Lisa's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 16 Mar 2025 22:08:48 -0700 60 Lisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Bewilderment 56404444 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain�

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?]]> 278 Richard Powers 0393881148 Lisa 0 to-read 3.87 2021 Bewilderment
author: Richard Powers
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Young Mungo 58891551
As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.]]> 390 Douglas Stuart 0802159559 Lisa 0 to-read 4.38 2022 Young Mungo
author: Douglas Stuart
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Novel]]> 204260280 A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter—the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.

1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.

1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing that her skin was lighter, that her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music was quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.

Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.]]> 334 Ayelet Tsabari 0812989023 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.40 2024 Songs for the Brokenhearted: A Novel
author: Ayelet Tsabari
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> How to Say Babylon: A Memoir 73666310 With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.]]> 349 Safiya Sinclair 1982132353 Lisa 5 4.50 2023 How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Breaks 764239 446 Richard Price 0140070370 Lisa 0 to-read 3.23 1983 The Breaks
author: Richard Price
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.23
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art]]> 27876332 Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists—Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon—whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights. Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary—one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde.Jackson Pollock’s uninhibited style of “action painting� triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock’s sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock's mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend’s mistress.Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain’s most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen. Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one’s own as an artist—finding one’s voice—almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate’s expectations of who you are or ought to be.Praise forThe Art of Rivalry“Gripping . . . Mr. Smee’s skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . .You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.�—The New York Times“With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority.�—The Boston Globe]]> 385 Sebastian Smee 0812994817 Lisa 0 3.91 2016 The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art
author: Sebastian Smee
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2020/05/27
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> The Latecomer 57693566 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

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

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.]]> 439 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250790794 Lisa 4 3.93 2022 The Latecomer
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Night Watch 125085756
"A tour de force." —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.

Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.]]> 306 Jayne Anne Phillips 0451493346 Lisa 3 4.15 2023 Night Watch
author: Jayne Anne Phillips
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 85148114
As these characters� stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.]]> 400 James McBride 0593422961 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.25 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Absolution 137223946
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets� to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good� for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering as they do how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands� convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from one of our most observant, most affecting writers—about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.]]> 369 Alice McDermott Lisa 4 4.02 2023 Absolution
author: Alice McDermott
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Last Anniversary 36589761 Sophie Honeywell always wondered if Thomas Gordon was the one she let get away. He was the perfect boyfriend, but on the day he was to propose, she broke his heart. A year later he married his travel agent, while Sophie has been mortifyingly single ever since. Now Thomas is back in her life because Sophie has unexpectedly inherited his aunt Connie's house on Scribbly Gum Island -- home of the famously unsolved MunroBabymystery.

Sophie moves onto the island and begins a new life as part of an unconventional family where it seems everyone has a secret. Grace, a beautiful young mother, is feverishly planning a shocking escape from her perfect life. Margie, a frumpy housewife, has made a pact with a stranger, while dreamy Aunt Rose wonders if maybe it's about time she started making her own decisions.

As Sophie's life becomes increasingly complicated, she discovers that sometimes you have to stop waiting around -- and come up with your own fairy-tale ending.

As she so adroitly did in her smashing debut novel, Three Wishes, the incomparable Liane Moriarty once again combines sharp wit, lovable and eccentric characters, and a page-turning story for an unforgettable Last Anniversary.

]]> 402 Liane Moriarty Lisa 2 4.02 2006 The Last Anniversary
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2019/09/01
date added: 2023/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Enemy Women 40387785
The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women's prison. But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

Now an escaped "enemy woman," Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise...seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.]]> 336 Paulette Jiles Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.07 2002 Enemy Women
author: Paulette Jiles
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Florida 36647045
The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive. Startling, precise, and affecting, Florida is a magnificent achievement.]]> 287 Lauren Groff 0698405145 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.83 2018 Florida
author: Lauren Groff
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Riverman: An American Odyssey 60753382 “This quietly profound book belongs on the shelf next to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.� —The New York TimesThe riveting true story of Dick Conant, an American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, canoed solo thousands of miles of American rivers—and then disappeared near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This book “contains adventure, mystery, travelogue, and unforgettable characters� (David Grann, best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting. Ben McGrath, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was one of those people. In 2014 he met Conant by chance just north of New York City as Conant paddled down the Hudson, headed for Florida. McGrath wrote a widely read article about their encounter, and when Conant's canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body, McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched--to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence.Riverman is a moving portrait of a complex and fascinating man who was as troubled as he was charismatic, who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt, and was ultimately unable to fashion a stable life for himself; who traveled alone and yet thrived on connection and brought countless people together in his wake. It is also a portrait of an America we rarely a nation of unconventional characters, small river towns, and long-forgotten waterways.]]> 269 Ben McGrath 0451494016 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.11 2022 Riverman: An American Odyssey
author: Ben McGrath
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Cloud Cuckoo Land 56786980 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B08TRMSR3Z

In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.

In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.

And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father.

Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.]]> 630 Anthony Doerr Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.36 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Crying in H Mart 55577549
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band � and meeting the man who would become her husband � her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

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

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.23 2021 Crying in H Mart
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Booth 57822543 From the Man Booker finalist and bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth.

In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next 16 years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor and master of the house in all ways—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

As the children grow and the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and disasters begin to take their toll. A startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of brother- and sisterhood, Booth is a riveting historical novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.]]> 480 Karen Joy Fowler 0593331443 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.08 2022 Booth
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> French Braid 57329182
The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understands. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close—yet how unknowable—every family is to itself.]]> 245 Anne Tyler 0593321103 Lisa 4 3.87 2022 French Braid
author: Anne Tyler
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/11
date added: 2022/04/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Round House 37767425
One of the most revered novelists of our time - a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life - Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction - at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.]]> 368 Louise Erdrich Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.24 2012 The Round House
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century]]> 56822253 "This book has a miraculous quality.... As a memoir this is hard to put down; if you are seeking a better American future you should pick it up."--Timothy Snyder, New York Times best-selling author of On Tyranny

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia--and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern "There is nothing for you here, pet," he said.

The coal-miner's daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink--and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia's fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.

"Of every book written by anybody associated with the Trump administration, in any way, [this] is absolutely the one to read."--Rachel Maddow

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year]]> 437 Fiona Hill 0358574242 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.22 2021 There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
author: Fiona Hill
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Stationery Shop 59045705 A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea—extolled by the Wall Street Journal as a “moving tale of lost love� and by Shelf Awareness as “a powerful, heartbreaking story”—explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.

Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.

Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?]]> 337 Marjan Kamali Lisa 0 4.28 2019 The Stationery Shop
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/24
date added: 2022/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Never Simple 59112557 Liz Scheier’s darkly funny and touching memoir—with shades of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace—of growing up in �90s Manhattan with a brilliant, mendacious single mother

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things: one, she had been married for most of Scheier’s life to a man she’d never heard of, and two, the man she’d told Scheier was her father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up. Those two big lies were the start, but not the end; it took dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a farcical, half-true life for the two of them, from fake social security number to fabricated husband.

One hot July day twenty years later, Scheier receives a voicemail from Adult Protective Services, reporting that Judith has stopped paying rent and is refusing all offers of assistance. That call is the start of a shocking journey that takes the Scheiers, mother and daughter, deep into the cascading effects of decades of lies and deception.

Never Simple is the story of learning to survive—and, finally, trying to save—a complicated parent, as feared as she is loved, and as self-destructive as she is adoring.]]> 280 Liz Scheier 1250823129 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.01 2022 Never Simple
author: Liz Scheier
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Little Fires Everywhere 59019972
Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

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

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

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

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more. ]]> 347 Celeste Ng Lisa 0 4.21 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2021/11/21
date added: 2022/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Station Eleven 59000287 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band's existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 352 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353316 Lisa 4 4.23 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/10
date added: 2022/03/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Henry VI: Parts I, II, and III (Modern Library Classics)]]> 19165748

From the Paperback edition.]]> 779 William Shakespeare Lisa 0 3.90 1623 Henry VI: Parts I, II, and III (Modern Library Classics)
author: William Shakespeare
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1623
rating: 0
read at: 2022/03/08
date added: 2022/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Henry VI Part 1 (Folger Shakespeare Library)]]> 23472070 Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play Scene-by-scene plot summaries A key to famous lines and phrases An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books
Essay by Phyllis Rackin

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit .]]> 160 William Shakespeare Lisa 0 3.63 1592 Henry VI Part 1 (Folger Shakespeare Library)
author: William Shakespeare
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1592
rating: 0
read at: 2022/03/05
date added: 2022/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox]]> 59043504
In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.]]> 290 Maggie O'Farrell Lisa 0 4.02 2006 The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/19
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Midnight Library 53568397
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559485 Lisa 0 4.16 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/05
date added: 2022/02/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Firekeeper's Daughter 50762972
After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. How far will she go to protect her community if it means tearing apart the only world she’s ever known?]]> 496 Angeline Boulley Lisa 4 4.40 2021 Firekeeper's Daughter
author: Angeline Boulley
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/21
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 53595348
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 456 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230264 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.60 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Dictionary of Lost Words 54790816 In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.

Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.]]> 400 Pip Williams 1984820737 Lisa 4 4.18 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words
author: Pip Williams
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/16
date added: 2021/11/16
shelves:
review:

]]> The Weight of Ink 40776163 An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers ofA. S. Byatt’s Possession and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book.

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, anemigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.

As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents� scribe, the elusive“Aleph.”�

Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticatedwork of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must makein orderreconcile the life of the heart and mind.]]> 704 Rachel Kadish Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.12 2017 The Weight of Ink
author: Rachel Kadish
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times]]> 25753803

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.


Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.


Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own fabric.
]]> 338 Elizabeth Wayland Barber 0393285588 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.37 1994 Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Klara and the Sun 54250259 A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!

A magnificent new novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro—author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 418 Kazuo Ishiguro Lisa 4 3.99 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/10/08
date added: 2021/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> What is the What 6622843 New York Times Notable Book
New York Times Bestseller

What Is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.




From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 560 Dave Eggers 0307390365 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.23 2006 What is the What
author: Dave Eggers
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Summer at the Golden Hotel]]> 56600650
In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families � best friends and business partners � have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be � and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds. As the facilities and management begin to fall apart, a tempting offer to sell forces the two families together again to make a heart-wrenching decision. Can they save their beloved Golden or is it too late?

Long-buried secrets emerge, new dramas and financial scandal erupt, and everyone from the traditional grandparents to the millennial grandchildren wants a say in the hotel’s future. Business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story, where the hotel owners rediscover the magic of a bygone era of nonstop fun even as they grapple with what may be their last resort.]]> 384 Elyssa Friedland 0593199731 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.95 2021 Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
author: Elyssa Friedland
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Shuggie Bain 48589362
A stunning debut novel by a masterful writer telling the heartwrenching story of a young boy and his alcoholic mother, whose love is only matched by her pride.

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie� Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward she is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good—her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits—all the family has to live on—on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes’s older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,� a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her—even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.]]> 384 Douglas Stuart Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.25 2020 Shuggie Bain
author: Douglas Stuart
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Pull of the Stars 55572527 An alternative cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and ROOM.

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.]]> 305 Emma Donoghue Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.08 2020 The Pull of the Stars
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Monogamy 53507736 A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller.

Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. A golden couple, their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances.

Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites—curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love.

When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him?

Then, while she is still mourning him intensely, she discovers that Graham had been unfaithful to her; and she spirals into darkness, wondering if she ever truly knew the man who loved her.]]> 352 Sue Miller 0062969676 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.77 2020 Monogamy
author: Sue Miller
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Out Stealing Horses 20696580 We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.

 Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning was different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed� horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys.

Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.
]]> 274 Per Petterson 1555970702 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.97 2003 Out Stealing Horses
author: Per Petterson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury]]> 41065491
New York, 1921: Alfred Stieglitz, the most influential figure in early twentieth-century photography, celebrates the success of his latest exhibition—the centerpiece, a series of nude portraits of the young Georgia O’Keeffe, soon to be his wife. It is a turning point for O’Keeffe, poised to make her entrance into the art scene—and for Rebecca Salsbury, the fiancée of Stieglitz’s protégé at the time, Paul Strand. When Strand introduces Salsbury to Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, it is the first moment of a bond between the two couples that will last more than a decade and reverberate throughout their lives. In the years that followed, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz became the preeminent couple in American modern art, spurring each other’s creativity. Observing their relationship led Salsbury to encourage new artistic possibilities for Strand and to rethink her own potential as an artist. In fact, it was Salsbury, the least known of the four, who was the main thread that wove the two couples� lives together. Carolyn Burke mines the correspondence of the foursome to reveal how each inspired, provoked, and unsettled the others while pursuing seminal modes of artistic innovation. The result is a surprising, illuminating portrait of four extraordinary figures.]]> 525 Carolyn Burke Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.87 2019 Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury
author: Carolyn Burke
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> NOON AT TIFFANY'S 19385092 379 Echo Heron 1938439481 Lisa 3
For a similar, but very different book about this fascinating woman, and for lovers of her work, one should also read Vreeland's "Clara and Mr. Tiffany". It's another take on the whole story. It's interesting to see what two authors can do using the same materials. I think Vreeland does a better job of character development of many of the supporting characters, including the New York City of the gilded age, and the artistic process of creating the stained glass. Heron, on the other hand, gives us more of the actual round robins.

Together, the books have set me off on a journey to learn more of this story. Post pandemic, I"m looking forward to rising the New York Historical Society to see their collection of Tiffany lamps. I may also get to Winter Park, FL (Morse Museum) and Cleveland.


Each book has its flaws, ]]> 4.50 2012 NOON AT TIFFANY'S
author: Echo Heron
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/11
date added: 2021/03/11
shelves:
review:
I understand that the italicized letters from Clara and her family were taken verbatim from the round robins sent between them. Correct? I wish the author/publisher had used a different font for the other, author-written diary entries of LCTiffany, and others. I kept needing to remind myself of this as I read them. They gave undeserved weight to Heron's inference regarding Tiffany's actions and motivations.

For a similar, but very different book about this fascinating woman, and for lovers of her work, one should also read Vreeland's "Clara and Mr. Tiffany". It's another take on the whole story. It's interesting to see what two authors can do using the same materials. I think Vreeland does a better job of character development of many of the supporting characters, including the New York City of the gilded age, and the artistic process of creating the stained glass. Heron, on the other hand, gives us more of the actual round robins.

Together, the books have set me off on a journey to learn more of this story. Post pandemic, I"m looking forward to rising the New York Historical Society to see their collection of Tiffany lamps. I may also get to Winter Park, FL (Morse Museum) and Cleveland.


Each book has its flaws,
]]> <![CDATA[The Private Lives of the Impressionists]]> 8296488
“Anyone who has ever lost themselves in Monet’s color-saturated gardens or swooned over Degas’s dancers will enjoy this revealing group portrait of the artists who founded the Impressionist movement. . . . For the armchair dilettante, as well as the art-history student, this is lively, required reading.”—People

The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt.

Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for their paintings. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people?

Sue Roe's colorful, lively, poignant, and superbly researched biography, The Private Lives of the Impressionists, follows an extraordinary group of artists into their Paris studios, down the rural lanes of Montmartre, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental change. Vivid and unforgettable, it casts a brilliant, revealing light on this unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty years and transformed the art world forever with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life.]]> 370 Sue Roe 0061978965 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.09 2006 The Private Lives of the Impressionists
author: Sue Roe
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Breakfast with Buddha 36467627
Listening Length: 9 hours and 34 minutes]]> 353 Roland Merullo Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.18 2007 Breakfast with Buddha
author: Roland Merullo
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Vanishing Half 52195151 From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.]]> 350 Brit Bennett Lisa 0
Did anyone else question the premise of Mallard? The idea of such town was intriguing. It wasn't until I was halfway through the book that I began to think about a small town where everyone was a lightskinned black person. Who did the citizens marry? It didn't seem like most of its inhabitants traveled much. Where did they meet outsiders who matched their criterion and wanted to live in a very small town? Or did they intermarry? That didn't seem to be the case. I suspended belief because the initial story was interesting, but after a while it just didn't real. Just like most of the "white" people didn't seem real. ]]> 4.25 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/20
date added: 2021/02/20
shelves:
review:
I really liked the first part of this book, reading about Mallard, the twins, and their escape to New Orleans. I liked it less, the further it got from Mallard and Desiree. Stella and Kennedy did not feel as authentic--they felt like caricatures (cold white bitch, spoiled rich girl) with a dose of self-questioning thrown in. I liked the relationship between Jade and Reese, and the idea of "crossing" in a different way.

Did anyone else question the premise of Mallard? The idea of such town was intriguing. It wasn't until I was halfway through the book that I began to think about a small town where everyone was a lightskinned black person. Who did the citizens marry? It didn't seem like most of its inhabitants traveled much. Where did they meet outsiders who matched their criterion and wanted to live in a very small town? Or did they intermarry? That didn't seem to be the case. I suspended belief because the initial story was interesting, but after a while it just didn't real. Just like most of the "white" people didn't seem real.
]]> The Snow Child 33597976 423 Eowyn Ivey Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.10 2012 The Snow Child
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Hamnet 49856101 A thrilling departure: A short, piercing, deeply moving new novel from the acclaimed author of I Am, I Am, I Am, about the death of Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in fifteenth-century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play.

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

A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.]]> 310 Maggie O'Farrell Lisa 5 4.32 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/29
date added: 2020/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Spectator Bird 6571856 From the “dean of Western writers� (The New York Times) and the Pulitzer Prize winning–author of Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety, his National Book Award–winning novel A Penguin Classic Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birth­place where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.]]> 226 Wallace Stegner 1101042591 Lisa 0 4.29 1976 The Spectator Bird
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2020/12/17
date added: 2020/12/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Americanah 18209268 588 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Lisa 0 to-read 4.31 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Redhead by the Side of the Road]]> 52404180 From the beloved and best-selling Anne Tyler, a sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.

Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever. An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.]]> 192 Anne Tyler Lisa 3 3.83 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road
author: Anne Tyler
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/08
date added: 2020/08/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Water Dancer 43996589 A boldly imagined work of magic and adventure from the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me .

Every plantation is a house of spies and intrigue, engineered to hide a fundamental reality: that it is built on slavery and built by the enslaved, its true geniuses and laborers stashed away in basements and fields, sleeping under beds and entering drawing rooms from passageways hidden behind sliding walls, their faces masks of compliance, their hearts beating with betrayal and insurrection. But against whom?

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage—and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child—but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, all Hiram wants is to return to the Walker Plantation to free the family he left behind—but to do so, he must first master his magical gift and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss.

This is a bracingly original vision of the world of slavery, written with the narrative force of a great adventure. Driven by the author's bold imagination and striking ability to bring readers deep into the interior lives of his brilliantly rendered characters, The Water Dancer is the story of America's oldest struggle—the struggle to tell the truth--from one of our most exciting thinkers and beautiful writers.]]> 416 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0399590609 Lisa 4 4.27 2019 The Water Dancer
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/30
date added: 2020/06/30
shelves:
review:

]]> City of Girls 42140794 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things, comes a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person.

“Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are.�

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves—and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.

Now ninety-five years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life—and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. “At some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time,� she muses. “After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is.�

Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.]]> 391 Elizabeth Gilbert 0698408322 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.19 2019 City of Girls
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> America's First Daughter 36425455
From her earliest days, Patsy Jefferson knows that though her father loves his family dearly, his devotion to his country runs deeper still. As Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, she becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother’s death, traveling with him when he becomes American minister to France.

It is in Paris, at the glittering court and among the first tumultuous days of revolution, that fifteen-year-old Patsy learns about her father’s troubling liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age. Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love—with her father’s protégé William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Torn between love, principles, and the bonds of family, Patsy questions whether she can choose a life as William’s wife and still be a devoted daughter.

Her choice will follow her in the years to come, to Virginia farmland, Monticello, and even the White House. And as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family, Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father's reputation, in the process defining not just his political legacy, but that of the nation he founded.]]> 624 Stephanie Dray Lisa 0 4.39 2016 America's First Daughter
author: Stephanie Dray
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2020/05/25
date added: 2020/05/27
shelves:
review:

]]> A Moveable Feast 19872782 298 Don George Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.93 2010 A Moveable Feast
author: Don George
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/05/23
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Overdue Life of Amy Byler 42399951 An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller, and a ŷ Choice Award finalist.

“A laugh-out-loud funny, pitch-perfect novel that will have readers rooting for this unlikely, relatable, and totally lovable heroine, The Overdue Life of Amy Byler is the ultimate escape—and will leave moms everywhere questioning whether it isn’t time for a #momspringa of their own.� —New York Journal of Books

Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.

Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.

But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.]]> 328 Kelly Harms 1542090571 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.88 2019 The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
author: Kelly Harms
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child]]> 44004373 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Velazquez Laura Cumming shares the riveting story of her mother’s mysterious kidnapping as a toddler in a small English coastal village—and how that event reverberated through her own family and her art for decades.

In the fall of 1929, when Laura Cumming’s mother was three years old, she was kidnapped from a beach on the Lincolnshire coast of England. There were no screams when she was taken, suggesting the culprit was someone familiar to her, and when she turned up again in a nearby village several days later, she was found in perfect health and happiness. No one was ever accused of a crime. The incident quickly faded from her memory, and her parents never discussed it. To the contrary, they deliberately hid it from her, and she did not learn of it for half a century.

This was not the only secret her parents kept from her. For many years, while raising her in draconian isolation and protectiveness, they also hid the fact that she’d been adopted, and that shortly after the kidnapping, her name was changed from Grace to Betty.

In Five Days Gone, Laura Cumming brilliantly unspools the tale of her mother’s life and unravels the multiple mysteries at its core. Using photographs from the time, historical documents, and works of art, Cumming investigates this case of stolen identity with the toolset of a detective and the unique intimacy of a daughter trying to understand her family’s past and its legacies. Compulsive, vivid, and profoundly touching, Five Days Gone is a masterful blend of memoir and history, an extraordinary personal narrative unlike any other.]]> 320 Laura Cumming Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.42 2019 Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child
author: Laura Cumming
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir]]> 42934122 An acclaimed documentary filmmaker comes to terms with her larger-than-life father, the late New York Times journalist David Carr, in this fierce memoir of addiction and sobriety, work and family.

Dad: What will set you apart is not talent but will and a certain kind of humility. A willingness to let the world show you things that you play back as you grow as an artist. Talent is cheap.
Me: OK I will ponder these things. I am a Carr.
Dad: That should matter quite a bit, actually not the name but the guts of what that name means.

A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence�1,936 items in total—in search of comfort and support.

What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father’s writings contain the answers to the question of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her but to the many who served alongside him?

All That You Leave Behind is a poignant coming-of-age story that offers a raw and honest glimpse into the multilayered relationship between a daughter and a father. Through this lens, Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, and relationship fails. While daughter and father bond over their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, it is their powerful sense of work and family that comes to ultimately define them.

This unique combination of Erin Lee Carr’s earnest prose and her father’s meaningful words offers a compelling read that shows us what it means to be vulnerable and lost, supported and found. It is a window into love, with all of its fierceness and frustrations.

Advance praise for All That You Leave Behind

“Erin Lee Carr’s father, David, was an inimitable force in American journalism and a complex, boundlessly fascinating figure in her life. But what we learn inAll That You Leave Behindis that Erin is just as much of an original as the man who raised her, and her sharp but tender-hearted debut memoir is perfect evidence of that. This book is wonderful.�—Lena Dunham]]> 244 Erin Lee Carr 0399178988 Lisa 3 4.05 2019 All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir
author: Erin Lee Carr
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2020/04/24
date added: 2020/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> The Liars' Club 17159333 344 Mary Karr 1101650737 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.96 1995 The Liars' Club
author: Mary Karr
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Moon Tiger 12298392 “A powerful, moving and beautifully wrought novel about the ways in which lives are molded by personal memory and the collective past.� —The Boston GlobeWinner of the Man Booker PrizeElderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she’s carrying out her last a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt. Always the independent woman, often with contentious relationships, Claudia’s personal history is complex and fascinating. As people visit Claudia, they shake and twist the mosaic, changing speed, movement, and voice, to reveal themselves and Claudia’s impact on their world.“Emotionally, Moon Tiger is kaleidoscopic, deeply satisfying. The all too brief encounter between Claudia and Tom will surely rate as one of the most memorable of contemporary fictional affairs. This is one of the best novels I have read for years.� —The London Sunday Telegraph“It pulls us in; it engages us and saddens us. It is also unexpectedly funny... It leaves its traces in the air long after you’ve put it away.� —The New York Times Book Review“One of the very best Booker winners... it asks hard questions about memory and history and personal legacy; it’s stylistically demanding and inventive... a wonderful book.� —The Guardian]]> 226 Penelope Lively 080219737X Lisa 3 4.17 1987 Moon Tiger
author: Penelope Lively
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2020/04/14
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Angle of Repose 22146715
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.]]> 632 Wallace Stegner 1101872764 Lisa 0 4.18 1971 Angle of Repose
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/21
shelves: lisa-s-favorites, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire]]> 46019500 “A dynamic group biography studded with design history and high-society dash . . .[This] elegantly wrought narrative bears the Cartier hallmark.”—The EconomistThe “astounding� (André Leon Talley) story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather’s humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon—as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives“Ms. Cartier Brickell has done her grandfather proud.”—The Wall Street Journal The Cartiers isthe revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s.At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create� and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry. Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more. The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor. Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty’s founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.]]> 673 Francesca Cartier Brickell 0525621628 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.36 2019 The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire
author: Francesca Cartier Brickell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Abigail 43697426
There is something of Jane Austen in this story of the deceptiveness of appearances; fans of J.K. Rowling are sure to enjoy Szabó’s picture of irreverent students, eccentric teachers, and boarding-school life. Above all, however, Abigail is a thrilling tale of suspense.]]> 353 Magda Szabó 1681374080 Lisa 4 4.23 1970 Abigail
author: Magda Szabó
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/20
date added: 2020/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dutch House 44569767 The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades,The Dutch Houseis a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

]]> 353 Ann Patchett 0062963694 Lisa 4 4.25 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/11
date added: 2020/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> An Unnecessary Woman 18114449 The Hakawati, with a heartrending novel that celebrates the singular life of an obsessive introvert, revealing Beirut’s beauties and horrors along the way.

Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, divorced, and childless, Aaliya is her family’s "unnecessary appendage.� Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated have never been read—by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, "the three witches,� discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue.

In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman’s late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya’s digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Insightful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya’s volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.

A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of a single woman's reclusive life in the Middle East.]]> 291 Rabih Alameddine 0802122140 Lisa 5 lisa-s-favorites 3.81 2013 An Unnecessary Woman
author: Rabih Alameddine
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: lisa-s-favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built]]> 17455908
When Joel Russ started peddling herring from a barrel shortly after his arrival in America from Poland, he could not have imagined that he was giving birth to a gastronomic legend. Here is the story of this “Louvre of lox� (The Sunday Times, London): its humble beginnings, the struggle to keep it going during the Great Depression, the food rationing of World War II, the passing of the torch to the next generation as the flight from the Lower East Side was beginning, the heartbreaking years of neighborhood blight, and the almost miraculous renaissance of an area from which hundreds of other family-owned stores had fled.

Filled with delightful anecdotes about how a ferociously hardworking family turned a passion for selling perfectly smoked and pickled fish into an institution with a devoted national clientele, Mark Russ Federman’s reminiscences combine a heartwarming and triumphant immigrant saga with a panoramic history of twentieth-century New York, a meditation on the creation and selling of gourmet food by a family that has mastered this art, and an enchanting behind-the-scenes look at four generations of people who are just a little bit crazy on the subject of fish.]]> 224 Mark Russ Federman Lisa 5 4.08 2013 Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built
author: Mark Russ Federman
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2019/12/08
date added: 2019/12/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Lady in the Lake 42854187
ANew York TimesBestseller

The reveredNew York Timesbestselling author returns with a novel set in 1960s Baltimore that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir, about a middle-aged housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know—everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie� Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life.

Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl—assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, theStar.Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do Cleo Sherwood, a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.

If Cleo were white, every reporter in Baltimore would be clamoring to tell her story. Instead, her mysterious death receives only cursory mention in the daily newspapers, and no one cares when Maddie starts poking around in a young Black woman's life—except for Cleo's ghost, who is determined to keep her secrets and her dignity. Cleo scolds the ambitious You're interested in my death, not my life. They're not the same thing.

Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life—a jewelry store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people—includingFerdie, the man who shares her bed, a police officer who is risking far more than Maddie can understand.]]> 366 Laura Lippman Lisa 3 3.67 2019 Lady in the Lake
author: Laura Lippman
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/31
date added: 2019/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Chances Are . . . 44177960
One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year-old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today--Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-four years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives and that of a significant other are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community.
For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are . . . is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement.]]> 320 Richard Russo Lisa 3 3.98 Chances Are . . .
author: Richard Russo
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/12
date added: 2019/10/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Becoming 38745806
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.]]> 428 Michelle Obama Lisa 5 4.67 2018 Becoming
author: Michelle Obama
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2019/10/12
date added: 2019/10/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Small Fry: A Memoir 40552730 The New York Times–bestselling memoir by Steve Jobs� “This sincere and disquieting portrait reveals a complex father-daughter relationship.� —Publishers Weekly, starred reviewBorn on a farm and named in a field by her parents—artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs—Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools.Lisa found her father’s attention thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be.Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s poignant story of childhood and growing up. Scrappy, wise, and funny, Lisa offers an intimate window into the peculiar world of this family, and the strange magic of Silicon Valley in the seventies and eighties.]]> 388 Lisa Brennan-Jobs Lisa 4 4.02 2018 Small Fry: A Memoir
author: Lisa Brennan-Jobs
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/08/28
date added: 2019/08/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bluest Eye 6551700
A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.]]> 226 Toni Morrison 0307386589 Lisa 5 4.11 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2019/08/20
date added: 2019/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> One Amazing Thing 8858258 An acclaimed novel by the author of The Mistress of Spices, and Before We Visit the Goddess. Jhumpa Lahiri "One Amazing Thing collapses the walls dividing characters and cultures; what endures is a chorus of voices in one single room." Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair. When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival -- and about the reasons to survive.]]> 225 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Lisa 3 3.80 2009 One Amazing Thing
author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2019/08/10
date added: 2019/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 42421761
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

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

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 370 Delia Owens Lisa 4 4.60 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/22
date added: 2019/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Fiction Class 19445532 Read Susan Breen's posts on the Penguin Blog.A witty, honest, and hugely entertaining story for anyone who loves books, or has a difficult mother. And, let’s face it, that’s practically everybody . . . On paper, Arabella Hicks seems more than qualified to teach her fiction class on the Upper West she’s a writer herself; she’s passionate about books; she’s even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel. On the other hand, she’s thirty-eight, single, and has been writing the same book for the last seven years. And she has been distracted on the same day that Arabella teaches her class she also visits her mother in a nursing home outside the city. And every time they argue. Arabella wants the fighting to stop, but, as her mother puts it, “Just because we’re family, doesn’t mean we have to like each other.� When her class takes a surprising turn and her lessons start to spill over into her weekly visits, she suddenly finds she might be holding the key to her mother’s love and, dare she say it, her own inspiration. After all, as a lifelong lover of books, she knows the power of a good story.]]> 296 Susan Breen 1440636982 Lisa 0 4.08 2008 The Fiction Class
author: Susan Breen
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2019/06/27
date added: 2019/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Transcription 37930624 A new novel from the bestselling author of Life After Life

During WWII, Juliet Armstrong was conscripted into service as a young woman, transcribing conversations between an MI5 agent and a ring of suspected German sympathizers. Years later, in 1950 post-war London, Julie can't escape the repercussions of her work for the government, and is pulled back into the life of espionage she thought she'd left behind.

Kate Atkinson's latest novel brings mid-century London to life in a gripping tale of deception and consequences.]]> 352 Kate Atkinson 0316479756 Lisa 4 3.63 2018 Transcription
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/15
date added: 2019/06/15
shelves:
review:

]]> This Is How It Always Is 43364981 An alternative cover edition for this ASIN can be found here and here.

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

"This is a novel everyone should read. It’s brilliant. It’s bold. And it’s time.�
―Elizabeth George, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Banquet of Consequences]]> 338 Laurie Frankel Lisa 3 4.36 2017 This Is How It Always Is
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/05/04
date added: 2019/05/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics]]> 17404747 For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics

Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.

The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.

Drawing on the boys� own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs.]]> 460 Daniel James Brown Lisa 0 4.55 2013 The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Salvage the Bones 36145671 Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family—motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—pulls itself up to face another day.

A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

Winner of the National Book Award]]> 273 Jesmyn Ward Lisa 4 4.09 2011 Salvage the Bones
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2019/04/26
date added: 2019/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Bowlaway 40852822 A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident.

When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

]]> 355 Elizabeth McCracken Lisa 2 3.28 2019 Bowlaway
author: Elizabeth McCracken
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2019/04/22
date added: 2019/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Lisette's List 40606161 Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Luncheon of the Boating Party, and Clara and Mr. Tiffany, comes a richly imagined story of a woman’s awakening in the south of Vichy France—to the power of art, to the beauty of provincial life, and to love in the midst of war.

In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move from Paris to a village in Provence to care for André’s grandfather Pascal. Lisette regrets having to give up her dream of becoming a gallery apprentice and longs for the comforts and sophistication of Paris. But as she soon discovers, the hilltop town is rich with unexpected pleasures.

Pascal once worked in the nearby ochre mines and later became a pigment salesman and frame maker; while selling his pigments in Paris, he befriended Pissarro and Cézanne, some of whose paintings he received in trade for his frames. Pascal begins to tutor Lisette in both art and life, allowing her to see his small collection of paintings and the Provençal landscape itself in a new light. Inspired by Pascal’s advice to “Do the important things first,� Lisette begins a list of vows to herself (#4. Learn what makes a painting great). When war breaks out, André goes off to the front, but not before hiding Pascal’s paintings to keep them from the Nazis� reach.

With German forces spreading across Europe, the sudden fall of Paris, and the rise of Vichy France, Lisette sets out to locate the paintings (#11. Find the paintings in my lifetime). Her search takes her through the stunning French countryside, where she befriends Marc and Bella Chagall, who are in hiding before their flight to America, and acquaints her with the land, her neighbors, and even herself in ways she never dreamed possible. Through joy and tragedy, occupation and liberation, small acts of kindness and great acts of courage, Lisette learns to forgive the past, to live robustly, and to love again.]]> 433 Susan Vreeland 0812996852 Lisa 3 3.94 2014 Lisette's List
author: Susan Vreeland
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/02
date added: 2019/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Warlight 36410100 NATIONAL BEST SELLER

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.

In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey--through facts, recollection, and imagination--that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.]]> 304 Michael Ondaatje Lisa 4 3.79 2018 Warlight
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2019/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Educated 36247169 A newer cover edition of ASIN B072BLVM83 can be found here.

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 336 Tara Westover Lisa 5 4.56 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2019/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Unsheltered 38313843
How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.

In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men.

Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.]]> 508 Barbara Kingsolver 0062684744 Lisa 3 3.96 2018 Unsheltered
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2018/12/28
date added: 2018/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Vanessa and Her Sister 32786441 For fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank comes a captivating novel that offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, and the controversial and popular circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group.

London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer.

Each member of the group will go on to earn fame and success, but so far Vanessa Bell has never sold a painting. Virginia Woolf’s book review has just been turned down by The Times. Lytton Strachey has not published anything. E. M. Forster has finished his first novel but does not like the title. Leonard Woolf is still a civil servant in Ceylon, and John Maynard Keynes is looking for a job. Together, this sparkling coterie of artists and intellectuals throw away convention and embrace the wild freedom of being young, single bohemians in London.

But the landscape shifts when Vanessa unexpectedly falls in love and her sister feels dangerously abandoned. Eerily possessive, charismatic, manipulative, and brilliant, Virginia has always lived in the shelter of Vanessa’s constant attention and encouragement. Without it, she careens toward self-destruction and madness. As tragedy and betrayal threaten to destroy the family, Vanessa must decide if it is finally time to protect her own happiness above all else.

The work of exciting young newcomer Priya Parmar, Vanessa and Her Sister exquisitely captures the champagne-heady days of prewar London and the extraordinary lives of sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf.

Advance praise for Vanessa and Her Sister

“Priya Parmar is on a high-wire act all her own in this radiantly original novel about the Bloomsbury Set. Irrepressible, with charm and brio to spare, Vanessa and Her Sister boldly invites us to that moment in history when famous minds sparked and collided. Prepare to be dazzled.�—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

“With sparkling wit and insight, Priya Parmar sets us down into the legendary Bloomsbury household of the Stephen siblings, where sisters Vanessa and Virginia vie for love and primacy amidst a collection of eccentric guests. Vanessa and Her Sister kidnapped me for a couple of days. I couldn’t put it down.�—Nancy Horan, author of Under the Wide and Starry Sky

“I loved this brilliant depiction of the true price of genius. Parmar’s novel shines a bright light into the empty spaces between the lines of history.�—Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

“This is the novel I didn’t know I was waiting for, and it is, quite simply, astonishing: not just because of Priya Parmar’s preternatural skill at evoking the moment when the lid was coming off the Victorians, but because of how she has caught the two sisters at the center of that swirl. It is beautiful, wise, and as deft as a stroke upon the canvas.�—Sarah Blake, author of The Postmistress]]> 368 Priya Parmar Lisa 4 4.04 2014 Vanessa and Her Sister
author: Priya Parmar
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/24
date added: 2018/11/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Hot Water: a novel 41185074 262 J.J. Shelley 1949292002 Lisa 5 4.55 Hot Water: a novel
author: J.J. Shelley
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/11/15
date added: 2018/11/15
shelves:
review:

]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 29430012 He can't leave. You won't want to.

With his breakout novel Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late-1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Lisa 5 4.33 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2018/11/11
date added: 2018/11/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Wandering Falcon 13018037 A haunting literary debut set in the forbidding remote tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Traditions that have lasted for centuries, both brutal and beautiful, create a rigid structure for life in the wild, astonishing place where Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan meet-the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It is a formidable world, and the people who live there are constantly subjected to extremes-of place and of culture.

The Wandering Falcon begins with a young couple, refugees from their tribe, who have traveled to the middle of nowhere to escape the cruel punishments meted out upon those who transgress the boundaries of marriage and family. Their son, Tor Baz, descended from both chiefs and outlaws, becomes "The Wandering Falcon," a character who travels among the tribes, over the mountains and the plains, into the towns and the tents that constitute the homes of the tribal people. The media today speak about this unimaginably remote region, a geopolitical hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks, and conflict, but in the rich, dramatic tones of a master storyteller, this stunning, honor-bound culture is revealed from the inside.

Jamil Ahmad has written an unforgettable portrait of a world of custom and compassion, of love and cruelty, of hardship and survival, a place fragile, unknown, and unforgiving.]]> 258 Jamil Ahmad 1101547952 Lisa 3 3.79 2011 The Wandering Falcon
author: Jamil Ahmad
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2018/10/07
date added: 2018/10/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Looking Back: A Book of Memories]]> 19725165 196 Lois Lowry Lisa 5 4.27 1998 Looking Back: A Book of Memories
author: Lois Lowry
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2018/09/30
date added: 2018/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Improvement 36513424 WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

AUTHOR IS THE WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN/MALAMUD AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE SHORT STORY

Named 1 of 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2017 by The Washington Post
Named 1 of 10 Top Fiction Titles of 2017 by the Wall Street Journal
A Newsday Best Book of 2017
A Kirkus Best Book of 2017
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.

Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three-month stint at Rikers Island, their bond grows tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honorable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a cigarette smuggling scheme, across state lines, where he could risk violating probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four-year-old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.

A novel that examines conviction, connection, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us. The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber: "No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power." Improvement is Silber’s most shining achievement yet.

"Without fuss or flourishes, Joan Silber weaves a remarkably patterned tapestry connecting strangers from around the world to a central tragic car accident. The writing here is funny and down-to-earth, the characters are recognizably fallible, and the message is quietly profound: We are not ever really alone, however lonely we feel." �The Wall Street Journal, 1 of 10 top fiction titles of 2017

"[I]t feels vital to love Silber’s work. . . Now is the moment to appreciate that she is here, in our midst: our country’s own Alice Munro. Silber’s great theme as a writer is the way in which humans are separated from their intentions, by desires, ideas, time. . . Like Grace Paley and Lucia Berlin, she’s a master of talking a story past its easiest meaning; like Munro, a master of the compression and dilation of time, what time and nothing else can reveal to people about themselves." �Washington Post]]> 241 Joan Silber 1619029715 Lisa 3 3.59 2017 Improvement
author: Joan Silber
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/09/30
date added: 2018/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater]]> 18871270 The inspiration for the NBC TV series "Rise," starring Josh Radnor, Auli'i Cravalho, and Rosie Perez � the incredible and true story of an extraordinary drama teacher who has changed the lives of thousands of students and inspired a town. By the author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino. Why would the multimillionaire producer ofCats,The Phantom of the Opera, andMiss Saigontake his limo from Manhattan to the struggling former steel town of Levittown, Pennsylvania, to see a high school production ofLes Misérables? To see the show performed by the astoundingly successful theater company at Harry S Truman High School, run by its legendary director, Lou Volpe. Broadway turns to Truman High when trying out controversial shows such as RentandSpringAwakeningbefore they move on to high school theater programs across the nation. Volpe’s students from this blue-collar town go on to become Emmy-winning producers, entertainment executives, newscasters, and community-theater founders. Michael Sokolove, a Levittown native and former student of Volpe’s, chronicles the drama director’s last school years and follows a group of student actors as they work through riveting dramas both on and off the stage. This is a story of an economically depressed but proud town finding hope in a gifted teacher and the magic of theater.]]> 370 Michael Sokolove 1101632100 Lisa 5 4.37 2013 Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater
author: Michael Sokolove
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2018/09/30
date added: 2018/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Stay with Me 33778610
Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage--after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures--Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time--until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does--but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.]]> 288 Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ Lisa 3 4.08 2017 Stay with Me
author: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/08/14
date added: 2018/08/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Lisa 3 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/08/11
date added: 2018/08/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Love Letters: To My Mother 34662195
Using a mixture of prose and poetry, Agam weaves patches of memories together to create a literary quilt depicting the two intertwined lives. She reflects on the lunches of tuna sandwiches and chocolate pudding her mother lovingly made her when Agam was a child, as well as her helplessness in the face of her mother’s incurable autoimmune disease.

The love they shared was unconditional, and it reflected something fundamental about family bonds. No matter where Agam traveled—whether to summer camp or halfway around the world—her mother always wrote her long, reflective letters.

And then the world ruptured as her mother lay dying in a hospital in California. Agam’s sense of loss was deep and searing when her mother’s death came all too soon.

Responding to those many years of letters from her mother with a love letter of her own, Agam has crafted a deeply personal, moving tribute to all mothers that will resonate with women of all ages.]]> 75 Nitza Agam Lisa 5 4.50 Love Letters: To My Mother
author: Nitza Agam
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/07
date added: 2018/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The Best Place on Earth 17495285 The Best Place on Earth are peopled with characters at the crossroads of nationalities, religions and communities: expatriates, travellers, immigrants and locals.

In the powerfully affecting opening story, “Tikkun,� a chance meeting between a man and his former lover carries them through near tragedy and into unexpected peace. In “Casualties,� Tsabari takes us into the military—a world every Israeli knows all too well—with a brusque, sexy young female soldier who forges medical leave forms to make ends meet. Poets, soldiers, siblings and dissenters, the protagonists here are mostly Israelis of Mizrahi background (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent), whose stories have rarely been told in literature. In illustrating the lives of those whose identities swing from fiercely patriotic to powerfully global, The Best Place on Earth explores Israeli history as it illuminates the tenuous connections—forged, frayed and occasionally destroyed—between cultures, between generations and across the gulf of transformation and loss.]]> 224 Ayelet Tsabari 1443411957 Lisa 0 to-read 4.15 2013 The Best Place on Earth
author: Ayelet Tsabari
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation]]> 20250453
In Like Dreamers, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi interweaves the stories of a group of 1967 paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem, tracing the history of Israel and the divergent ideologies shaping it from the Six-Day War to the present.

Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem, Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played pivotal roles in shaping Israel’s destiny long after their historic victory. While they worked together to reunite their country in 1967, these men harbored drastically different visions for Israel’s future.

One emerges at the forefront of the religious settlement movement, while another is instrumental in the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. One becomes a driving force in the growth of Israel’s capitalist economy, while another ardently defends the socialist kibbutzim. One is a leading peace activist, while another helps create an anti-Zionist terror underground in Damascus.

Featuring an eight pages of black-and-white photos and maps, Like Dreamers is a nuanced, in-depth look at these diverse men and the conflicting beliefs that have helped to define modern Israel and the Middle East.]]> 616 Yossi Klein Halevi Lisa 5 4.42 2013 Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation
author: Yossi Klein Halevi
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/05
date added: 2018/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> What to Do About the Solomons 34608939 From a remarkable new voice in fiction, Bethany Ball, comes a transporting debut; a hilarious multigenerational family saga set in Israel, New York, and Los Angeles that explores the secrets and gossip-filled lives of a kibbutz community near Jerusalem
Meet Marc Solomon, an Israeli ex-Navy commando now living in L.A., who is falsely accused of money laundering through his asset management firm. As the Solomons' Santa Monica home is raided, Marc's American wife, Carolyn--concealing her own dark past--makes hopeless attempts to hold their family of five together. But news of the scandal makes its way from America to the rest of the Solomon clan on the kibbutz in the Jordan River Valley. There we encounter various members of the family and the community--from Marc's self-absorbed movie actress sister, Shira, and her forgotten son Joseph; to his rich and powerful construction magnate father, Yakov; to his former star-crossed love, Maya; and his brother-in-law Guy Gever, a local ranger turned -artist.- As the secrets and rumors of the kibbutz are revealed through various memories and tales, we witness the things that keep the Solomons together, and those that tear them apart.
Reminiscent of Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, and told with razor-sharp humor and elegant acuity, What to Do About the Solomons is an exhilarating first book from a bright new star in fiction.]]> 205 Bethany Ball 0802190723 Lisa 3 3.46 2017 What to Do About the Solomons
author: Bethany Ball
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/07/14
date added: 2018/07/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Another Brooklyn 30064150
New York Times Bestseller

A SeattleTimes pick for Summer Reading Roundup 2017

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years.

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.

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.

Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

]]> 197 Jacqueline Woodson Lisa 3 3.94 2016 Another Brooklyn
author: Jacqueline Woodson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2018/06/29
date added: 2018/06/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Lives Other Than My Own 13052564 From the acclaimed award-winning author Emmanuel Carrère, Lives Other Than My A Memoir is an act of generous imagination that unflinchingly records devastating loss and, equally vividly, the wealth of human solace that follows in its wake.Selected by the New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 YearsIn Sri Lanka, a tsunami sweeps a child out to sea, her grand-father helpless against the onrushing water. In France, a young woman succumbs to illness, leaving her husband and small children bereft. Present at both events, Emmanuel Carrère sets out to tell the story of two families—shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is nothing short of a literary a heartrending narrative of endless love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, an intimate and reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of ordinary lives.Precise, sober, and suspenseful, as full of twists and turns as any novel, Lives Other Than My Own confronts terrifying catastrophes to illuminate the astonishing richness of human a grandfather who thought he had found paradise—too soon—and now devotes himself to helping his neighbors rebuild their village; a husband so in love with his ailing wife that he carries her in his arms like a knight does his princess; and finally, Carrère himself, longtime chronicler of the tormented self, who unexpectedly finds consolation and even joy as he immerses himself in the lives of others.“Moving…Carrère’s prose is precise and measured…Through interviews with friends and relatives of both families, he creates powerful portraits that celebrate ordinary lives.”—The New Yorker“You begin this memoir thinking it will be about one thing, and it turns into something else altogether—a book at once more ordinary and more extraordinary than any first impressions might allow.”—The New York Times]]> 258 Emmanuel Carrère Lisa 5 4.17 2009 Lives Other Than My Own
author: Emmanuel Carrère
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2018/06/03
date added: 2018/06/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales]]> 63697 243 Oliver Sacks Lisa 5 4.08 1985 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
author: Oliver Sacks
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Lisa 5 4.39 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stones from the River (Burgdorf Cycle, #1)]]> 77163 9780684844770

From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Floating in My Mother's Palm comes a stunning novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he's a girl, to the Jews Trudy harbors in her cellar.

Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.]]> 525 Ursula Hegi Lisa 0 lisa-s-favorites 4.10 1994 Stones from the River (Burgdorf Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula Hegi
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/05/01
shelves: lisa-s-favorites
review:

]]>