Sarah's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 02 Apr 2025 06:23:28 -0700 60 Sarah's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present]]> 56769532 Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.]]> 237 Dara Horn 0393531562 Sarah 5 In Dara Horn we trust 4.34 2021 People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
author: Dara Horn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
review:
In Dara Horn we trust
]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

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

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 724 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Sarah 0 to-read 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> Germinal 28407
Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, in debt, and unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

•New translation
� Includes introduction, suggestions for further reading, filmography, chronology, explanatory notes, and glossary]]> 592 Émile Zola 0140447423 Sarah 0 currently-reading 4.17 1885 Germinal
author: Émile Zola
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1885
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Olive Days 205673372 A smoldering novel about an exhausted young mother in an Orthodox Jewish community of Los Angeles whose quest for authenticity erupts in a passionate affair following a night of wife swappingRina Kirsch is an exhausted young mother and Modern Orthodox Jew in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles. Dutifully keeping to the formidable expectations of a traditional household connects Rina with generations past and those to come. But a contradiction burns at her Rina is an atheist. She is also stymied in her life and marriage.Hoping to reinvigorate their relationship, Rina’s husband convinces her to partake in a night of wife swapping with other Orthodox couples. Rather than preserve her marriage, however, the swap plunges Rina down a heady path that begins with a rekindled passion for painting and culminates in an intoxicating affair with Will, her married Mexican American art teacher. Clandestine rendezvous and stolen moments of ardor awaken Rina to an existence beyond the confining parameters of tradition, offering a glimpse at the possible life she left behind in the olive groves of her youth. As the blush of erotic thrill comes into sharp contrast with the complications of living a secret life, Rina must decide if it’s worth sacrificing everything she’s ever known to fully inhabit the uncharted landscape unfolding before her, one where her needs take precedence.Told in the fevered tenor common to both lust and religious devotion, Olive Days is an unforgettable story of the agonizing choices women make to balance duty against desire.]]> 320 Jessica Elisheva Emerson 1640096531 Sarah 3 3.39 2024 Olive Days
author: Jessica Elisheva Emerson
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life-in Judaism (after Finally Choosing to Look There)]]> 43289179
After a decade as a political speechwriter—serving as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama, a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, and chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign—Sarah Hurwitz decided to apply her skills as a communicator to writing a book . . . about Judaism. And no one is more surprised than she is.

Hurwitz was the quintessential lapsed Jew—until, at age thirty-six, after a tough breakup, she happened upon an advertisement for an introductory class on Judaism. She attended on a whim, but was blown away by what she found: beautiful rituals, helpful guidance on living an ethical life, conceptions of God beyond the judgy bearded man in the sky—none of which she had learned in Hebrew school or during the two synagogue services she grudgingly attended each year. That class led to a years-long journey during which Hurwitz visited the offices of rabbis, attended Jewish meditation retreats, sat at the Shabbat tables of Orthodox families, and read hundreds of books about Judaism—all in dogged pursuit of answers to her biggest questions. What she found transformed her life, and she wondered: How could there be such a gap between the richness of what Judaism offers and the way so many Jews like her understand and experience it?

Sarah Hurwitz is on a mission to close this gap by sharing the profound insights she discovered on everything from Jewish holidays, ethics, and prayer to Jewish conceptions of God, death, and social justice. In this entertaining and accessible book, she shows us why Judaism matters and how its message is more relevant than ever, and she inspires Jews to do the learning, questioning, and debating required to make this religion their own.]]> 352 Sarah Hurwitz 0525510710 Sarah 0 to-read 4.42 Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life-in Judaism (after Finally Choosing to Look There)
author: Sarah Hurwitz
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.42
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/26
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]]> Milk Fed 54304105 The Pisces and So Sad Today.

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

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

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.]]> 304 Melissa Broder 1982142499 Sarah 3 3.56 2021 Milk Fed
author: Melissa Broder
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> Nadja 110457
The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in the city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work -- pictures of various surreal people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in naja's presence and which inspire him to mediate on their reality or lack of it. The Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as not so much a thing as a way things happen, Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, k a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel.]]> 160 André Breton 0802150268 Sarah 4
Le roman surréaliste qui n'est pas un roman

La flâneuse folle et le flâneur qui est sans doute fou lui-même

Sans décrire les images, mais les images décrites

Le dérèglement des sens et des clichés

Fantastique et fou de chez fou
]]> 3.57 1928 Nadja
author: André Breton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
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review:
"La beauté sera convulsive ou ne sera pas"

Le roman surréaliste qui n'est pas un roman

La flâneuse folle et le flâneur qui est sans doute fou lui-même

Sans décrire les images, mais les images décrites

Le dérèglement des sens et des clichés

Fantastique et fou de chez fou

]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Sarah 4 classics 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: classics
review:

]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Sarah 5 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
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Five stars because of how terrifyingly uncomfortable it made me and then it turned into sort of a ghost story?! I was so emotionally repulsed but in a this book is so well done way
]]> <![CDATA[Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Angels in America, #1-2)]]> 9828349 344 Tony Kushner 1559363843 Sarah 4 plays, read-in-school 4.40 1995 Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Angels in America, #1-2)
author: Tony Kushner
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/22
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: plays, read-in-school
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816]]> 8563678 Jean Baptiste Henri Savigny Sarah 2 3.15 1817 Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816
author: Jean Baptiste Henri Savigny
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.15
book published: 1817
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they ³¦²¹²Ô’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 384 Emily Henry 059344129X Sarah 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Golem of Brooklyn 124019742
But Len Bronstein is no rabbi—he’s a Brooklyn art teacher who steals a large quantity of clay from his school, gets extremely stoned, and manages to bring his creation to life despite knowing little about Judaism and even less about golems. Unable to communicate with his nine-foot-six, four hundred–pound, Yiddish-speaking guest, Len enlists a bodega clerk and ex-Hasid named Miri Apfelbaum to translate.

Eventually, the golem learns English by binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm after ingesting a massive amount of LSD and reveals that he is a creature with an ancestral memory; he recalls every previous iteration of himself, proving to be a repository of Jewish history and trauma. He demands to know what crisis has prompted his re-creation and whom he must destroy. When Miri shows him a video of white nationalists marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us,� the answer becomes clear.

The Golem of Brooklyn is an epic romp through Jewish history and the American present that wrestles with the deepest questions of our humanity—the conflicts between faith and skepticism, tribalism and interdependence, and vengeance and healing.]]> 272 Adam Mansbach 059372982X Sarah 0 to-read 3.97 2023 The Golem of Brooklyn
author: Adam Mansbach
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Sons and Daughters 215362224 From “one of the greatest—if not the greatest—contemporary Yiddish novelists� (Elie Wiesel), the long-awaited English translation of a work, Tolstoyan in scope, that chronicles the last, tumultuous decade of a world succumbing to the march of modernity

“It is me the prophet laments when he cries out, ‘My enemies are the people in my own home.’� The Rabbi ignored his borscht and instead chewed on a crust of bread dipped in salt. “My greatest enemies are my own family.�

Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the godless Zionists.ÌýÌý
ÌýÌýÌýÌýOriginally serialized in the 1960s and 70s, in New York-based Yiddish newspapers, Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters is a precious glimpse of a way of life that is no longer—theÌý rich, Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania that the Holocaust would eradicate. We meet the Katzenellenbogens in the tiny village of Morehdalye, in the 1930s, when gangs of Poles are beginning to boycott Jewish merchants and the modern, secular world is pressing in on the shtetl from all sides. It’s this clash, between the freethinking secular life and a life bound by religious duty—and the comforts offered by each—that stands at the center of Sons and Daughters.Ìý
ÌýÌýÌýÌýWith characters that rival the homespun philosophers and loveable rouges of Sholem Aleichem and I. B. Singer—from the brooding Zalia Ziskind, paralyzed by the suffering of others, to the Dostoevskian demon Shabse Shepsel—Grade’s masterful novel brims with humanity and with heartbreaking affection for a world, once full of life in all its glorious complexity, that would in just a few years vanish forever.]]> 704 Chaim Grade 0394536460 Sarah 0 to-read 4.46 Sons and Daughters
author: Chaim Grade
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.46
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays]]> 214458091 “Sensitive, searingly intelligent, and beautifully written.â€� —Claire Dederer, author ofÌý A Fan’s Dilemma



“This is—for real—a masterwork, one I will return to over and over."Ìý—JoannaÌýRakoff, author ofÌýMy Salinger Year



In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist Nicole Graev Lipson breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives.

What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a motherÌýin a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters.ÌýWhether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.Ìý



As Lipson journeys through this thorny terrain, literature becomes her lodestar. Kate Chopin’s erotic story “The Stormâ€� helps her reckon with the longings stirring below the surface of her marriage. Watching her son absorb the stifling codes of manhood, she finds unlikely parenting inspiration in Philip Roth’s most cartoonish overbearing mother. Summoning Gwendolyn Brooks, she asks, Can destroying one’s frozen embryos be understood as a maternal act? And accompanied by Shakespeare’s gender-bending heroine Rosalind, she seizes on the truest meaning of loving her oldest child.Ìý



Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy,ÌýMothers and Other Fictional CharactersÌýis a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves—and the ones we’re still becoming.]]> 248 Nicole Graev Lipson 1797228560 Sarah 0 to-read 4.73 2025 Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays
author: Nicole Graev Lipson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> Scaffolding 201826095 The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London. Hence, she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, unaware that they once inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.]]> 388 Lauren Elkin 1529926459 Sarah 0 to-read 3.71 2024 Scaffolding
author: Lauren Elkin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> This Is a Love Story 216426697 An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.]]> 304 Jessica Soffer 0593851269 Sarah 0 to-read 3.23 This Is a Love Story
author: Jessica Soffer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild West Village: Not a Memoir—Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1]]> 214438107 In this darkly humorous memoir-in-essays, singer-songwriter Lola Kirke untangles an extraordinary upbringing in a family of eccentric, messy artists and how a girl from the big city went a little bit country.

Born into a dynastic creative family, Lola Kirke grew up around people who maintained glamorous veneers while turbulence rocked their inner worlds. The youngest daughter of a British rock star and socialite designer, Lola and her siblings (including actress Jemima and celebrity doula Domino), spent their childhoods in a sprawling West Village brownstone, which, thanks to the eclectic stylings of its matriarch, became the talk of the City, and was visited by the likes of Courtney Love and David Bowie. But behind the enviable exterior of wealth and coolness, was a family in disarray.

Her parents� marriage was characterized by addiction and affairs. Her sisters� youths marked by their own stints in rehab, and oriented around a relentless pursuit of beauty idealized by their mother. To make sense of all the madness, young Lola turned to chocolate, masturbation, marijuana, and last but not least, the distant sounds of country music, where singers like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Gram Parsons helped her see that the worst things in life are fine if you can make them rhyme. That women can be complicated. And that men sometimes beg for forgiveness.

But before heading south to make music herself, Lola went west to Los Angeles, landing with a career-launching role in Gone Girl that led to starring alongside Greta Gerwig in Mistress America and Gael Garcia Bernal for four seasons on the Golden Globe–winning Mozart in the Jungle. But increasingly dubious of an artistic life lived in only one lane, Lola eventually left LA for Nashville, reconciling the future she was building with the chaotic past she was recalling by writing her own country songs. After a lifetime of trying to fit in with her family and stand out in the world, she finally realized what she really needed was just to be herself—contradictions and all.

Darkly funny, high spirited, and just a little bit country, this is the story of a young woman trying to be someone else while secretly learning to become herself, as well as the story of a family that, in Lola’s own words, puts the “fun� in dysfunctional.]]> 272 Lola Kirke 166803557X Sarah 0 to-read 3.78 Wild West Village: Not a Memoir—Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1
author: Lola Kirke
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty]]> 211953307 A moving culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head on.ÌýThen a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Tracing the defining moments of her life, from her colorful childhood in the restaurant business to the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef and that life-altering visit to Poland, the author recounts a tale of scarcity and plenty, stepping into the kitchen to connect her past to her future. Whether it's the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her Baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman's search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done?ÌýThisÌýmoving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.]]> 304 Bonny Reichert 0593599160 Sarah 0 to-read 4.15 2025 How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
author: Bonny Reichert
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Confidential: A Novel 207449811 The darkly comic tale of three generations of a Jewish family, from one of Poland’s most renowned contemporary authors



Confidential follows on the success of acclaimed photographer, psychologist, and writer Mikołaj Grynberg’s highly acclaimed short story collection, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To, which was a finalist for numerous awards, including Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award in Prose for Sean Gasper Bye’s excellent translation.


This powerful new novel is a darkly comic portrait of a Jewish family in today’s Poland, struggling to express their love for one another in the face of a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. The grandfather is a doctor, a Holocaust survivor who has now vowed to live only for pleasure. His son, born at the start of the war, becomes a well-respected physicist, but finds himself emotionally unable to attend the medical conferences in Germany, despite the benefit it would give his career. The mother is loving but firm, though she has a secret habit of attending strangers� funerals so that she can cry.


A masterpiece of concision, Confidential expands on one of the stories in I’d Like to Say SorryÌý.Ìý.Ìý. , tackling themes of memory and care, trauma and memory, as well as enduring anti-Semitism, with unforgettable power, emotional complexity, and Grynberg’s trademark black humor.]]> 164 MikoÅ‚aj Grynberg 1620978903 Sarah 0 to-read 3.83 2025 Confidential: A Novel
author: Mikołaj Grynberg
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Sarah 0 to-read 3.84 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Piglet 127282554 A New York Times Book Review Editors� Choice
A Belletrist Book Club Pick

An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all

Outside of a childhood nickname she ³¦²¹²Ô’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she ³¦²¹²Ô’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X Sarah 0 to-read 3.40 2024 Piglet
author: Lottie Hazell
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

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

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

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

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Sarah 0 to-read 4.59 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Sarah 0 to-read 4.23 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hebrew Teacher 131967980 320 Maya Arad 1954404239 Sarah 0 to-read 3.95 The Hebrew Teacher
author: Maya Arad
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Worry 176443441
It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls� mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 304 Alexandra Tanner 1668018616 Sarah 3 3.32 2024 Worry
author: Alexandra Tanner
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Such a Fun Age 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Sarah 4 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Magical Meet Cute 198264665 Is he the real deal…or did she truly summon a golem?

Faye Kaplan used to be engaged. She also used to have a successful legal practice. But she much prefers her new life as a potter in Woodstock, New York. The only thing missing is the perfect guy.

Not that she needs one. She’s definitely happy alone.

That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers after yet another failed singles event at the synagogue. Desperate for comfort, Faye drunkenly turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her—pottery. A golem protector is just what her town needs…and adding all the little details to make him her ideal man ³¦²¹²Ô’t hurt, right?

When a seriously hot stranger mysteriously turns up the next day, Greg seems too good to be true—if you ignore the fact that Faye hit him with her bike. And that he subsequently lost his memory�

But otherwise, the man checks Every. Single. Box. Causing Faye to wonder if Greg’s sudden and spicy appearance might be anything but a coincidence.]]> 400 Jean Meltzer 0778334414 Sarah 2 I am so confused 3.49 2024 Magical Meet Cute
author: Jean Meltzer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:
I am so confused
]]> Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]> 309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Sarah 3 First book of 2025! 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
First book of 2025!
]]> Twisted Love (Twisted, #1) 62057697
He has a heart of ice…but for her, he'd burn the world

A diverse new adult steamy romance from Tiktok sensation and USA Today bestselling author Ana Huang.

Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can't escape.

Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.

But when he's forced to look after his best friend's sister, he starts to feel something in his chest:

A crack.

A melt.

A fire that could end his world as he knew it.

***

Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can't remember.

But despite her broken past, she's never stopped seeing the beauty in the world...including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn't want.

Her brother's best friend.

Her neighbor.

Her savior and her downfall.

Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen-but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both...and everything they hold dear.

Twisted Love is a contemporary brother's best friend/grumpy sunshine romance. It's book one in the Twisted series but can be read as a standalone.]]> 343 Ana Huang 1728274869 Sarah 1 3.71 2021 Twisted Love (Twisted, #1)
author: Ana Huang
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
this was so bad but i bought a copy without knowing what it was and it's been on my shelf for way too long.
]]> Heartburn 225343
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. The fact that the other woman has "a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs" is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel writes cookbooks for a living. And in between trying to win Mark back and loudly wishing him dead, Ephron's irrepressible heroine offers some of her favorite recipes. "Heartburn" is a sinfully delicious novel, as soul-satisfying as mashed potatoes and as airy as a perfect soufflé.]]> 179 Nora Ephron Sarah 4 3.59 1983 Heartburn
author: Nora Ephron
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Rickshaw Boy 8016836 A beautiful new translation of beloved Chinese author Lao She's masterpiece of social realism, about the misadventures of a poor Beijing rickshaw driver

First published in China in 1937, Rickshaw Boy is the story of Xiangzi, an honest and serious country boy who works as a rickshaw puller in Beijing. A man of simple needs whose greatest ambition is to one day own his own rickshaw, Xiangzi is nonetheless thwarted, time and again, in his attempts to improve his lot in life.

One of the most important and popular works of twentieth-century Chinese literature, Rickshaw Boy is an unflinchingly honest, darkly comic look at a life on the margins of society and a searing indictment of the philosophy of individualism.]]> 300 Lao She 0061436925 Sarah 3 3.84 1936 Rickshaw Boy
author: Lao She
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1936
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: read-in-school, fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> All Other Nights 5294347 A gripping epic about the great moral struggles of the Civil War.

How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it is a question his commanders have already answered for him - on Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his assignment isn't to murder the spy but to marry her.

Based on real personalities such as Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's Jewish secretary of state and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a story of men and women driven to the limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.]]> 363 Dara Horn 0393064921 Sarah 0 to-read 3.74 2009 All Other Nights
author: Dara Horn
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eternal Life 40180023

But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren—consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering—develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.


Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive.]]> 256 Dara Horn 0393356566 Sarah 0 to-read 3.74 2018 Eternal Life
author: Dara Horn
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Funny Story 194803835 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441281 Sarah 0 to-read 4.19 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)]]> 38923599 192 Yenta Mash 0875807933 Sarah 0 4.50 2018 On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
author: Yenta Mash
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Acrobat 22515848 103 Celia Dropkin 1939678064 Sarah 5 4.52 2014 The Acrobat
author: Celia Dropkin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 151
«Nos capítulos iniciais de Anna Karénina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. Há efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelúdio Oblonski� (o acidente na estação ferroviária, a zombadora discussão sobre o divórcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O método de Tolstoi é polifónico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As técnicas musicais e linguísticas não podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderíamos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princípio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna Karénina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literária existe algo da Fénix imortal. Através das vidas perduráveis das suas personagens, a própria existência de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0143035002 Sarah 4 fall-2024-course-books 4.10 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> The Dybbuk 734085 148 S. Ansky 0871402629 Sarah 5 3.90 1914 The Dybbuk
author: S. Ansky
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1914
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Enemies: A Love Story 830884 280 Isaac Bashevis Singer 0374515220 Sarah 5 fall-2024-course-books Both in this book and in my life :|]]> 3.92 1966 Enemies: A Love Story
author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: fall-2024-course-books
review:
I have a lot to process
Both in this book and in my life :|
]]> The Familiar 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X Sarah 0 to-read 3.74 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme 2109727 Le Bourgeois gentilhomme est une comédie-ballet, en cinq actes en prose.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme nous raconte l'histoire comique d'un riche bourgeois qui essaye d'imiter la façon de vivre et le comportement des nobles.]]> 222 ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð 2266085808 Sarah 4 french, plays, read-in-school 3.67 1670 Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
author: ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1670
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/19
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: french, plays, read-in-school
review:

]]> Great Expectations 2705546
Young Pip lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith, with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his past - the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella - and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart.

A powerful and moving novel, Great Expectations is suffused with Dickens's memories of the past and its grip on the present, and it raises disturbing questions about the extent to which individuals affect each other's lives. This edition includes a lively introduction, Dickens's working notes, the novel's original ending, and an extract from an early theatrical adaptation. It reprints the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 482 Charles Dickens 0199219761 Sarah 4 3.82 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1861
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
Honestly so solid and enjoyable. I forgot how intense the third part is! High stakes!
]]> <![CDATA[The God Of Vengeance: Drama In Three Acts (1918)]]> 51089654 120 Sholem Asch 1437369189 Sarah 4 fall-2024-course-books 3.00 1907 The God Of Vengeance: Drama In Three Acts (1918)
author: Sholem Asch
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1907
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics)]]> 2518824 And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859�1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,� who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the “Railroad Stories,� twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.]]> 320 Sholom Aleichem 0805240268 Sarah 4 3.85 1894 Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics)
author: Sholom Aleichem
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1894
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> City of Laughter 128713487 A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years.

An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence,Ìý City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice. The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, the novel follows her back to her family’s origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire.

Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger—bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.

In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family’s mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mira, about whom no one speaks.

What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate,Ìý City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind.]]> 384 Temim Fruchter 0802161286 Sarah 0 to-read 3.75 2024 City of Laughter
author: Temim Fruchter
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Diary of a Lonely Girl, or The Battle against Free Love (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)]]> 45359178 di Varhayt in 1916-18, Diary of a Lonely Girl, or The Battle against Free Love is a novel of intimate feelings and scandalous behaviors, shot through with a dark humor. From the perch of a diarist writing in first person about her own love life, Miriam Karpilove's novel offers a snarky, melodramatic criticism of radical leftist immigrant youth culture in early twentieth-century New York City. Squeezed between men who use their freethinking ideals to pressure her to be sexually available and nosy landladies who require her to maintain her respectability, the narrator expresses frustration at her vulnerable circumstances with wry irreverence. The novel boldly explores issues of consent, body autonomy, women's empowerment and disempowerment around sexuality, courtship, and politics.

Karpilove immigrated to the United States from a small town near Minsk in 1905 and went on to become one of the most prolific and widely published women writers of prose in Yiddish. Kirzane's skillful translation gives English readers long-overdue access to Karpilove's original and provocative voice.]]> 344 Miriam Karpilove 0815611161 Sarah 5 3.78 Diary of a Lonely Girl, or The Battle against Free Love (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)
author: Miriam Karpilove
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Madame Bovary 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Sarah 4 fall-2024-course-books 3.70 1856 Madame Bovary
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories]]> 57475377
From the Jewish Provinces showcases a brilliant and nearly forgotten voice in Yiddish letters. An insistently original writer whose abrupt departure from the literary scene is the stuff of legend, Fradl Shtok composed stories that describe the travails of young women looking for love and desire in a world that spurns them. These women struggle with disability, sexual violence, and unwanted marriage, striving to imagine themselves as artists or losing themselves in fantasy worlds. The men around them grapple with their own frustrations and failures to live up to stifling social expectations. Through deft portraits of her characters� inner worlds Shtok grants us access to unnoticed corners of the Jewish imagination.
Ìý
Set alternately in the Austro‑Hungarian borderlands and in New York City, Shtok’s stories interpret the provincial worlds of the Galician shtetl and the Lower East Side with literary sophistication, experimenting with narrative techniques that make her stories expertly alive to women’s aesthetic experiences.]]> 144 Fradel Stock 0810144395 Sarah 4 4.09 From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories
author: Fradel Stock
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme]]> 169672
Lifshin continues, "These striking, original, beautifully sensuous poems do just that. Ordinary moments--a sunset, a walk, a private religious ritual--are so alive in poems like 'Shabbat moment'ÌýÌýand 'Rosh Hodesh.' In the same way that she celebrates ordinary moments, small things become charged with memories and feelings: paper snowflakes, buttons, one bird, a bottle-cap flower made from a ginger ale top and crystal beads.

"She celebrates the body in rollicking, gusto-filled poems like 'Belly good' and 'The chuppah,' where 'our bodies open their portals wide.' So much that is richly sensuous: 'hands that caressed you,ÌýÌý. . . untied the knot of pleasure and loosened your flesh till it fluttered,' and lush praise for 'life in our spines, our throats,ÌýÌýour knees, our genitals, our brains, our tongues.'

"I love the humor in poems like 'Eat fruit,' the nostalgia and joy in 'The rabbi's granddaughter and the Christmas tree,' the fresh, beautiful images of nature--'In winter . . .the sun hangs its wizened rosehip in the oaks.'

"I admire Piercy's sense of the past alive in the present, in personal and social history. The poems are memorials, like the yahrtzeit candle in a glass. 'We lose and we go on losing,' but the poems are never far from harsh joy, the joy that is 'the wine of life.'

"Growing up haunted by Holocaust ghosts is an echo throughout the book, and some of the strongest poems are about the Holocaust, poems that become the voices of those who had no voice: 'What youÌýÌýcarry in your blood is us,ÌýÌýthe books we did not write, music we could not make, a worldÌýÌýgone from gristle to smoke, onlyÌýÌýas real now as words can make it.'

"Marge Piercy's words make such a moving variety of experiences beautifully and forcefully real."]]> 192 Marge Piercy 0375704310 Sarah 0 to-read 4.33 1999 The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme
author: Marge Piercy
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Man from Buenos Aires 53410575 Shalom Aleichem Sarah 4 read-in-school 3.25 The Man from Buenos Aires
author: Shalom Aleichem
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.25
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: read-in-school
review:

]]> Old Man Goriot 4552782 Old Man Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.]]> 336 Honoré de Balzac 0140449728 Sarah 4 fall-2024-course-books 3.92 1835 Old Man Goriot
author: Honoré de Balzac
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1835
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Combray (À la recherche du temps perdu, #1)]]> 204698 72 Marcel Proust 2840552183 Sarah 4 french, read-in-school 3.78 1913 Combray (À la recherche du temps perdu, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/23
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: french, read-in-school
review:

]]> Great Expectations 13641547 9780141439563

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor � these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens’s haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his ‘great expectations�.

This definitive edition uses the text from the first published edition of 1861. It includes a map of Kent in the early nineteenth century, and appendices on Dickens’s original ending and his working notes, giving readers an illuminating glimpse into the mind of a great novelist at work.]]> 514 Charles Dickens Sarah 3 3.85 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1861
rating: 3
read at: 2022/03/09
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: classics, fall-2024-course-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Believers by Zoë Heller (30-Apr-2009) Paperback]]> 141442344 0 Zoë Heller Sarah 0 currently-reading 3.75 2008 The Believers by Zoë Heller (30-Apr-2009) Paperback
author: Zoë Heller
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Le Tour du monde en 80 jours 1452956 Le Tour du monde en 80 jours notamment, sont conçus comme des machines théâtrales. Tout y est calibré, ajusté pour tenir le lecteur en haleine, l'étonner, le distraire ou le prendre à contre-pied. On est en pleine esthétique romantique, celle de Dumas en particulier, avec qui Verne collabora un temps. Mais le Tour du monde c'est aussi l'avènement du monde industriel, le culte de la machine, de l'efficacité, le pointage horaire étendu à une échelle universelle. Culte porté jusqu'à l'outrance, avec un humour féroce, une ironie mordanteÌý: Verne n'est pas dupe. Et s'il agite ses personnages comme des marionnettes prises de frénésie, c'est pour, en sourdine, articuler un discours de révolteÌý: Philéas Fogg n'est pas si loin de Némo l'anarchiste, nouveau Faust moderne, et ce texte éblouissant cache bien des profondeurs. --Scarbo]]> 331 Jules Verne 2253012696 Sarah 4 french 3.81 1872 Le Tour du monde en 80 jours
author: Jules Verne
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1872
rating: 4
read at: 2018/01/01
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: french
review:

]]> For Esmé—with Love & Squalor 52266607 26 J.D. Salinger Sarah 0 to-read 4.13 1953 For Esmé—with Love & Squalor
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Either/Or 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 Sarah 5 on-my-shelf Comp lit major’s dream novel 4.01 2022 Either/Or
author: Elif Batuman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/03
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:
Comp lit major’s dream novel
]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent]]> 127280282 Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before by ordering internationally renowned actor Dame Judi Dench's SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent—a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved Shakespeare.

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...

Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...

Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.]]> 400 Judi Dench 1250325773 Sarah 0 to-read 4.51 2023 Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent
author: Judi Dench
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kissing Kosher 62325757
Avital Cohen isn’t wearing underpants—woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing.

She needs hired help.

And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems the perfect fit.

Except Ethan isn’t there to work—he’s undercover, at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spiceÌýbabka recipe.

As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief—and pleasure—she’s been missing.

But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies…even if coming clean means risking everything.
Ìý]]> 432 Jean Meltzer 0778334406 Sarah 4 3.77 2023 Kissing Kosher
author: Jean Meltzer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
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]]> Love, Theoretically 61326735
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?]]> 389 Ali Hazelwood 1408725797 Sarah 3 Enemies to lovers but in the sense that jack has caused an intellectual schism between experimental and theoretical physicists. Too much physics for my liking, but quite charming lmao]]> 4.07 2023 Love, Theoretically
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:
I ³¦²¹²Ô’t help but love rom coms
Enemies to lovers but in the sense that jack has caused an intellectual schism between experimental and theoretical physicists. Too much physics for my liking, but quite charming lmao
]]> People We Meet on Vacation 54985743 Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806750 Sarah 4 3.85 2021 People We Meet on Vacation
author: Emily Henry
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The World to Come 92644 336 Dara Horn 0393329062 Sarah 5 3.87 2006 The World to Come
author: Dara Horn
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Intermezzo 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 Sarah 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Idiot 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

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

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 Sarah 4 3.67 2017 The Idiot
author: Elif Batuman
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves:
review:
Reading this from the end of my freshman year of college into the summer was fated! What a lovely lovely book
]]> La place 399264 Paris-Normandie et se servait de son Opinel pour manger. Ouvrier devenu petit commerçant, il espérait que sa fille, grâce aux études, serait mieux que lui.
Cette fille, Annie Ernaux, refuse l'oubli des origines. Elle retrace la vie et la mort de celui qui avait conquis sa petite "place au soleil". Et dévoile aussi la distance, douloureuse, survenue entre elle, étudiante, et ce père aimé qui lui disait : "Les livres, la musique, c'est bon pour toi. Moi, je n'en ai pas besoin pour vivre."
Ce récit dépouillé possède une dimension universelle.]]> 114 Annie Ernaux 2070377229 Sarah 4 3.78 1983 La place
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/22
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement]]> 1408291 267 Assia Djebar 2253068217 Sarah 0 read-in-school, french 3.48 1980 Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement
author: Assia Djebar
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: read-in-school, french
review:

]]> Bedtime 2976700 12 Mary Gallagher Sarah 4 acting I scene 3.91 1997 Bedtime
author: Mary Gallagher
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:
acting I scene
]]> La Fille Aux Yeux D'Or 7542784 76 Honoré de Balzac 140995398X Sarah 4 3.21 1833 La Fille Aux Yeux D'Or
author: Honoré de Balzac
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.21
book published: 1833
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: classics, french, read-in-school
review:

]]> Our Missing Hearts 60149573 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture� in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 335 Celeste Ng 0593492544 Sarah 5 3.74 2022 Our Missing Hearts
author: Celeste Ng
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/11
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Measure for Measure 91571 Measure for Measure is among the most passionately discussed of Shakespeare’s plays. In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his administration, Angelo, to enforce the laws more rigorously. Angelo chooses as his first victim Claudio, condemning him to death because he impregnated Juliet before their marriage.

Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is entering a convent, pleads for her brother’s life. Angelo attempts to extort sex from her, but Isabella preserves her chastity. The duke, in disguise, eavesdrops as she tells her brother about Angelo’s behavior, then offers to ally himself with her against Angelo.]]> 278 William Shakespeare 0743484908 Sarah 0 to-read 3.66 1604 Measure for Measure
author: William Shakespeare
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1604
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen]]> 16091284 15 Tennessee Williams Sarah 0 4.21 1953 Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/27
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> La Princesse des Cleves 38328003 A Parigi, nel momento più fulgido della Renaissance francese, Mlle de Chartres � sposata al principe di Clèves � si innamora dell'affascinante duca di Nemours. Legata al marito da profonda stima e affetto, decide di confessargli i propri sentimenti. Narrato in una scena tra le più celebri della letteratura francese, questo gesto si rivela gravido di conseguenze per tutti i personaggi� Scritto da una dama della corte del Re Sole, colta e raffinata, amica di La Rochefoucauld e di Mme de Sévigné, e pubblicato anonimo nel 1678, La principessa di Clèves segna una tappa importante nella storia della narrativa occidentale. In nome della verosimiglianza della trama, della verità dei personaggi, dell'eleganza degli strumenti espressivi, La principessa di Clèves rompe con le inutili lungaggini del romanzo barocco, ed è considerato il primo romanzo psicologico. Con i dilemmi interiori della sua principessa, in bilico tra fosca inquietudine e penetrante lucidità, Mme de Lafayette ha affascinato lettori d'ogni epoca.�

]]> 250 Madame de La Fayette Sarah 0 3.46 1678 La Princesse des Cleves
author: Madame de La Fayette
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1678
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Night Owls 134039882
Clara loves rules. Rules are what have kept her and her sister, Molly, alive—or, rather, undead—for over a century. Work their historic movie theater by day. Shift into an owl under the cover of night. Feed on men in secret. And never fall in love.

Molly is in love. And she’s tired of keeping her girlfriend, Anat, a secret. If Clara won’t agree to bend their rules a little, then she will bend them herself.

Boaz is cursed. He ³¦²¹²Ô’t walk two city blocks without being cornered by something undead. At least at work at the theater, he gets to flirt with Clara, wishing she would like him back.

When Anat vanishes, and New York’s monstrous underworld emerges from the shadows, Clara suspects Boaz, their annoyingly cute box office attendant, might be behind it all.

But if they are to find Anat, they will need to work together to face demons and the hungers they would sooner bury. Clara will have to break all her rules—of love, of life, and of death itself—before her rules break everyone she loves.

In this standalone debut, A. R. Vishny interweaves mystery, romance, and lore to create an unputdownable story about those who have kept to the shadows for far too long.]]> A.R. Vishny Sarah 0 to-read 4.32 2024 Night Owls
author: A.R. Vishny
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Le Cid 1228439 188 Pierre Corneille 2035831989 Sarah 4 3.61 1636 Le Cid
author: Pierre Corneille
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1636
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/02
date added: 2024/02/02
shelves: french, plays, classics, read-in-school
review:

]]> The Fury 123206645 A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder � from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time � it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder.

We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse � a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered.

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X Sarah 0 to-read 3.34 2024 The Fury
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions]]> 33585392 From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions--compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive--for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.]]> 63 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Sarah 5 to-read 4.51 2017 Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Les Cahiers d'Esther : Histoires de mes 17 ans (Tome 8)]]> 140310382
Toujours accompagnée de son amie d'enfance, Cassandre, sa queen, d'Eva qui organise des grosses teufs sans le dire à ses darons ; et de Léa, en couple avec un dealer (mais " sensible " dans le fond en fait), elle survit au lycée Royal.

C'est alors que Poutine, le dictateur chauve, attaque l'Ukraine, et c'est la guerre. Et si ça nous arrivait ici en France aussi ?]]> 54 Riad Sattouf 2370734671 Sarah 4 4.41 2023 Les Cahiers d'Esther : Histoires de mes 17 ans (Tome 8)
author: Riad Sattouf
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/15
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt]]> 461869 A hilarious and provocative collection of original essays by some of today’s top Jewish women writers—including Aimee Bender, Daphne Merkin, and Rebecca Walker—exploring all the things that their rabbis warned them never to discuss in public.

Have you ever heard a grandmother’s biological clock tick? Are you certain that a piano is about to fall on your head, simply because too many good things have happened to you lately? Would your own mother out you as a lesbian at her Yiddish club? The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt is a laugh-out-loud funny pull-no-punches collection of original essays on topics that aren’t usually talked about—much like the recent bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House.

o Molly Jong-Fast, author of Normal Girl and daughter of Erica Jong, writes about displeasing her therapist in “Tell Me About Your Mother.�
o Tova Mirvis, author of the bestselling novel The Ladies Auxiliary, writes about the pressure to be perfect in “What Will They Think?�
o Lori Gottlieb, author of the bestselling memoir Stick Figure, writes about trying to outwit her mother using caller ID in “Conversations with My Mother.�

Also includes pieces by: Jennifer Bleyer · Pearl Gluck · Rebecca Goldstein · Lauren Grodstein · Dara Horn · Rachel Kadish · Cynthia Kaplan · Binnie Kirschenbaum · Ellen Miller · Katie Rophie · Laurie Gwen Shapiro · Susan Shapiro · Ayelet Waldman, and many more.

]]> 320 Ruth Andrew Ellenson 0525948848 Sarah 5 3.70 2005 The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt
author: Ruth Andrew Ellenson
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir]]> 22929524 The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick's exchange of more than twenty years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has "shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy" she has known. The exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator's continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful. In Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees.

Written as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, The Odd Woman and the City beautifully bookends Gornick's acclaimed Fierce Attachments, in which we first encountered her rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis.]]> 192 Vivian Gornick 0374298602 Sarah 0 to-read 3.90 2015 The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir
author: Vivian Gornick
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/11
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Sarah 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Le Malade imaginaire 857213 Le Malade imaginaire est la dernière comédie et en même temps la dernière pièce écrite par ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð. Il s'agit d'une comédie-ballet en trois actes.

Dans la satire outrageante de ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð sur la médecine et ses praticiens on peut dire que le riche Argan “jouitâ€� d'une mauvaise santé. Les laxatifs, suppositoires, saignées, et les opinions deuxième et troisième des charlatans éminents sont à l'ordre du jour et l’enfer de Toinette, sa servante qui ose lui contredire. Sa fille Angélique est amoureuse de Cléante, mais Argan veut la marier à Thomas Diafoirus, un médecin qui ne vaut rien, qui peut assurer à son beau-père des soins de santé pour la durée de sa vie. Cléante se déguise en professeur de musique pour pouvoir voir son amour, mais Béline, la deuxième épouse d’Argan, menace de les dénoncer. Une Toinette déguisée, des sages conseils de son frère Béralde, et une scène de mort truquée, vont enfin montrer à Argan qui il peut faire confiance.]]> 255 ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð 2038716668 Sarah 5 3.63 1670 Le Malade imaginaire
author: ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1670
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> Stone Blind 61102615 A fresh take on the story of Medusa, the original monstered woman.

They will fear you and flee you and call you a monster.

The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.

When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene's temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge--on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon's actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude.

Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon...

In Stone Blind, classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes turns our understanding of this legendary myth on its head, bringing empathy and nuance to one of the earliest stories in which a woman--injured by a powerful man--is blamed, punished, and monstered for the assault. Delving into the origins of this mythic tale, Haynes revitalizes and reconstructs Medusa's story with her passion and fierce wit, offering a timely retelling of this classic myth that speaks to us today.]]> 373 Natalie Haynes 0063258390 Sarah 0 to-read 3.79 2022 Stone Blind
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> Weyward 60654349 I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 329 Emilia Hart 125028080X Sarah 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Weyward
author: Emilia Hart
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> In the Dream House 43317482 251 Carmen Maria Machado 1644450038 Sarah 0 to-read 4.41 2019 In the Dream House
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept]]> 48987 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is an enigmatic and nearly indescribable book, a small classic of poetic prose whose author has been compared with Anaïs Nin and Djuna Barnes. In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife; the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.]]> 240 Elizabeth Smart 0679738045 Sarah 0 to-read 3.54 1945 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
author: Elizabeth Smart
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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]]> Another Brooklyn 27213163
But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.]]> 192 Jacqueline Woodson 0062359983 Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 2016 Another Brooklyn
author: Jacqueline Woodson
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> Mayflies 50162215 From the widely renowned author Andrew O'Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.

Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.

In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.

Mayflies is a memorial to youth's euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.]]> 288 Andrew O'Hagan 0571273688 Sarah 0 to-read 3.91 2020 Mayflies
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Alone With You in the Ether 61126612
Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.

For Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.

To Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse.

For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?

From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.]]> 288 Olivie Blake 1250888166 Sarah 0 to-read 3.69 2020 Alone With You in the Ether
author: Olivie Blake
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> Sula 6551707 From the acclaimed Nobel Prize Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.]]> 196 Toni Morrison Sarah 0 to-read 4.13 1973 Sula
author: Toni Morrison
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion]]> 43126457 Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.]]> 303 Jia Tolentino 0525510540 Sarah 5 on-my-shelf 4.04 2019 Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
author: Jia Tolentino
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

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

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

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

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

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Sarah 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They ³¦²¹²Ô’t stand to break their friendsâ€� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one weekâ€� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Sarah 0 to-read 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> A Perfect Vintage 123255927
Lea Mortimer has everything under control. As a highly sought-after consultant specializing in transforming dilapidated French country estates into boutique hotels, she relishes her freedom as a single, childfree woman. And her life is full, occupied as much by her impeccable historic renovations as by the aristocratic -- and often exhausting -- French families she works for.

But after the heated divorce of her closest friend and cousin Stephanie Bryce, Lea finds herself taking Stephanie and her college-aged daughter to the Loire Valley in France for the summer. As they tag along for Lea's latest work assignment, despite their best intentions, they threaten to complicate the tightrope act of launching the hotel on time. And when Lea unexpectedly falls for the much-younger son of her boss, she quickly learns the beauty and danger of losing control.

As affairs bloom in the idyllic chateau, wars of inheritance play out between the family, and betrayals threaten even the most solid relationships. Lea realizes that it's not just a broken heart she's risking, but her entire, meticulously-constructed life blowing up in her face.]]> 382 Chelsea Fagan 1662938624 Sarah 0 to-read 3.44 2023 A Perfect Vintage
author: Chelsea Fagan
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)]]> 60092579 Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance from the author of the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet.

Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.

When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

Then Noah starts to see a different side of Rae Rose—she's Amelia: kindhearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye. He can't help but get close to her. Soon she'll have to return to her glamorous life on tour, but until then, Noah will show Amelia all the charming small-town experiences she's been missing, and she'll help him open his heart to more.

Amelia can't resist falling for the cozy town and her grumpy tour guide, but even Audrey had to leave Rome eventually.]]> 320 Sarah Adams 0593500784 Sarah 0 to-read 3.88 2022 When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)
author: Sarah Adams
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> Betting on You 60197314
Now, Bailey and Charlie are still polar opposites, but instead of everything about him rubbing Bailey the wrong way, she starts to look forward to hanging out and gossiping about the waterpark guests and their coworkers—particularly two who keep flirting with each other. Bailey and Charlie make a bet on whether or not the cozy pair will actually get together. Charlie insists that members of the opposite sex ³¦²¹²Ô’t just be friends, and Bailey is determined to prove him wrong.

Bailey and Charlie keep close track of the romantic progress of others while Charlie works to deflect the growing feelings he’s developed for Bailey. Terrified to lose her if his crush becomes known, what doesn’t help his agenda is Bailey and Charlie “fake dating� in order to disrupt the annoying pleasantries between Bailey’s mom and her mom’s new boyfriend. Soon, what Charlie was hoping to avoid becomes a reality as Bailey starts to see him as not only a friend she can rely on in the midst of family drama—but someone who makes her hands shake and heart race. But Charlie has a secret—a secret that involves Bailey and another bet Charlie may have made. Can the two make a real go of things…or has Charlie’s secret doomed them before they could start?]]> 432 Lynn Painter 1665921234 Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 2023 Betting on You
author: Lynn Painter
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin�-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,â€� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ³¦²¹²Ô’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Sarah 0 to-read 4.29 2023 Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> Pineapple Street 61246258
Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.]]> 304 Jenny Jackson 059349069X Sarah 0 to-read 3.49 2023 Pineapple Street
author: Jenny Jackson
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]> In Memoriam 59948520 A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war.

It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.

Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood--without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.

An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.]]> 382 Alice Winn 0593534565 Sarah 0 to-read 4.51 2023 In Memoriam
author: Alice Winn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/27
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]]>