoughts. But every time it seems that there might be a way for them to move forward, something else conspires to keep them apart. In life and in love, timing is everything—but will Tom and Jess ever manage to get it right?]]> 384 Owen Nicholls 1984826891 Jana 0 to-read 3.30 2021 Perfect Timing
author: Owen Nicholls
name: Jana
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Palestine 23129811 On Palestine is the sequel to their acclaimed book Gaza in Crisis.]]> 220 Noam Chomsky 1608464709 Jana 0 to-read 4.28 2015 On Palestine
author: Noam Chomsky
name: Jana
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Morning, Midnight 45894065 208 Jean Rhys 0393357805 Jana 0 to-read 3.87 1939 Good Morning, Midnight
author: Jean Rhys
name: Jana
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Even If This Love Disappears Tonight]]> 61399263 240 Misaki Ichijo 1975348338 Jana 0 to-read 4.11 2020 Even If This Love Disappears Tonight
author: Misaki Ichijo
name: Jana
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3)]]> 35247769 Lara Jean is having the best senior year.

And there’s still so much to look forward to: a class trip to New York City, prom with her boyfriend Peter, Beach Week after graduation, and her dad’s wedding to Ms. Rothschild. Then she’ll be off to college with Peter, at a school close enough for her to come home and bake chocolate chip cookies on the weekends.

Life couldn’t be more perfect!

At least, that’s what Lara Jean thinks . . . until she gets some unexpected news.

Now the girl who dreads change must rethink all her plans—but when your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to?]]> 325 Jenny Han 1481430483 Jana 4 Re-read 3.99 2017 Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3)
author: Jenny Han
name: Jana
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: favourites, favourite-characters
review:
Re-read
]]> <![CDATA[Oscar Wilde - Die besten Geschichten]]> 29913703 The Importance of Being Earnest


With an Introduction by Sylvan Barnetand a New Afterword by Marylu Hill]]> 317 Oscar Wilde 373060239X Jana 3 4.09 1898 Oscar Wilde - Die besten Geschichten
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Jana
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/06
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: poetry, classics, irish-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery]]> 56179372 Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

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

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

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

Complete with 8 pages of Brom’s mesmerizing full-color artwork and chapter illustrations throughout, his latest book is sure to delight.]]> 305 Brom 125062200X Jana 0 to-read 4.23 2021 Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery
author: Brom
name: Jana
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nettle & Bone 56179377
Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.]]> 243 T. Kingfisher 1250244048 Jana 0 to-read 4.07 2022 Nettle & Bone
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Jana
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Belladonna (Belladonna, #1) 59227936
Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each one more interested in her wealth than her well-being—and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy. Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family’s waning reputation, and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer.

However, Signa’s best chance of uncovering the murderer is an alliance with Death himself, a fascinating, dangerous shadow who has never been far from her side. Though he’s made her life a living hell, Death shows Signa that their growing connection may be more powerful—and more irresistible—than she ever dared imagine.]]> 409 Adalyn Grace 0316158232 Jana 0 to-read 3.96 2022 Belladonna (Belladonna, #1)
author: Adalyn Grace
name: Jana
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ripe 62919394
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.]]> 288 Sarah Rose Etter 1668011638 Jana 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Ripe
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: Jana
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2)]]> 20698530 Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.

They were just pretending. Until they weren’t. And now Lara Jean has to learn what it's like to be in a real relationship and not just a make-believe one.

But when another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him suddenly return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Times bestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Lara Jean is about to find out that falling in love is the easy part.]]> 337 Jenny Han 144242673X Jana 4 screen-adaptation The third act ties everything together very nicely, and it becomes apparent that this book was less about Lara Jean and Peter and more about her relationship with Genevieve.

Oh, and John Ambrose McClaren is probably one of the most tragic literary characters ever.]]> 4.01 2015 P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2)
author: Jenny Han
name: Jana
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: screen-adaptation
review:
For most of the book, the plot is barely existent, but the vibes are great, and I adore the characters.
The third act ties everything together very nicely, and it becomes apparent that this book was less about Lara Jean and Peter and more about her relationship with Genevieve.

Oh, and John Ambrose McClaren is probably one of the most tragic literary characters ever.
]]> <![CDATA[If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English]]> 57693584
A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?]]> 186 Noor Naga 164445081X Jana 0 to-read 3.95 2022 If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
author: Noor Naga
name: Jana
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Jana 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Jana
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Jana 0 to-read 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: Jana
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

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

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is 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.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Jana 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Jana
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1)]]> 15749186
But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh.

As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.]]> 355 Jenny Han 1442426713 Jana 4 screen-adaptation
I've been trying to get out of a reading slump, and this worked wonders.
So cosy and lovely ]]> 4.04 2014 To All the Boys I've Loved Before (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #1)
author: Jenny Han
name: Jana
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: screen-adaptation
review:
Re-read

I've been trying to get out of a reading slump, and this worked wonders.
So cosy and lovely
]]> <![CDATA[A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning, #1)]]> 75302266 Angharad—Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him—is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny.

But musty, decrepit Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task, and its residents are far from welcoming. Including Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar determined to expose Myrddin as a fraud. As the two rivals piece together clues about Myrddin’s legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them—and the truth may bring them both to ruin.]]> 378 Ava Reid 0063211505 Jana 0 to-read 3.73 2023 A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning, #1)
author: Ava Reid
name: Jana
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Woman, Eating 58536037 A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London--where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans--the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for--perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality--but, she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry--always hungry.

As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her--between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.]]> 240 Claire Kohda 0063140888 Jana 0 to-read 3.46 2022 Woman, Eating
author: Claire Kohda
name: Jana
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Carrie 10592
Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is...Carrie
--back cover]]> 272 Stephen King 1416524304 Jana 0 to-read 4.00 1974 Carrie
author: Stephen King
name: Jana
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Little Prince 157993
Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.]]> 96 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0152023984 Jana 0 to-read 4.32 1943 The Little Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Jana
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Der Alchimist 70740 176 Paulo Coelho 3257061269 Jana 3 brazilian-literature 3.89 1988 Der Alchimist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Jana
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: brazilian-literature
review:
I finally understand why all these start-up/business/finance-bros love this book
]]> From Lukov with Love 37683751
After seventeen years—and countless broken bones and broken promises—she knows her window to compete in figure skating is coming to a close.

But when the offer of a lifetime comes in from an arrogant idiot she’s spent the last decade dreaming about pushing in the way of a moving bus, Jasmine might have to reconsider everything.

Including Ivan Lukov.]]> 493 Mariana Zapata Jana 0 to-read 4.19 2018 From Lukov with Love
author: Mariana Zapata
name: Jana
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Winter in Sokcho 52873922 As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman - a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author

It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.

The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic� Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows � the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.]]> 154 Elisa Shua Dusapin 1911547542 Jana 0 to-read 3.55 2016 Winter in Sokcho
author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
name: Jana
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dollmaker of Krakow 34079578 In the land of humans, there is war.
Everywhere there is pain.
But together there is hope.

Karolina is a living doll whose king and queen have been overthrown. But when a strange wind spirits her away from the Land of the Dolls, she finds herself in Krakow, Poland, in the company of the Dollmaker, a man with an unusual power and a marked past.

The Dollmaker has learned to keep to himself, but Karolina's courageous and compassionate manner lead him to smile and to even befriend a violin-playing father and his daughter--that is, once the Dollmaker gets over the shock of realizing a doll is speaking to him.

But their newfound happiness is dashed when Nazi soldiers descend upon Poland. Karolina and the Dollmaker quickly realize that their Jewish friends are in grave danger, and they are determined to help save them, no matter what the risks.]]> 336 R.M. Romero 1524715395 Jana 0 to-read 4.14 2017 The Dollmaker of Krakow
author: R.M. Romero
name: Jana
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Characters & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing)]]> 9441466 Vivid and memorable characters aren't born: they have to be made

This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs. Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your imagination.

Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options—the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families.

You'll learn how to:

Draw characters from a variety of sources Make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style" Develop characters readers will love—or love to hate Distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each appropriately Choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling Decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions, and attitudes ]]> 240 Orson Scott Card 1599632128 Jana 0 non-fiction 4.16 1988 Characters & Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing)
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Jana
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sorcery of Thorns (Sorcery of Thorns, #1)]]> 42201395
Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.]]> 456 Margaret Rogerson 1481497618 Jana 0 to-read 4.03 2019 Sorcery of Thorns (Sorcery of Thorns, #1)
author: Margaret Rogerson
name: Jana
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)]]> 23437156 Alternate cover of ISBN 9781627792127

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone...

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.]]> 480 Leigh Bardugo 1627792120 Jana 0 to-read 4.47 2015 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Jana
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)]]> 27774758 Alternative Cover Edition #1

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 446 Sabaa Tahir Jana 0 to-read 4.23 2015 An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)
author: Sabaa Tahir
name: Jana
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)]]> 7171637 New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters—including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them...]]> 479 Cassandra Clare 1416975861 Jana 0 to-read 4.31 2010 Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Jana
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>