en-US Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:44:00 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 710 Mark Z. Danielewski Masha 0 to-read 4.11 2000
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Masha
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 298275 Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him.

His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time, the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."

Roquentin's efforts to try and come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.

The introduction for this edition of Nausea by Hayden Carruth gives background on Sartre's life and major works, a summary of the principal themes of Existentialist philosophy, and a critical analysis of the novel itself.]]> 178 Jean-Paul Sartre 0811201880 Masha 0 to-read 3.96 1938
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Masha
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/23
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]]> 49628
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Masha 0 to-read 4.02 2004
author: David Mitchell
name: Masha
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> 2967752
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.]]> 325 Muriel Barbery 1933372605 Masha 0 to-read 3.76 2006
author: Muriel Barbery
name: Masha
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Masha 0 4.17 2005
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Masha
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Masha 5 4.21 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Masha
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 5
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]]> 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky Masha 0 to-read 4.16 1848
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Masha
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 0
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]]> 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Masha 5 4.01 2003
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Masha
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Masha 0 to-read 4.22 2020
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Masha
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Masha 0 to-read 4.05 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Masha
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Masha 0 to-read 4.29 1943
author: Betty Smith
name: Masha
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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]]> 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Masha 0 to-read 4.28 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Masha
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 206305528
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.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.]]> 404 Bonnie Garmus Masha 0 to-read 4.24 2022
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Masha
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Masha 0 to-read 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: Masha
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 22557272
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 336 Paula Hawkins 1594633665 Masha 0 to-read 3.97 2015
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Masha
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Masha 5 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Masha
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 5
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]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Masha 5 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Masha
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Masha 5 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: Masha
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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read 5 years ago + I got this signed by zusak yay
]]> 18144590 The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.]]> 182 Paulo Coelho 0062315005 Masha 4 4.01 1988
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Masha
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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]]> 421 The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0374532079 Masha 0 to-read 4.06 1979
author: Joan Didion
name: Masha
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Masha 0 to-read 3.94 2005
author: Joan Didion
name: Masha
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 206318521 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 262 Patti Smith 006621131X Masha 0 to-read 4.27 2010
author: Patti Smith
name: Masha
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 18796
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of À la recherche du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).]]> 4211 Marcel Proust 0812969642 Masha 0 to-read 4.34 1913
author: Marcel Proust
name: Masha
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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]]> 11623
A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.]]> 732 Sylvia Plath 0385720254 Masha 0 to-read 4.27 2000
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Masha
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 590645 Le Parfum, un roman qui, dès sa parution, eut un succès extraordinaire et est devenu très vite un best-seller mondial aujourd'hui porté à l'écran.]]> 280 Patrick Süskind 2253044903 Masha 0 to-read 4.06 1985
author: Patrick SĂĽskind
name: Masha
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 141421 254 Simone de Beauvoir Masha 0 to-read 4.01 1967
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Masha
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 5148 A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.]]> 208 John Knowles Masha 0 to-read 3.60 1959
author: John Knowles
name: Masha
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 68783
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.]]> 169 Susanna Kaysen 0679746048 Masha 0 to-read 3.95 1993
author: Susanna Kaysen
name: Masha
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Masha 5 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Masha
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 Masha 0 4.16 1994
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Masha
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> 38458438 122 Amparo Dávila 0811228215 Masha 0 currently-reading 3.58 2018
author: Amparo Dávila
name: Masha
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Masha 4 romance, to-read-have 3.81 2018
author: Sally Rooney
name: Masha
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Masha 5 fiction, to-read-don-t-have 4.36 1880
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Masha
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:
so many insect analogies. I like insects
]]> 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Masha 5 fiction, to-read-don-t-have 4.28 1939
author: Agatha Christie
name: Masha
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 40670312 How far would you go to find The One?

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner the one you are genetically made for.

That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.

Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.� They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after� isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others�

A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.]]> 418 John Marrs Masha 4 fiction, to-read-have 4.09 2016
author: John Marrs
name: Masha
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 42201431
Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501128035.]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501128035 Masha 2 romance, to-read-have 3.88 2019
author: Christina Lauren
name: Masha
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Masha 5 fiction, to-read-have 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Masha
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-have
review:
I love figs! and metaphors abt them
]]> 11334 338 Toni Morrison 140003342X Masha 5 to-read-don-t-have, fiction 4.15 1977
author: Toni Morrison
name: Masha
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read-don-t-have, fiction
review:

]]> 1095776 Chronique de 1830, bien avant l'existence du cinéma donc, Stendhal alterne les prises de vue pour concilier réalisme et romantisme. Le Rouge et le Noir, portrait social, est également un roman de l'individualité où le regard des personnages sert de philtre au narrateur et où la cristallisation stendhalienne, cette phase irisée De l'amour, trouve un formidable support dans les champs, contrechamps, plongées et contre-plongées. Cette écriture visuelle ajoute à l'analyse une intelligence psychologique profonde. Inversement, le ton dépouillé permet au romantisme d'éviter le lyrisme abusif et de demeurer ironique envers la société sclérosée de la France de la Restauration. --Sana Tang-Léopold Wauters]]> 832 Stendhal 2070412393 Masha 4 fiction, to-read-have Finished 2 years ago whoopsie 3.61 1830
author: Stendhal
name: Masha
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1830
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-have
review:
Finished 2 years ago whoopsie
]]> 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Masha 5 fiction, to-read-have 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Masha
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Masha 3 fiction, to-read-don-t-have 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Masha
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 51933429
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 330 Lucy Foley Masha 3 fiction, to-read-don-t-have 3.64 2020
author: Lucy Foley
name: Masha
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:
didn’t love the writing style, felt a little too childish
]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Masha 0 to-read 3.87 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Masha
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Masha 5 I reread this once every few years and have multiple copies of this. Once again, no one does a short story like Lahiri]]> 4.18 1999
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Masha
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:
how have I never reviewed this? need to catch up on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ fr.
I reread this once every few years and have multiple copies of this. Once again, no one does a short story like Lahiri
]]> 85301
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,� a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,� a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,� a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.]]> 352 Jhumpa Lahiri 0676979343 Masha 5 fiction, to-read-have 4.14 2008
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Masha
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-have
review:
no one does a short story like Lahiri
]]> 42815544
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.]]> 307 Mona Awad 0525559736 Masha 5 fiction, to-read-don-t-have 3.53 2019
author: Mona Awad
name: Masha
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:
blinked and suddenly people’s heads were blowing up?? loved her writing style so much that I bought two of her other books.
]]> 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 Masha 5 4.00 2022
author: Elif Batuman
name: Masha
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:
reading this feels like talking to an old friend. a reassurance that the way my brain works is relatable
]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Masha 0 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Masha
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 6280118
So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?

And every year that follows?
--back cover]]> 435 David Nicholls 0340896965 Masha 5 3.86 2009
author: David Nicholls
name: Masha
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 27845690
The long-awaited and beguiling second novel from Alain de Botton that tracks the beautifully complicated arc of a romantic partnership, from the internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life. De Botton's essay "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person" (The New York Times, May 28, 2016), which draws from The Course of Love, was the #1 most emailed article for days.

We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading.

This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.]]> 240 Alain de Botton 0241145473 Masha 5 romance, to-read-have 4.01 2016
author: Alain de Botton
name: Masha
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: romance, to-read-have
review:
this was unlike anything I had read before - a fictional story of realistic romance, with therapist-like speeches interspersed throughout. Loved. Made me think about my idea of love - and the overglamorization of the idea of the “right person� - the right person is whoever makes an effort to put aside differences, not someone who is perfect for you. “Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn’t be its precondition�
]]> 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 Masha 4 to-read-don-t-have, fiction 3.74 2017
author: Sally Rooney
name: Masha
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: to-read-don-t-have, fiction
review:

]]> 13079982 Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.� But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.]]> 194 Ray Bradbury Masha 0 3.97 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Masha
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
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]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Masha 0 to-read 3.66 2015
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Masha
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58468990 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List comes a new locked room mystery, set in a Paris apartment building in which every resident has something to hide�

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up � to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? � he’s not there.

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

The socialite � The nice guy � The alcoholic � The girl on the verge � The concierge

Everyone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.]]> 360 Lucy Foley 0063003058 Masha 0 to-read 3.63 2022
author: Lucy Foley
name: Masha
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25851562
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.]]> 291 Sylvia Plath 0062444476 Masha 0 4.03 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Masha
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Masha 0 to-read 4.28 2015
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Masha
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

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

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

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Masha 0 to-read 4.35 2022
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Masha
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 Masha 0 to-read 4.22 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Masha
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199313102 From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else

It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield Masha 0 to-read 3.85 2024
author: Julia Armfield
name: Masha
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 42870948
Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion � turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

Winner of The White Review Short Story Prize, Armfield is a writer of sharp, lyrical prose and tilting dark humour � salt slow marks the arrival of an ambitious and singular new voice.]]> 193 Julia Armfield 1529012562 Masha 0 to-read 3.99 2019
author: Julia Armfield
name: Masha
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X Masha 5 ]]> 3.75 2022
author: Julia Armfield
name: Masha
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
To be honest I don’t know how anyone could have given this book a bad rating - I think it’s one of my favorites that I’ve read in a while. The infection-by-the-sea felt very metaphorical to me, perhaps an allegory to dementia/Alzheimer’s and what it is to slowly lose someone, for them to slowly slip away from comprehension. Julia Armfield’s writing was also so so lovely and full of imagery - “ghost groans of wordsthat died before my tongue could shape them� I LOVE. also loved the usage of sci-fi as a vehicle for grief - I’m not the biggest fan of world-building sci-fi/fantasy books, but love when they’re used in tandem with another, more overpowering genre.

]]> 23492661
From the acclaimed author of Forever, Interrupted and After I Do comes a breathtaking new novel about a young woman whose fate hinges on the choice she makes after bumping into an old flame; in alternating chapters, we see two possible scenarios unfold—with stunningly different results.

At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?

In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Life raises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?

Hannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.]]> 342 Taylor Jenkins Reid Masha 3 3.77 2015
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Masha
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
Although I loved Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Reid Jenkins� writing here is quite simplistic and leaves much to be desired. Although the plot and premise of the two parallel universes was captivating, I felt sometimes as though I was reading a Wattpad fanfiction�
]]> 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 Masha 4 romance, to-read-have 4.02 2021
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Masha
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band � and meeting the man who would become her husband � her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 Masha 5 I don’t think a book has moved me this much in a while - Michelle Zauner writes so beautifully yet with so much wit. The mother daughter relationship - particularly that of the daughter losing her mother - captures deep grief and loss in such a beautiful way that I couldn’t help but sob through the entire book. ]]> 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Masha
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
jumping back onto Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ as I slowly exit my reading slump.
I don’t think a book has moved me this much in a while - Michelle Zauner writes so beautifully yet with so much wit. The mother daughter relationship - particularly that of the daughter losing her mother - captures deep grief and loss in such a beautiful way that I couldn’t help but sob through the entire book.
]]> 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

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

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 Masha 5 3.67 2017
author: Elif Batuman
name: Masha
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
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review:

]]> 51704136 Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned--from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren--an enigmatic artist and single mother--who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood--and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more. ]]> 368 Celeste Ng 0143135163 Masha 0 4.06 2017
author: Celeste Ng
name: Masha
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/06
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 768496
John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper. From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of "self-actualization." However, Liz begins to fall in love with John's best friend, and John realizes his journey of self-discovery has only just begun.]]> 307 Vikram Seth 0679734570 Masha 0 currently-reading 4.02 1986
author: Vikram Seth
name: Masha
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Masha 0 to-read 4.44 2018
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Masha
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Masha 0 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Masha
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/13
shelves: fiction, to-read-have, currently-reading
review:

]]> 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806734 Masha 3 3.99 2020
author: Emily Henry
name: Masha
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/13
date added: 2022/01/13
shelves:
review:
meh. It was really cute but painfully American? Painfully�. “American rom com�? idk. too cliche and not enough depth added to the characters. felt like I was watching some overplayed hallmark movie. Cute story tho, but expected a lot more from glowing reviews
]]> 3153910
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life ... as only a dog could tell it.]]> 336 Garth Stein 1554681723 Masha 0 to-read 4.22 2008
author: Garth Stein
name: Masha
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40024139 Bound as one to love, honor, or burn.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. His path was never meant to cross with Lou's, but a wicked stunt forces them into an impossible union—holy matrimony.

The war between witches and Church is an ancient one, and Lou's most dangerous enemies bring a fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, a choice must be made.

And love makes fools of us all.

This is a previously published edition of ISBN 9780062878021. An alternate cover edition can be found here.]]> 513 Shelby Mahurin Masha 0 3.92 2019
author: Shelby Mahurin
name: Masha
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 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 Masha 0 4.47 2015
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Masha
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 22299763
Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.]]> 561 Leigh Bardugo Masha 0 4.58 2016
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Masha
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 27883214 A legendary competition.
A mesmerizing romance.
An unbreakable bond
between two sisters.

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . beware of getting swept too far away.]]> 407 Stephanie Garber 1250095255 Masha 0 3.97 2016
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Masha
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 18584855 Long before she was the terror of Wonderland—the infamous Queen of Hearts—she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.

Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen.

Then Cath meets Jest, the handsome and mysterious court joker. For the first time, she feels the pull of true attraction. At the risk of offending the king and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into an intense, secret courtship. Cath is determined to define her own destiny and fall in love on her terms. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans.

In her first stand-alone teen novel, the New York Times-bestselling author dazzles us with a prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.]]> 453 Marissa Meyer 1250044650 Masha 0 4.10 2016
author: Marissa Meyer
name: Masha
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-have, romance
review:

]]> 11250317
Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.]]> 352 Madeline Miller 1408816032 Masha 0 4.38 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: Masha
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-have, romance
review:

]]> 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Masha 0 4.22 2018
author: Madeline Miller
name: Masha
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 41150487
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?]]> 448 Casey McQuiston 1250316774 Masha 0 4.06 2019
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Masha
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 25494343 Lady Midnight is a Shadowhunters novel.

It’s been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses.

Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions�

Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters� help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

Glitz, glamours, and Shadowhunters abound in this heartrending opening to Cassandra Clare’s Dark Artifices series.]]> 688 Cassandra Clare 1442468351 Masha 0 4.35 2016
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Masha
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 44778083
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it.

With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom-and the power of love.]]> 803 Sarah J. Maas 1635574048 Masha 0 4.43 2020
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Masha
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Masha 0 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Masha
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 42505366
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.]]> 357 Rory Power 0525645586 Masha 0 3.46 2019
author: Rory Power
name: Masha
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Masha 0 4.35 2018
author: Delia Owens
name: Masha
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 35702241
1) Woo the Shadow King.
2) Marry him.
3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.

No one knows the extent of the freshly crowned Shadow King’s power. Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she’s going to do everything within her power to get it.

But Alessandra’s not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen—all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?]]> 326 Tricia Levenseller 1250189969 Masha 0 3.82 2020
author: Tricia Levenseller
name: Masha
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 52831200 A Maiden�

Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.

A Duty�

The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.

A Kingdom�

Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.]]> 622 Jennifer L. Armentrout 1952457017 Masha 0 4.19 2020
author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
name: Masha
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Masha 0 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Masha
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 44107480
Aubrey Edwards is also headed toward the trenches. A gifted musician who's played Carnegie Hall, he's a member of the 15th New York Infantry, an all-African-American regiment being sent to Europe to help end the Great War. Love is the last thing on his mind. But that's before he meets Colette Fournier, a Belgian chanteuse who's already survived unspeakable tragedy at the hands of the Germans.

Thirty years after these four lovers' fates collide, the Greek goddess Aphrodite tells their stories to her husband, Hephaestus, and her lover, Ares, in a luxe Manhattan hotel room at the height of World War II. She seeks to answer the age-old question: Why are Love and War eternally drawn to one another? But her quest for a conclusion that will satisfy her jealous husband uncovers a multi-threaded tale of prejudice, trauma, and music and reveals that War is no match for the power of Love.

A sweeping, multi-layered romance with a divine twist, by the Printz Honor-winning author of The Passion of Dolssa, set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II.]]> 471 Julie Berry Masha 0 4.23 2019
author: Julie Berry
name: Masha
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 33385229
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.

Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.]]> 389 Adam Silvera 0062457799 Masha 0 3.76 2017
author: Adam Silvera
name: Masha
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 10194157 Alternative Cover Edition #1

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.]]> 358 Leigh Bardugo 1250048117 Masha 0 3.93 2012
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Masha
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-don-t-have, romance
review:

]]> 30474 The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels' revolutionary 1848 summons to the working classes, is one of the most influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration, the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property, or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which capitalism is overthrown. Their vision transformed the world irrevocably, and remains relevant as a depiction of global capitalism today.]]> 288 Karl Marx 0140447571 Masha 0 3.67 1848
author: Karl Marx
name: Masha
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1848
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, non-fiction-science, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Masha 0 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Masha
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-have
review:

]]> 12000020
But against all odds, when Ari and Dante meet, they develop a special bond that will teach them the most important truths of their lives, and help define the people they want to be. But there are big hurdles in their way, and only by believing in each other—and the power of their friendship—can Ari and Dante emerge stronger on the other side.]]> 390 Benjamin Alire Sáenz 1442408928 Masha 0 4.29 2012
author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
name: Masha
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, fiction, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 36492488 People lived because she killed. People died because he lived.

Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya--but neither wants to be.

War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore magic to her suffering world and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the sultan on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs as their journey unfolds--and the prize they seek may pose a threat greater than either can imagine.]]> 472 Hafsah Faizal 0374311544 Masha 0 3.87 2019
author: Hafsah Faizal
name: Masha
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 52735921 Two sisters.
One brutal murder.
A quest for vengeance that will unleash Hell itself...
And an intoxicating romance.

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe - witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family's renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin...desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister's killer and to seek vengeance at any cost—even if it means using dark magic that's been long forbidden.

Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked—princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia's side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women's murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems...]]> 372 Kerri Maniscalco 0316428469 Masha 0 3.87 2020
author: Kerri Maniscalco
name: Masha
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 7896527 Meet Celaena Sardothien.

Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, Celaena, an assassin, is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king’s champion.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.]]> 406 Sarah J. Maas Masha 0 4.19 2012
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Masha
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

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

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

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 Masha 0 4.18 2019
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Masha
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-have
review:

]]> 30075662 From the internationally bestselling authors of THE ILLUMINAE FILES comes an epic new science fiction adventure.

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch�

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger management issues
A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

They're not the heroes we deserve. They're just the ones we could find. Nobody panic. ]]> 473 Amie Kaufman 1524720968 Masha 0 4.08 2019
author: Amie Kaufman
name: Masha
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
review:

]]> 20820994
Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways... but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor. The early years are Noah's to tell; the later years are Jude's. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they'll have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant, award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Printz Award Winner Stonewall Honor Book.]]> 371 Jandy Nelson 0803734964 Masha 0 4.14 2014
author: Jandy Nelson
name: Masha
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
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]]> 50892212
A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.

Perfect for fans of The Last Magician and Descendant of the Crane, this heart-stopping debut is an imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs and a monster in the depths of the Huangpu River.]]> 449 Chloe Gong 1534457690 Masha 0 3.82 2020
author: Chloe Gong
name: Masha
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/07
shelves: to-read, romance, to-read-don-t-have
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]]>