Kathryn's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 06 Mar 2025 05:46:21 -0800 60 Kathryn's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[This Earth of Mankind (Buru #1)]]> 301304 367 Pramoedya Ananta Toer 0140256350 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.14 1980 This Earth of Mankind (Buru #1)
author: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Storyteller 53931 ]]> 245 Mario Vargas Llosa 0312420285 Kathryn 3 3.74 1987 The Storyteller
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 29068909 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

In the CafĂ© of Lost Youth is vintage Patrick Modiano, an absorbing evocation of a particular Paris of the 1950s, shadowy and shady, a secret world of writers, criminals,Ěýdrinkers, and drifters. The novel, inspired in part by the circle (depicted in the photographs of Ed van der Elsken) of the notorious and charismatic Guy Debord, centers on the enigmatic, waiflike figure of Louki, who catches everyone’s attention even as she eludes possession or comprehension. Through the eyes of four very different narrators, including Louki herself, we contemplate her character and her fate, while Modiano explores the themes of identity, memory, time, and forgetting that are at the heart of his spellbinding and deeply moving art.]]> 129 Patrick Modiano 1590179544 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.82 2007 In the CafĂ© of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Patrick Modiano
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The King's General 18869969 A classic work of historical fiction from the author ofĚýRebeccaĚýandĚýThe Birds. Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless â€� and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As the English Civil war is waged across the country, Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, and Honor remains true to him. Decades later, an undaunted Sir Richard, now a general serving King Charles I, finds her. Finally they can share their passion in the ruins of her family's great estate on the storm-tossed Cornish coast â€� one last time before being torn apart, never to embrace again.]]> 448 Daphne du Maurier 0316252956 Kathryn 4
I find that Daphne du Maurier has told a tale in a way that many authors of historical fiction fail to do. How does one weave fact into fiction in such a way that even things that sometimes just functions as a backdrop to the more personal story become as important as the characters themselves? The beauty of Cornwall, the mystery of Menabilly, the premonition of tragedy, the stench of war, the enchantment of love - all of this as seen through the narration of Honor Harris, are shown through a veil of wistfulness and resignation.

It is not easy (maybe even possible) to like any main character in this novel at all. Nearly everyone is proud and self-serving (with the self by extension a particular political cause or one's family), despite the fact that they all long for peace, love, and happiness with their loved ones. Misery begets misery. Although there is great effort on Honor's part to never act the part of a vengeful woman full of resentment, her sense of self-preservation will always tell her to love Richard Grenville but also to keep him at arm's length in order to protect herself from his character. Personal redemption is not a thing that is ever sought in this story and Honor Harris does her best to love Richard Grenville "honorably".


Merged review:

A story of pride, tragedy, and family ties. Despite Richard Grenville's claim that politics and one's private life should be kept separate (during a falling out with Robin Harris), the story shows that that isn't at all possible. One's private life is always wholly enmeshed in the political. One's sense of political loyalty, family, and belonging to a place (or perhaps in Gartred's case, the lack of it) always ties oneself to a side, voluntarily or involuntarily. There is a sense that people are all pawns with no real "freedom." One can only work with what little he/she is left with. And it isn't just war that deprives people of their freedom and happiness. The character of Honor Harris, for example, and the events surrounding her engagement to Richard Grenville show that the whims of others (Gartred) can do as much to destroy lives. There are also characters that certain Grenvilles have abused to the point of self-destruction by preying on their dependencies - Kit Harris, Robin Harris, and Dick Grenville, to name a few.

I find that Daphne du Maurier has told a tale in a way that many authors of historical fiction fail to do. How does one weave fact into fiction in such a way that even things that sometimes just functions as a backdrop to the more personal story become as important as the characters themselves? The beauty of Cornwall, the mystery of Menabilly, the premonition of tragedy, the stench of war, the enchantment of love - all of this as seen through the narration of Honor Harris, are shown through a veil of wistfulness and resignation.

It is not easy (maybe even possible) to like any main character in this novel at all. Nearly everyone is proud and self-serving (with the self by extension a particular political cause or one's family), despite the fact that they all long for peace, love, and happiness with their loved ones. Misery begets misery. Although there is great effort on Honor's part to never act the part of a vengeful woman full of resentment, her sense of self-preservation will always tell her to love Richard Grenville but also to keep him at arm's length in order to protect herself from his character. Personal redemption is not a thing that is ever sought in this story and Honor Harris does her best to love Richard Grenville "honorably".]]> 3.94 1946 The King's General
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/25
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: oh-so-tragic, historical-fiction
review:
A story of pride, tragedy, and family ties. Despite Richard Grenville's claim that politics and one's private life should be kept separate (during a falling out with Robin Harris), the story shows that that isn't at all possible. One's private life is always wholly enmeshed in the political. One's sense of political loyalty, family, and belonging to a place (or perhaps in Gartred's case, the lack of it) always ties oneself to a side, voluntarily or involuntarily. There is a sense that people are all pawns with no real "freedom." One can only work with what little he/she is left with. And it isn't just war that deprives people of their freedom and happiness. The character of Honor Harris, for example, and the events surrounding her engagement to Richard Grenville show that the whims of others (Gartred) can do as much to destroy lives. There are also characters that certain Grenvilles have abused to the point of self-destruction by preying on their dependencies - Kit Harris, Robin Harris, and Dick Grenville, to name a few.

I find that Daphne du Maurier has told a tale in a way that many authors of historical fiction fail to do. How does one weave fact into fiction in such a way that even things that sometimes just functions as a backdrop to the more personal story become as important as the characters themselves? The beauty of Cornwall, the mystery of Menabilly, the premonition of tragedy, the stench of war, the enchantment of love - all of this as seen through the narration of Honor Harris, are shown through a veil of wistfulness and resignation.

It is not easy (maybe even possible) to like any main character in this novel at all. Nearly everyone is proud and self-serving (with the self by extension a particular political cause or one's family), despite the fact that they all long for peace, love, and happiness with their loved ones. Misery begets misery. Although there is great effort on Honor's part to never act the part of a vengeful woman full of resentment, her sense of self-preservation will always tell her to love Richard Grenville but also to keep him at arm's length in order to protect herself from his character. Personal redemption is not a thing that is ever sought in this story and Honor Harris does her best to love Richard Grenville "honorably".


Merged review:

A story of pride, tragedy, and family ties. Despite Richard Grenville's claim that politics and one's private life should be kept separate (during a falling out with Robin Harris), the story shows that that isn't at all possible. One's private life is always wholly enmeshed in the political. One's sense of political loyalty, family, and belonging to a place (or perhaps in Gartred's case, the lack of it) always ties oneself to a side, voluntarily or involuntarily. There is a sense that people are all pawns with no real "freedom." One can only work with what little he/she is left with. And it isn't just war that deprives people of their freedom and happiness. The character of Honor Harris, for example, and the events surrounding her engagement to Richard Grenville show that the whims of others (Gartred) can do as much to destroy lives. There are also characters that certain Grenvilles have abused to the point of self-destruction by preying on their dependencies - Kit Harris, Robin Harris, and Dick Grenville, to name a few.

I find that Daphne du Maurier has told a tale in a way that many authors of historical fiction fail to do. How does one weave fact into fiction in such a way that even things that sometimes just functions as a backdrop to the more personal story become as important as the characters themselves? The beauty of Cornwall, the mystery of Menabilly, the premonition of tragedy, the stench of war, the enchantment of love - all of this as seen through the narration of Honor Harris, are shown through a veil of wistfulness and resignation.

It is not easy (maybe even possible) to like any main character in this novel at all. Nearly everyone is proud and self-serving (with the self by extension a particular political cause or one's family), despite the fact that they all long for peace, love, and happiness with their loved ones. Misery begets misery. Although there is great effort on Honor's part to never act the part of a vengeful woman full of resentment, her sense of self-preservation will always tell her to love Richard Grenville but also to keep him at arm's length in order to protect herself from his character. Personal redemption is not a thing that is ever sought in this story and Honor Harris does her best to love Richard Grenville "honorably".
]]> The Saga of Gosta Berling 19719526
A Swedish Gone with the Wind by the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature—published here in the first new English translation in more than 100 years

One hundred years ago, Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She assured her place in Swedish letters with this sweeping historical epic, her first and best-loved novel, and the basis for the 1924 silent film of the same name that launched Greta Garbo to stardom. Set in 1820s Sweden, it tells the story of a defrocked minister named Gösta Berling. After his appetite for alcohol and previous indiscretions end his career, Berling finds a home at Ekeby, an ironworks estate owned by Margareta Celsing, the “Majoress,� that also houses an assortment of eccentric veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. Berling’s defiant and poetic spirit proves magnetic to a string of women, who fall under his spell against the backdrop of political intrigue at Margareta’s estate and the magnificent wintry beauty of rural Sweden.


]]> 434 Selma Lagerlöf 1101140488 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.80 1891 The Saga of Gosta Berling
author: Selma Lagerlöf
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1891
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, and Selected Stories]]> 19107 The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories, deeply influenced later Russian literature with powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Ronald Wilks, and an introduction by Robert A. Maguire.

This volume includes a selection of Gogol's most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A hilarious and biting political satire, 'The Government Inspector' has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play ever written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include 'Diary of a Madman', an amusing but disturbing exploration of insanity; 'Nevsky Prospect', a depiction of an artist infatuated with a prostitute; and 'The Overcoat', a moving consideration of poverty.

Edited and translated by Ronald Wilks, this new collection of Gogol's shorter writings skilfully captures the savage wit of the original works. Robert Maguire's introduction considers recurrent themes and explores Gogol's influence on realism. This edition also includes detailed notes, a publishing history for each story and a chronology.

Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was born in the Ukraine. His experience of St Petersburg life informed a savagely satirical play, The Government Inspector, and a series of brilliant short stories including Nevsky Prospekt and Diary of a Madman. For over a decade, Gogol laboured on his comic epic Dead Souls - before renouncing literature and burning parts of the manuscript shortly before he died.

If you enjoyed The Diary of a Madman, you might like Anton Chekhov's The Steppe and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

'Everything he started to imagine transformed itself and began to wriggle with life'
A.S. Byatt, author of Possession]]> 330 Nikolai Gogol 0140449078 Kathryn 4 novella, russian-literature 4.15 1835 The Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, and Selected Stories
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1835
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: novella, russian-literature
review:

]]> The Constant Nymph 1793758 344 Margaret Kennedy 1844081907 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.67 1924 The Constant Nymph
author: Margaret Kennedy
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800]]> 36241087 Memoirs,Ěýspanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygoneĚýworld of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the firstĚýrumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beachesĚýof Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg,Ěýhunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried onĚýpikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia,Ěýand falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the smallĚýSuffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to FranceĚýafter eight years of exile in England.

In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the ˛Ń±đłľ´Çľ±°ů˛őĚýto be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer ofĚýgreat wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaningĚýof history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy andĚýmemorable gloom.]]> 571 1681371308 Kathryn 0 4.37 1849 Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800
author: François-René de Chateaubriand
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1849
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: history, nyrb, french-literature, to-read
review:

]]> Humiliated and Insulted 3304085 400 Fyodor Dostoevsky 184749045X Kathryn 0 to-read 4.14 1861 Humiliated and Insulted
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1861
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Simple Heart 269894 A Simple Heart, also published as A Simple Soul.

In A Simple Heart, the poignant story that inspired Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, Felicite, a French housemaid, approaches a lifetime of servitude with human-scaled but angelic aplomb. No other author has imparted so much beauty and integrity to so modest an existence. Flaubert's "great saint" endures loss after loss by embracing the rich, true rhythms of life: the comfort of domesticity, the solace of the Church, and the depth of memory. This novella showcases Flaubert's perfectly honed realism: a delicate counterpoint of daily events with their psychological repercussions.]]> 68 Gustave Flaubert 0811213188 Kathryn 0 3.60 1877 A Simple Heart
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1877
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read, novella, french-literature
review:

]]> The Tartar Steppe 83017 198 Dino Buzzati 1567923046 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.24 1940 The Tartar Steppe
author: Dino Buzzati
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Oblomov 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 Kathryn 0 to-read, russian-literature 4.09 1859 Oblomov
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read, russian-literature
review:

]]> Maurice Guest 1961551 432 Henry Handel Richardson 1406838713 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.68 1908 Maurice Guest
author: Henry Handel Richardson
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Alien Hearts 1782012
Richard Howard’s new English translation of this complex and brooding novel—the first in more than a hundred years—reveals the final, unexpected flowering of a great French realist’s art.]]> 177 Guy de Maupassant 1590172604 Kathryn 0 to-read, french-literature 3.81 1890 Alien Hearts
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: to-read, french-literature
review:

]]> The Voyage Out 1178472 383 Virginia Woolf Kathryn 0 to-read 3.68 1915 The Voyage Out
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley, #1)]]> 311182
Lord Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon, known for his coldness of manner, his remarkable omniscience, and his debauched lifestyle. Society believes the worst of Justin, who is clearly proud of his sobriquet, 'Satanas'. In a dark Parisian back alley, he is accosted by Leon, a young person dressed in ragged clothing running away from a brutal rustic guardian. The Duke buys Leon, a redheaded urchin with strangely familiar looks...]]> 352 Georgette Heyer 0099465825 Kathryn 4 to-read, regency 4.05 1926 These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley, #1)
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1926
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/04/16
shelves: to-read, regency
review:
Have to say: this is the best of GH's work that I've read. It reads as if it's the most inspired of her work. I'm glad to have finally read it after years of scouring her catalog for stories I might enjoy.
]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 Kathryn 5 to-read 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:
Read this in one sitting. Feels a lot like a reflection of my own impulses, and rarely does anything capture this particular self-effacing ennui this well (and this ironically).
]]> <![CDATA[The Snake Pit (The Master of Hestviken, #2)]]> 6227 240 Sigrid Undset 0679755543 Kathryn 4 4.28 1925 The Snake Pit (The Master of Hestviken, #2)
author: Sigrid Undset
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/19
shelves: oh-so-tragic, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Axe (The Master of Hestviken, #1)]]> 6218
Soaringly romantic and psychologically nuanced, Undset's novel is also a meticulous re-creation of a world split between pagan codes of retribution and the rigors of Christian piety--a world where law is a fragile new invention and manslaughter is so common that it's punishable by fine.]]> 304 Sigrid Undset 0679752730 Kathryn 4 historical-fiction 4.24 1925 The Axe (The Master of Hestviken, #1)
author: Sigrid Undset
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/19
date added: 2023/03/19
shelves: historical-fiction
review:

]]> Red Adam's Lady 34734335 Red Adam’s Lady is a boisterous, bawdy tale of wild adventure, set against the constant dangers of medieval England. It is a story of civil war and border raids, scheming aristorcrats and brawling villagers, daring escapes across the moors and thundering descents down steep cliffs to the ocean. Its vivid details give the reader a fascinating and realistic view of life in a medieval castle and village. And the love story in it is an unusual one, since Julitta won’t let Adam get closer than the length of her stiletto. Long out of print though highly acclaimed, Red Adam’s Lady is a true classic of historical fiction along the lines of Anya Seton’s Katherine and Sharon Kay Penman’s Here Be Dragons.]]> 320 Grace Ingram 1613739672 Kathryn 4 3.85 1973 Red Adam's Lady
author: Grace Ingram
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: historical-fiction, plantagenets
review:

]]> How Do You Live? 54110592 Anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite childhood book, in English for the first time.

First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in Japan as a crossover classic for young readers. Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle) has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of a final film.

How Do You Live? is narrated in two voices. The first belongs to Copper, fifteen, who after the death of his father must confront inevitable and enormous change, including his own betrayal of his best friend. In between episodes of Copper’s emerging story, his uncle writes to him in a journal, sharing knowledge and offering advice on life’s big questions as Copper begins to encounter them. Over the course of the story, Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, looks to the stars, and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth, and human nature to answer the question of how he will live.

This first-ever English-language translation of a Japanese classic about finding one’s place in a world both infinitely large and unimaginably small is perfect for readers of philosophical fiction like The Alchemist and The Little Prince, as well as Miyazaki fans eager to understand one of his most important influences.]]> 288 Genzaburo Yoshino 1616209771 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.00 1937 How Do You Live?
author: Genzaburo Yoshino
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Scorpio Races 10626594
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition � the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.]]> 409 Maggie Stiefvater 054522490X Kathryn 0 currently-reading 4.09 2011 The Scorpio Races
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)]]> 8430098
But everything about Genevieve is unexpected: the passion simmering beneath her cool control, the sharp wit tempered by gentleness...And though Genevieve has heard the whispers about the duke's dark past, and knows she trifles with him at her peril, one incendiary kiss tempts her deeper into a world of extraordinary sensuality. Until Genevieve is faced with a fateful choice...is there anything she won't do for a duke?]]> 365 Julie Anne Long 0061885681 Kathryn 4 4.14 2011 What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
author: Julie Anne Long
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga, #6)]]> 71648 Paula Klug, A Romance Review

When Viscount Mowbury invites Wulfric Bedwyn, Duke of Bewcastle, to his sister’s country house party, Lady Renable has to scramble to find another lady guest to balance numbers. Christine Derrick, widow and part-time schoolteacher, is persuaded much against her will to be that lady.

The cold, aloof duke and the fun-loving, accident-prone Christine are about as mismatched as a couple could possibly be, and they dislike each other from the start. But there is a definite attraction between them too, and soon Wulfric, much to his surprise, is in determined pursuit of an elusive Christine–even after the house party is over.]]> 365 Mary Balogh 044024112X Kathryn 3 4.18 Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga, #6)
author: Mary Balogh
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves:
review:
Gives me Georgette Heyer vibes. Might be all that quizzing glass talk.
]]> Black Ice (Ice, #1) 24248
Then by chance Chloe discovers her employers are anything but the entrepreneurs they appear, and suddenly she knows far too much. Her clients are illegal arms dealers, and one of them is ordered to kill her. But instead, Bastien Toussaint drags Chloe away, and the next thing she knows she's on the run with the most terrifying and seductive man she's ever met. What were his motives--and would she live long enough to find out?]]> 377 Anne Stuart 0778321711 Kathryn 3 romance 3.70 2005 Black Ice (Ice, #1)
author: Anne Stuart
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/18
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves: romance
review:
I gave this 2 stars years ago and have since upgraded it. What changed? My ability to suspend disbelief.
]]> The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo 14742759 81 Zen Cho 1476177678 Kathryn 2 to-read 3.77 2012 The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo
author: Zen Cho
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Holiday of Love 834431 always reigns supreme!]]> 384 Judith McNaught 0671502522 Kathryn 2 3.89 1994 A Holiday of Love
author: Judith McNaught
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/01/27
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]]> Seize the Fire 910685 453 Laura Kinsale 0380753995 Kathryn 4 romance 3.94 1989 Seize the Fire
author: Laura Kinsale
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: romance
review:

]]> The Duke of Shadows 3112394 In a debut romance as passionate and sweeping as the British Empire, Meredith Duran paints a powerful picture of an aristocrat torn between two worlds, an heiress who dares to risk everything...and the love born in fire and darkness that nearly destroys them.

From exotic sandstone palaces...

Sick of tragedy, done with rebellion, Emmaline Martin vows to settle quietly into British Indian society. But when the pillars of privilege topple, her fiancé's betrayal leaves Emma no choice. She must turn for help to the one man whom she should not trust, but cannot resist: Julian Sinclair, the dangerous and dazzling heir to the Duke of Auburn.

To the marble halls of London...

In London, they toast Sinclair with champagne. In India, they call him a traitor. Cynical and impatient with both worlds, Julian has never imagined that the place he might belong is in the embrace of a woman with a reluctant laugh and haunted eyes. But in a time of terrible darkness, he and Emma will discover that love itself can be perilous -- and that a single decision can alter one's life forever.

Destiny follows wherever you run.

A lifetime of grief later, in a cold London spring, Emma and Julian must finally confront the truth: no matter how hard one tries to deny it, some pasts cannot be disowned...and some passions never die.]]> 371 Meredith Duran 1416567038 Kathryn 3 4.07 2008 The Duke of Shadows
author: Meredith Duran
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2008
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/01/22
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]]> One for My Enemy 43795562
After twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side. As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out.

If, that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.]]> 427 Olivie Blake Kathryn 0 currently-reading 3.70 2019 One for My Enemy
author: Olivie Blake
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Alone With You in the Ether 61126612
Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.

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

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

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

From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.]]> 288 Olivie Blake 1250888166 Kathryn 0 currently-reading 3.69 2020 Alone With You in the Ether
author: Olivie Blake
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse]]> 38884189
In Mixed Their Use and Abuse , Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects.

Mixed Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.]]> 240 Karen Sullivan 1350066044 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.00 Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse
author: Karen Sullivan
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beguiling the Beauty (Fitzhugh Trilogy, #1)]]> 11990937
For in reality, the “baroness� is Venetia Easterbrook—a proper young widow who had her own vengeful reasons for instigating an affair with the duke. But the plan has backfired. Venetia has fallen in love with the man she despised—and there’s no telling what might happen when she is finally unmasked…]]> 281 Sherry Thomas 0425246965 Kathryn 4 3.77 2012 Beguiling the Beauty (Fitzhugh Trilogy, #1)
author: Sherry Thomas
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/10/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X Kathryn 5 4.33 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/24
date added: 2022/07/24
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.]]> 154 Elisa Shua Dusapin 1911547542 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.55 2016 Winter in Sokcho
author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Behaviour 439712
Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.]]> 291 Molly Keane Kathryn 0 to-read 3.83 1981 Good Behaviour
author: Molly Keane
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vera 1294375
Considered a high-water mark by the author, the story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude.]]> 336 Elizabeth von Arnim 0860683168 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.89 1921 Vera
author: Elizabeth von Arnim
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym]]> 56329046
She was Pym to friends. Miss Pym in her diaries. Sandra in seduction mode. Pymska at her most sophisticated.
English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only fifteen years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel she had been dropped. She was deemed old-fashioned, telling stories of little English villages, unrequited love and the social dramas of vicars or academics.

This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing. It gallops through her love affairs and lifelong relationships. It opens a door to the quick-draw humour which lives in her every written line. It shows how, with a little help from her most ardent fans and friends including Philip Larkin, her work eventually resurfaced, meeting new readers and bringing her sudden astounding, resounding love and acclaim � in the last years of her life.]]> 686 Paula Byrne 0008322201 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.97 2021 The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
author: Paula Byrne
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.26 1989 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
author: Dan Simmons
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Politics of Friendship 187998 Influential exploration of the idea of friendship and its political consequences.

“O, my friends, there is no friend.� The most influential of contemporary philosophers explores the idea of friendship and its political consequences, past and future.

Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's “political turn,� marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages.

Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, “my friends, there is no friend� and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought—friendship and enmity, private and public life � have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy

The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future.]]> 312 Jacques Derrida 1844670546 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.99 1994 The Politics of Friendship
author: Jacques Derrida
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brazil-Maru 43710 248 Karen Tei Yamashita 1566890160 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.54 1992 Brazil-Maru
author: Karen Tei Yamashita
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3)]]> 40159
Then he drags a naive young guard into the center of the political maelstrom. Poor Costis knows he is the victim of the king's caprice, but his contempt for Eugenides slowly turns to grudging respect. Though struggling against his fate, the newly crowned king is much more than he appears. Soon the corrupt Attolian court will learn that its subtle and dangerous intrigue is no match for Eugenides.]]> 387 Megan Whalen Turner 006083577X Kathryn 5 to-read 4.38 2006 The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3)
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lost Estate 983730 The Lost Estate is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, Le Grand Meaulnes. This Penguin Classics edition also contains an introduction by Adam Gopnik.

When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house - and his love for the beautiful girl hidden within it, Yvonne de Galais - his life has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

Robin Buss's translation of Le Grand Meaulnes sensitively and accurately renders Alain-Fournier's poetically charged, expressive and deceptively simple style. In his introduction, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik discusses the life of Alain-Fournier, who was killed in the First World War after writing this, his only novel.

I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and loved every page. I find its depiction of a golden time and place just as poignant now as I did then
Nick Hornby]]> 227 Henri Alain-Fournier 0141441895 Kathryn 0 to-read, french-literature 3.72 1913 The Lost Estate
author: Henri Alain-Fournier
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/16
shelves: to-read, french-literature
review:

]]> The Reluctant Heiress 5711852
Tessa is a beautiful, tiny, dark-eyed princess - who's given up her duties to follow her heart, working for nothing backstage at the Viennese opera. No one there knows who she really is, or that a fairy-tale castle is missing its princess, and Tessa is determined to keep it that way.

But secret lives can be complicated, and when a wealthy, handsome Englishman discovers this bewitching urchin backstage, Tessa's two lives collide - and in escaping her inheritance, she finds her destiny. . .

Magic Flutes is an enchanting story of love, music and secret princesses from Eva Ibbotson.]]> 368 Eva Ibbotson 0142412775 Kathryn 0 currently-reading 3.92 1982 The Reluctant Heiress
author: Eva Ibbotson
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Love in a Fallen City 189123 Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.]]> 321 Eileen Chang 1590171780 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.92 1943 Love in a Fallen City
author: Eileen Chang
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mrs Caliban 58659076
A couple weeks later, there is a special interruption in regular programming. The announcer warns all listeners of an escaped sea monster. Giant, spotted, and froglike, the beast - who was captured six months earlier by a team of scientists - is said to possess incredible strength and to be considered extremely dangerous.

That afternoon, the seven-foot-tall lizard man walks through Dorothy's kitchen door. She is frightened at first, but there is something attractive about the monster. The two begin a tender, clandestine affair, and no one, not even Dorothy's husband or her best friend, seems to notice.

Selected by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the greatest American novels since World War II, Mrs. Caliban, much like Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, uses an interspecies romance to explores issues of passion and loneliness, love and loss - and in its own wryly subversive way, it blends surrealism, satire, and a strong female perspective.]]> 124 Rachel Ingalls Kathryn 0 to-read 3.91 1982 Mrs Caliban
author: Rachel Ingalls
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Persuasion 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Kathryn 0 currently-reading 4.15 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/31
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The King's Man (Welsh Blades, #1)]]> 25770293 324 Elizabeth Kingston Kathryn 4 romance 3.86 2015 The King's Man (Welsh Blades, #1)
author: Elizabeth Kingston
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2017/12/26
date added: 2021/07/31
shelves: romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not Quite a Husband (The Marsdens, #2)]]> 5841500
Leo has no reason to think Bryony could ever forgive him for the way he treated her, but he won’t rest until he’s delivered an urgent message from her sister—and fulfilled his duty by escorting her safely back to England. But as they risk their lives for each other on the journey home, will the biggest danger be the treacherous war around them—or their rekindling passion?]]> 341 Sherry Thomas 0553592432 Kathryn 3 3.80 2009 Not Quite a Husband (The Marsdens, #2)
author: Sherry Thomas
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Return of the Thief (The Queen's Thief, #6)]]> 11503920
Neither accepted nor beloved, Eugenides is the uneasy linchpin of a truce on the Lesser Peninsula, where he has risen to be high king of Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis. As the treacherous Baron Erondites schemes anew and a prophecy appears to foretell the death of the king, the ruthless Mede empire prepares to strike. The New York Times–bestselling Queen’s Thief novels are rich with political machinations, divine intervention, dangerous journeys, battles lost and won, power, passion, and deception.]]> 464 Megan Whalen Turner 0062874470 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.48 2020 Return of the Thief (The Queen's Thief, #6)
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scandal 5082951 From an author known for her "pulse-pounding action, well-drawn characters, and sexy romance",* comes the tale of a proper young widow and the rake who is out to steal her heart...

The Earl of Banallt is no stranger to scandal. But when he meets Sophie Evans, the young wife of a fellow libertine, even he is shocked by his reaction. This unconventional and intelligent woman proves to be far more than an amusing distraction - she threatens to drive him to distraction. Unlike the women who usually fall at Banallt's feet, and into his bed, Sophie refuses to be seduced. And soon Banallt desires her more than ever - and for more than an illicit affair.

Years later, the widowed Sophie is free, and Banallt is determined to win the woman he still loves. Unfortunately, she doesn't believe his declaration of love and chivalrous offer of marriage - her heart has already been broken by her scoundrel of a husband. And yet, Sophie is tempted to indulge in the torrid affair she's always fantasized about. Caught between her logical mind and her long-denied desire, Sophie must thwart Banallt's seduction - or risk being consumed by the one man she should avoid at all costs...

* Booklist]]> 309 Carolyn Jewel 0425225518 Kathryn 4 3.78 2009 Scandal
author: Carolyn Jewel
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/07/27
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bright Side of Life (Les Rougon-Macquart, #12)]]> 38819295 'Neither spoke another word, they were gripped by a shared, unthinking madness as they plunged headlong together into vertiginous rapture.'

Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens the household and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually Madame Chanteau starts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head.

The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulent relations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.
]]> 336 Émile Zola 0198753616 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.05 1883 The Bright Side of Life (Les Rougon-Macquart, #12)
author: Émile Zola
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1883
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Homeport 59820
But instead of cementing Miranda’s reputation as the leading expert in the field, the job nearly destroys it when her professional judgment is called into question. Emotionally estranged from her mother, with a brother immersed in his own troubles, Miranda has no one to turn to...except Ryan Boldari, a seductive art thief whose own agenda forces them into a reluctant alliance.

Now it becomes clear that the incident in Maine was not a simple mugging—and that The Dark Lady may possess as many secrets as its beautiful namesake once did. For Miranda, forced to rely on herself—and a partner who offers her both unnerving suspicion and intoxicating passion—the only way home is filled with deception, treachery, and a danger that threatens them all.]]> 484 Nora Roberts 0515124893 Kathryn 0 3.86 1998 Homeport
author: Nora Roberts
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves: romance, impressions-of-an-adolescent
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Anna of the Five Towns (The Five Towns #2)]]> 4860 and independence from her father and the repressive regime of Methodism. This is the first of Bennett's novels to mark out the province of the Five Towns where much of his later fiction is set.]]> 224 Arnold Bennett 1600962068 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.65 1902 Anna of the Five Towns (The Five Towns #2)
author: Arnold Bennett
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1902
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Flutter of an Eyelid 55120594 The Flutter of an Eyelid, originally published in 1933, is a vicious, and often quite funny, satire of Southern California's bohemian community in the 1920s by Jewish-American novelist Myron Brinig (1896-1991). Illustrated by Lynd Ward (1905-1985).




Some of the novel's characters are loosely based on prominent residents of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, an early center of film-making on the West Coast. These include the rare book dealer Jake Zeitlin (1902-1987), whose shop became a gathering place for local writers and artists, and who introduced Brinig to his circle of friends; and the charismatic evangelist and media celebrity Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944).




Zeitlin, who was caricatured as a self-loathing Jewish antique dealer in the novel, considered the book an "insulting betrayal" and, after seeing an early set of galleys, threatened to sue. He succeeded in having some of its more offensive anti-Semitic passages removed prior to its publication. Jewish himself, Brinig was no anti-Semite; he and Zeitlin simply did not get along. One source reports that shortly after the book was released, it was pulled from stores because of further legal threats from McPherson and some of the other individuals who were too "thinly disguised" in the novel.]]> 304 Myron Brinig 0578749270 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.00 1933 The Flutter of an Eyelid
author: Myron Brinig
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther]]> 1140708 392 Elizabeth von Arnim 1844082822 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.96 1907 Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther
author: Elizabeth von Arnim
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1907
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thief of Dreams 110298
Then the dashing Nigel Wetherby arrives at the ball --- an uninvited guest on Cassandra's most magical day. To young Cass, he is the sweetest of passions. But Nigel has plans of his own. Plans that could break her heart, and defy their love. At once, he is both her worst nightmare --- and her dream come true ...]]> 336 Mary Balogh 0515122742 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.67 1998 Thief of Dreams
author: Mary Balogh
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hidden Moon (The Pingkang Li Mysteries, #3)]]> 54876998
Impetuous and well-educated, young Lady Bai has always been the forgotten daughter between two favored sons. However, when Wei-wei's older brother is tasked with investigating a high-profile assassination, he turns to his clever younger sister for assistance.

Gao is a street-wise scoundrel with a checkered past and a shady reputation. He knows better than to set his sights on the high-born Lady Bai, but when she asks for his help, he can't refuse.

As the unlikely pair chase down a conspiracy that reaches from the gutters of the capital to the imperial palace, Wei-wei is intent on seeing justice done, while Gao is determined to solve the mystery just for her � even if the attraction between them can never be more than a moment's longing.]]> 340 Jeannie Lin Kathryn 0 to-read 4.00 2020 The Hidden Moon (The Pingkang Li Mysteries, #3)
author: Jeannie Lin
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lulu on the Bridge 1411888 240 Paul Auster 0805059784 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.43 1998 Lulu on the Bridge
author: Paul Auster
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lake 83024
The Lake is the history of an obsession. It traces a man's sad pursuit of an unattainable perfection, a beauty out of reach, admired from a distance, unconsummated. Homeless, a fugitive from an ambiguous crime, his is an incurable longing that drives him to shadow nameless women in the street and hide in ditches as they pass above him, beautiful and aloof. For their beauty is not of this world, but of a dream--the voice of a girl he meets in a Turkish bath is "an angel's," the figures of two students he follows seem to "glide over the green grass that hid their knees." Reality is the durable ugliness that is his constant companion and is symbolized in the grotesque deformity of the hero's feet. And it is the irreconcilable nature of these worlds that explains the strangely dehumanized, shadowy quality of the eroticism that pervades this novel.

In a sense The Lake is a formless novel, a "happening," making it one of the most modern of all Kawabata's works. Just as the hero's interest might be caught by some passing stranger, so the course of the novel swerves abruptly from present to past, memory shades into hallucination, dreams break suddenly into daylight. It is an extraordinary performance of free association, made all the more astonishing for the skill with which these fragments are resolved within the completed tapestry.]]> 160 Yasunari Kawabata 4770030010 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.71 1954 The Lake
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #2)]]> 40158 Revenge

When Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, stole Hamiathes's Gift, the Queen of Attolia lost more than a mythical relic. She lost face. Everyone knew that Eugenides had outwitted and escaped her. To restore her reputation and reassert her power, the Queen of Attolia will go to any length and accept any help that is offered... she will risk her country to execute the perfect revenge.

...but

Eugenides can steal anything. And he taunts the Queen of Attolia, moving through her strongholds seemingly at will. So Attolia waits, secure in the knowledge that the Thief will slip, that he will haunt her palace one too many times.

…at what price?

When Eugenides finds his small mountain country at war with Attolia, he must steal a man, he must steal a queen, he must steal peace. But his greatest triumph—and his greatest loss—comes in capturing something that the Queen of Attolia thought she had sacrificed long ago...

Books for the Teen Age 2001 (NYPL) and Bulletin Blue Ribbon Best of 2000 Award.]]> 362 Megan Whalen Turner 0060841826 Kathryn 5 4.17 2000 The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #2)
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/07/25
shelves:
review:
What do I think? Well, I read it all in one sitting, and probably re-read a few chapters along the way too.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thief (The Queen's Thief, #1)]]> 448873 Instead of Three Wishes, the first book by Megan Whalen Turner. Her second book more than fulfills that promise.

The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

Megan Whalen Turner weaves Gen's stories and Gen's story together with style and verve in a novel that is filled with intrigue, adventure, and surprise.]]> 280 Megan Whalen Turner 0060824972 Kathryn 3 3.86 1996 The Thief (The Queen's Thief, #1)
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Lemonade 24965067
After a lifetime of harboring shame and resentment, Christopher, a ruthless con artist, wants revenge, and unfortunately for Anna, he’s decided that she will be the perfect pawn in his terrible plot. With a fierceness of spirit uncommon in well-bred young ladies in the nineteenth century, Anna will have to use her intelligence and courage to protect her loved ones. But can she also save herself?]]> 451 Nina Pennacchi 1503944409 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.58 2011 Lemonade
author: Nina Pennacchi
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Magma 56233831 In an era of pornification, his acts of nearly imperceptible abuse continue to mount as their relationship develops. Lilja wants to hold onto him, take care of him and be the perfect lover. But in order to do so, she gradually lets go of her boundaries and concurrently starts to lose her sense of self.
With astounding clarity and restraint, Hjörleifsdóttir sheds light on the commonplace undercurrents of violence that so often go undetected in romantic relationships. She deftly illustrates the failings of our culture in recognizing symptoms of cruelty, and in powerful, poetic prose depicts the unspooling of a tender-hearted woman desperate to love well.

“A compulsive, propulsive debut about a young woman’s exploration of love and sex. In spare, harrowing prose, Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir’s narrator pulls us into the tale of her near undoing and her struggle to find her own value. It is the masterful writer who can shock us and make it ring so true.”—Lily King

“Magma is a luminous and poetic novel unlike any I have ever read. How to describe the slow escalation by which possession becomes control, and power abuse? Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir shows how and the effects are shocking and beautiful, it seethes like lava. She has created a whole new landscape for storytelling.� —John Freeman]]> 208 Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir Kathryn 0 to-read 3.51 2019 Magma
author: Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Virtue (V, #2) 426914
But the Davenports never bargained for the penetrating scrutiny of a certain strikingly handsome lord who had come to see for himself the woman who had all of Brussels at her feet, including his besotted nephew. Marcus Devlin, the honorable marquis of Carrington, wasn't fooled for an instant by Judith's air of innocence—or by her flirtatious way with a fan. Instead he was amused, infuriated, and intrigued enough to draw the bewitching schemer into a daring gamble of his own . . . where the stakes were nothing less than the lady's heart.]]> 448 Jane Feather 0553588605 Kathryn 3 3.67 1993 Virtue (V, #2)
author: Jane Feather
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories]]> 49011 126 Angela Carter 014017821X Kathryn 2 3.96 1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
author: Angela Carter
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/07/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Spinning Silver 36896898 Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into a glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.]]> 465 Naomi Novik Kathryn 0 to-read 4.20 2018 Spinning Silver
author: Naomi Novik
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand 222813
Lord Winn had trusted one woman and been betrayed. That disastrous marriage had endowed him with a wariness of females in general, and prospective wives in particular. But when the door to the dower house on one of his estates was opened by a woman with a cautious smile and memorable brown eyes, he knew here was danger to avoid at all costs -- if he really wanted to...]]> 224 Carla Kelly 0451181816 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.07 1994 Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand
author: Carla Kelly
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Matter of Class 6440767 New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh comes yet another classic historical tale that sizzles with romance and unforgettable drama.

Reginald Mason is wealthy, refined, and, by all accounts, a gentleman. However, he is not a gentleman by title, a factor that pains him and his father within the Regency society that upholds station over all else. That is, until an opportunity for social advancement arises, namely, Lady Annabelle Ashton. Daughter of the Earl of Havercroft, a neighbor and enemy of the Mason family, Annabelle finds herself disgraced by a scandal, one that has left her branded as damaged goods. Besmirched by shame, the earl is only too happy to marry Annabelle off to anyone willing to have her.

Though Reginald Mason, Senior, wishes to use Annabelle to propel his family up the social ladder, his son does not wish to marry her, preferring instead to live the wild, single life he is accustomed to. With this, Reginald Senior serves his son an ultimatum: marry Annabelle, or make do without family funds. Having no choice, Reginald consents, and enters into a hostile engagement in which the prospective bride and groom are openly antagonistic, each one resenting the other for their current state of affairs while their respective fathers revel in their suffering.

So begins an intoxicating tale rife with dark secrets, deception, and the trials of love—a story in which very little is as it seems.]]> 208 Mary Balogh 1593155549 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.84 2009 A Matter of Class
author: Mary Balogh
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sound of the Mountain 59950 Librarian's note: An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.

From the Nobel Prize-winning writer and acclaimed author of Snow Country comes a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age—about an elderly Tokyo businessman who must face the failures of his memory and the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate the end of a life.

“A rich, complicated novel�. Of all modern Japanese fiction, Kawabata’s is the closest to poetry.� �The New York Times Book Review

By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death. In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingo’s life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law, who inspires in him both pity and the stirrings of desire. Out of this translucent web of attachments, Kawabata has crafted a novel that is a powerful, serenely observed meditation on the relentless march of time.

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker]]> 276 Yasunari Kawabata 0679762647 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.92 1954 The Sound of the Mountain
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)]]> 45275488
Miss Susannah Logan felt very fortunate to have not one but two gentlemen shepherding her through the first London season.

One was the cynical and brilliant Mr. Warwick Jones, whose wit and wealth gave him free entry into society and whose pretended scorn for women was matched only by the sensual intensity of his passion for them.

The other was the handsome and honorable Julian, Viscount Hazelton, whose fierce desire for an unobtainable beauty had led him to financial ruin but could not mar his irresistible, godlike good looks.

Warwick Jones and Julian were good friends until they took the inexperienced Miss Logan in hand…each leading her on a different path of love and passion toward a decision that threatened to intoxicate her flesh…and yield her ripe innocence to the one man whose tantalizing nearness she could no longer resist.]]> 350 Edith Layton 194913587X Kathryn 0 to-read 4.46 1987 Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)
author: Edith Layton
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In the Night Café 22495535
In the vibrant downtown Manhattan art world of the 1960s, where men and women collide in “lucky and unlucky convergences,â€� a series of love affairs has left Joanna Gold, a young photographer, feeling numbed. Then, at yet another party, a painter named Tom Murphy walks up to her. “Why do you hang back?â€� he asks.Ěý
Ěý
Rather than another brief collision, their relationship is the profound and ecstatic love each had longed to find. But it’s undermined by Tom’s harrowing past—his fatherless childhood, his wartime experiences, and most of all, the loss of the two children he left behind in Florida, along with the powerful red, white, and black paintings he will never set eyes on again.Ěý Tom, both tender and volatile, draws Joanna into the unwinnable struggle against the forces that drive him toward death.
Ěý
Once again, Joyce Johnson brings to life a mythic bohemian world where art is everything and life is as full of intensity and risk as the bold sweep of a painter’s brush across a canvas.
Ěý
A New York Times Notable Book
Excerpted in the ĚýNew Yorker ĚýandĚý Harper’s Magazine]]> 268 Joyce Johnson 1480481297 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.57 1989 In the Night CafĂ©
author: Joyce Johnson
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nightwood 25320279 156 Djuna Barnes 0571322867 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.30 1936 Nightwood
author: Djuna Barnes
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.30
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/17
shelves: to-read
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 Kathryn 0 to-read 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy]]> 18492257
With a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, you'll learn how your prospective customers behave, the problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them. These insights may shake your assumptions, but they'll help you reach the "ah-ha!" moments that inspire truly great products.


Validate or invalidate your hypothesis by talking to the right people
Learn how to conduct successful customer interviews play-by-play
Detect a customer's behaviors, pain points, and constraints
Turn interview insights into Minimum Viable Products to validate what customers will use and buy
Adapt customer development strategies for large companies, conservative industries, and existing products]]> 236 Cindy Alvarez 1449356354 Kathryn 2 4.19 2014 Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy
author: Cindy Alvarez
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2021/06/29
date added: 2021/06/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Brokeback Mountain 1627 Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication of "Brokeback Mountain," and the story was included in Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards. In gorgeous and haunting prose, Proulx limns the difficult, dangerous affair between two cowboys that survives everything but the world's violent intolerance.

]]> 55 Annie Proulx 0743271327 Kathryn 4 novella 4.01 1997 Brokeback Mountain
author: Annie Proulx
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/06/29
shelves: novella
review:
the impossibility of love - a tale as old as time
]]> <![CDATA[The Evil Twin (Sweet Valley High, #100)]]> 292374 339 Francine Pascal 0553298577 Kathryn 0 impressions-of-an-adolescent 3.84 1993 The Evil Twin (Sweet Valley High, #100)
author: Francine Pascal
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: impressions-of-an-adolescent
review:

]]> Private Arrangements 25235462 Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition for ASIN: B007Y9ICN2

For ten years, Lord and Lady Tremaine have kept the width of the Atlantic Ocean between them. It is an arrangement much lauded by London Society: What a perfectly civilized way to conduct a marriage!

But it wasn't always that way. When Gigi Rowland first met Camden Saybrook, the handsome, candid, intelligent future duke was the answer to all her problems. Their connection was immediate--two young people meant for each other. But their marriage was doomed the moment she decided she must have him, by fair means or foul, and when Camden discovered her deceit, all happiness perished.

Now Gigi wants a divorce. Camden returns from America with an audacious proposal: give him an heir and he'll grant her request. But the overwhelming pleasure of their marriage bed soon makes it apparent that the enterprise is fraught with emotional peril. In an atmosphere thick with mistrust, desire, and incipient hope, they must decide between safeguarding their hearts or rising above the mistakes of the past and forging a new life together.]]> 386 Sherry Thomas Kathryn 4 romance, tearjerker 3.60 2008 Private Arrangements
author: Sherry Thomas
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: romance, tearjerker
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Notorious Rake (Waite, #3)]]> 690064 The Lady and the Libertine

Lord Edmund Waite was everything that Lady Mary Gregg despised in a man. He was lewd, lascivious, mocking—the most notorious and successful rake in the realm. Happily, Mary had nothing to fear from this lord of libertines. A bluestocking like her could never tempt a man whose taste ran to pretty playthings for his pleasures.

How startled Mary was to find herself the object of Lord Waite's determined desires. But even more surprising was her reaction to his shocking advances. How could she remain a lady with this man who knew so well how to make her feel like a woman?]]> 224 Mary Balogh 0451174194 Kathryn 3 regency, romance 3.84 1992 The Notorious Rake (Waite, #3)
author: Mary Balogh
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: regency, romance
review:
It's so ridiculous that I think it's best read as satire/comedy - and I always did like over-the-top self-deprecation, which means this merits something like a 3.5.
]]> The Dream Hunter 802150 String of Pearls. After the funeral of Lady Stanhope, her unacknowledged illegitimate daughter Zenia 25 agrees to guide him across the Arab desert if he will take her to her unknown father Michael Bruce in London. For months, she is a loyal servant, a ragged Bedouin boy. They save each others lives, until the night a prince sees her as a female, and condemns them to death. Historical Note that explorer Stanhope and younger lover Bruce were real.]]> 396 Laura Kinsale 0425207625 Kathryn 3 romance
Laura Kinsale's best stuff (in my mind) usually involve high octane drama and angst between two people caught in some geopolitical struggle from centuries past. This novel actually has that in its best form, which makes whatever comes after the first 3rd so painful to read.]]> 3.74 1994 The Dream Hunter
author: Laura Kinsale
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: romance
review:
A difficult rating, but it's really an average of its 2 parts. The first hundred pages or so are simply the most magical and engrossing I've read in genre fiction in a long time. And then it becomes a bad regency-set melodrama. Truly unfortunate.

Laura Kinsale's best stuff (in my mind) usually involve high octane drama and angst between two people caught in some geopolitical struggle from centuries past. This novel actually has that in its best form, which makes whatever comes after the first 3rd so painful to read.
]]> Antony and Cleopatra 642452
A magnificent drama of passion and war, this riveting play presents the complicated relationship between the seductive, cunning Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Roman leader Mark Antony, a man torn between an empire and love.

This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such

� An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater
•ĚýA special introduction to the play by the editor, Sylvan Barnet
� A selection from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans , the source from which Shakespeare derived Antony and Cleopatra
� Dramatic criticism from Samuel Johnson, A. C. Bradley, John F. Danby, and others
� A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions
� Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable text
� And more...]]> 352 William Shakespeare 0451527135 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.69 1606 Antony and Cleopatra
author: William Shakespeare
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1606
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Second Place 54785558 From the author of the Outline trilogy, a fable of human destiny and decline, enacted in a closed system of intimate, fractured relationships.

A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. His provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally in the intersecting spaces of our internal and external worlds.

With its examination of the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, Rachel Cusk's Second Place is deeply affirming of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.]]> 186 Rachel Cusk 0374279225 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.69 2021 Second Place
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Honor's Splendour 107774 New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood is a fan favorite—a beautiful lady needs rescue from a knight in shining armor, and gets an alpha warrior instead.

In the feuding English court, gentle Lady Madelyne suffered the cruel whims of her ruthless brother, Baron Louddon. Then, in vengeance for a bitter crime, Baron Duncan of Wexton—the Wolf—unleashed his warriors against Louddon. Exquisite Madelyne was the prize he catured...but when he gazed upon the proud beauty, he pledged to protect her with his life. In his rough-hewn castle, Duncan proved true to his honor. But when at last their noble passion conquered them both, she surrendered with all her soul. Now, for love, Madelyne would stand fast...as bravely as her Lord, the powerful Wolf who fought for...Honor’s Splendour.]]> 374 Julie Garwood 0671737821 Kathryn 2 romance 4.21 1987 Honor's Splendour
author: Julie Garwood
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1987
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/06/20
shelves: romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vienna Waltz (Rannoch Fraser Mysteries #1)]]> 9341394 November 1814

Nothing is fair in love and war. . .

With Napoleon Bonaparte exiled to Elba, the elite of Europe have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna--princes, ambassadors, the Russian tsar--negotiating the fate of the Continent by day and flirting and waltzing by night. But on one of those candle-warmed evenings, Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked about woman in Vienna, is found murdered during an ill-timed rendezvous with three of her most powerful conquests. . .

Suzanne Rannoch has tried to ignore rumors that her new husband, Malcolm, is also one of Tatiana's lovers. As a protégé of France's Prince Talleyrand and an attaché for Britain's Lord Castlereagh, Malcolm sets out to investigate the murder. He needs Suzanne's unique skills and knowledge if he is to succeed. The complex dance between husband and wife in the search for the truth tests their marriage, their liberty, and their very lives. No one's secrets are safe, and the future of Europe may hang in the balance. . .

]]> 436 Tracy Grant 0758254237 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.86 2011 Vienna Waltz (Rannoch Fraser Mysteries #1)
author: Tracy Grant
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stone Mattress: Nine Tales 22642472 A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.

In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.]]> 273 Margaret Atwood 0385539126 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.89 2014 Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Betrothed 566328 720 Alessandro Manzoni 014044274X Kathryn 0 to-read 3.88 1827 The Betrothed
author: Alessandro Manzoni
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1827
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 12749 In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way.]]> 468 Marcel Proust 0142437964 Kathryn 4 4.12 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/05
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: french-literature, epic-proportions
review:

]]> Kristin Lavransdatter 6217 Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally's award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.

As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.

With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway's most beloved author, one of the twentieth century's most prodigious and engaged literary minds and, in Nunnally's exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall.

]]> 1144 Sigrid Undset 0143039164 Kathryn 5
One of the things that represent the huge rift between her and Erlend throughout the whole novel is how one stays young, nonchalant, and sometimes selfish while the other dives headfirst into responsibility and purposefulness, to the detriment of one's body. While they came together in the honeymoon period of young love with all its sturm und drang, it was never going to be that way for them again after marriage, when their relationship had finally become true and proper but offered short-lived freedom and a wealth of resentment and irreconcilable differences.

It is not the length that makes this a tough read but its unflinching realism, a rare thing in historical fiction set in the middle ages - the era of knights, courtly love, political intrigue and the usual escapist fodder (for myself). As someone who grew up in a Catholic environment, I've always heard people talk casually about the meaning to all suffering on this world. Surely there's a reason for it or God would not have willed it, they all say. And yet even Undset, a Catholic writing this story with characters whose beliefs are deeply rooted in a much more pious Catholic tradition than we are used to in this day and age, doesn't present religious belief as a solace but as a source of conflict.

"She wished she could be gentle and grateful, fearing and loving God as her father had done. She remembered her father had said that the person who recalls his sins with a humble spirit and bows before the cross of the Lord need never bow his head beneath any earthly unhappiness or injustice." But this is easier said than done and Kristin spends nearly her entire adult life struggling with the consequences of her youthful waywardness, working incessantly to make up for her prior sins and the imperfections of her husband, at a significant cost. A burden or a sense of duty would make her life worth living, it seems. It's not something necessary but it is what she deems right. She, with her own harsh judgement, does not have her husband's relatively easier acceptance of wrongdoing: "And I firmly believe that salvation can be found for many things, for the worst of things, in such a good man's prayers of intercession." It is effectively, the conflict between a wife who cares too much and a husband who cares too little.

As a Pet Shop Boys song goes, "When I look back upon my life, it's always with a sense of shame. I've always been the one to blame." But instead of just having herself to blame, over the years, Kristin shifts the blame over to her husband, who will probably just proclaim, "It's a sin!" with a sense of remorse that he'll try to shrug off with either a dangerous endeavor or retirement to a farm. Perhaps this blame is placed rightfully, but she and various unavoidable circumstances are complicit in the tragedy of their lives as well. Everyone is at the mercy of the whims of nature and of the human mind and body.

Even though I feel the need to look for something light and fluffy to read after all of this, I foresee myself rereading Kristin Lavransdatter many more times in the future.]]> 4.32 1920 Kristin Lavransdatter
author: Sigrid Undset
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1920
rating: 5
read at: 2016/07/25
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: historical-fiction, oh-so-tragic, epic-proportions
review:
Kristin Lavransdatter is a domestic novel that is epic in scope and follows Kristin through childhood, numerous pregnancies, empty nest syndrome, and death. Things look pretty idyllic at first but trouble starts when she loses her blissful innocence the moment she falls in love with Erlend.

One of the things that represent the huge rift between her and Erlend throughout the whole novel is how one stays young, nonchalant, and sometimes selfish while the other dives headfirst into responsibility and purposefulness, to the detriment of one's body. While they came together in the honeymoon period of young love with all its sturm und drang, it was never going to be that way for them again after marriage, when their relationship had finally become true and proper but offered short-lived freedom and a wealth of resentment and irreconcilable differences.

It is not the length that makes this a tough read but its unflinching realism, a rare thing in historical fiction set in the middle ages - the era of knights, courtly love, political intrigue and the usual escapist fodder (for myself). As someone who grew up in a Catholic environment, I've always heard people talk casually about the meaning to all suffering on this world. Surely there's a reason for it or God would not have willed it, they all say. And yet even Undset, a Catholic writing this story with characters whose beliefs are deeply rooted in a much more pious Catholic tradition than we are used to in this day and age, doesn't present religious belief as a solace but as a source of conflict.

"She wished she could be gentle and grateful, fearing and loving God as her father had done. She remembered her father had said that the person who recalls his sins with a humble spirit and bows before the cross of the Lord need never bow his head beneath any earthly unhappiness or injustice." But this is easier said than done and Kristin spends nearly her entire adult life struggling with the consequences of her youthful waywardness, working incessantly to make up for her prior sins and the imperfections of her husband, at a significant cost. A burden or a sense of duty would make her life worth living, it seems. It's not something necessary but it is what she deems right. She, with her own harsh judgement, does not have her husband's relatively easier acceptance of wrongdoing: "And I firmly believe that salvation can be found for many things, for the worst of things, in such a good man's prayers of intercession." It is effectively, the conflict between a wife who cares too much and a husband who cares too little.

As a Pet Shop Boys song goes, "When I look back upon my life, it's always with a sense of shame. I've always been the one to blame." But instead of just having herself to blame, over the years, Kristin shifts the blame over to her husband, who will probably just proclaim, "It's a sin!" with a sense of remorse that he'll try to shrug off with either a dangerous endeavor or retirement to a farm. Perhaps this blame is placed rightfully, but she and various unavoidable circumstances are complicit in the tragedy of their lives as well. Everyone is at the mercy of the whims of nature and of the human mind and body.

Even though I feel the need to look for something light and fluffy to read after all of this, I foresee myself rereading Kristin Lavransdatter many more times in the future.
]]> The Weather in the Streets 1768393 Invitation to the Waltz left off, The Weather in the Streets shows us Olivia Curtis ten years older, a failed marriage behind her, thinner, sadder, and apprently not much wiser. A chance encounter on a train with a man who enchanted her as a teenager leads to a forbidden love affair and a new world of secret meetings, brief phone calls, and snatched liaisons in anonymous hotel rooms. Years ahead of its time when first published, this subtle and powerful novel shocked even the most stalwart Lehmann fans with its searing honesty and passionate portrayal of clandestine love.]]> 372 Rosamond Lehmann 1844083063 Kathryn 5 oh-so-tragic 3.98 1936 The Weather in the Streets
author: Rosamond Lehmann
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: oh-so-tragic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Young Blood (No Better Angels #4)]]> 28817703
Sabine Banchory is a sensible, intelligent, and unhappily married woman. She was once a dutiful young lady but years spent trying to curb her husband’s excesses have hardened her heart.

She’ll have no trouble resisting the charms of the notorious rake, the Earl of Kingston. One despicable wastrel in her life is quite enough, thank you very much.

Seducing the coldly beautiful Sabine won’t be a challenge for Kingston. It’s true that she slaps him on the face soon after they’re introduced but all relationships have to start somewhere. With the right attention, she’ll fall into his bed and insist she’d come up with the plan.

A terrible crime interrupts this game of cat and mouse. Caught in its wake, Sabine and Kingston are forced to rely on one another. To trust one another. And, if they dare, to build a loving future together.]]> 310 Erin Satie 1942457081 Kathryn 4 romance 3.87 2016 The Young Blood (No Better Angels #4)
author: Erin Satie
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: romance
review:
The first 2/3 of it alone puts it clear into the ranks of into those 'greats' (think Black Silk), but then it just tapers off. Perhaps Erin Satie isn't as into angst, big reveals, great misunderstandings as I am (we all know that's been done to death) but how I wish there was much more at the end... but I can't really think of what it should be.
]]> The Convenient Marriage 32106 272 Georgette Heyer 0099474425 Kathryn 3 regency 3.63 1934 The Convenient Marriage
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: regency
review:

]]> The Idea of Justice 6610623
The transcendental theory of justice, the subject of Sen's analysis, flourished in the Enlightenment and has proponents among some of the most distinguished philosophers of our day; it is concerned with identifying perfectly just social arrangements, defining the nature of the perfectly just society. The approach Sen favors, on the other hand, focuses on the comparative judgments of what is "more" or "less" just, and on the comparative merits of the different societies that actually emerge from certain institutions and social interactions.

At the heart of Sen's argument is a respect for reasoned differences in our understanding of what a "just society" really is. People of different persuasions--for example, utilitarians, economic egalitarians, labor right theorists, no--nonsense libertarians--might each reasonably see a clear and straightforward resolution to questions of justice; and yet, these clear and straightforward resolutions would be completely different. In light of this, Sen argues for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives that we inevitably face.]]> 496 Amartya Sen 0674036131 Kathryn 2 4.00 2009 The Idea of Justice
author: Amartya Sen
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine]]> 26889576 The #1 New York Times bestseller: "It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading."—Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.




Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.]]> 291 Michael Lewis 039335315X Kathryn 3 economics 4.34 2010 The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
author: Michael Lewis
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: economics
review:

]]> Crown in Candlelight 19179853 Katherine of Valois, raised amidst the madness and lechery of the French court, wed to a conquering English king, Henry V, and now alone and afraid in a world of treachery and violence. Owen Tudor, incredibly handsome and gifted, a poet and singer by nature, a warrior by necessity, and now a man ready to risk life for love. Theirs was a passion too perilous to reveal and too fiery to be long restrained or concealed...]]> 420 Rosemary Hawley Jarman 0752499378 Kathryn 3
There are some brilliant parts and some tedious parts. Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor seem merely like people who weren't particularly great in life but were notable by virtue of circumstance, pieces in a cog. Still, the use of the Welsh setting and its legends was fantastic anyway.

And once again, Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt steal the spotlight.

The great challenge of writing historical fiction (with a romantic leaning) seems to be balancing the interior with the exterior. While I sometimes think that Jarman sacrifices clarity in order to play around with prose and really embrace romanticism, it's a style that I've grown to like in this book, although Part 1 was rather weak compared to the later ones.]]> 3.71 1978 Crown in Candlelight
author: Rosemary Hawley Jarman
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2016/07/12
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: historical-fiction, plantagenets
review:
I would say this is a story of people trying to find some light in a dark and desperate world of warring and political intrigue, which is why the prose tends to get too overwrought, where nice things just seem so magical and characters hold on to prophesies like it's the only thing they have left. Love is a concept so often used in this book, possibly to contrast with the circumstances that seem so devoid of it. Like I mentioned, the "supernatural" element can seem too much, but this is the time period where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake and that says a great many things about people's beliefs and motivations. It seemed that the closer you were to the supernatural and the primal, the closer you were to what truly matters.

There are some brilliant parts and some tedious parts. Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor seem merely like people who weren't particularly great in life but were notable by virtue of circumstance, pieces in a cog. Still, the use of the Welsh setting and its legends was fantastic anyway.

And once again, Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt steal the spotlight.

The great challenge of writing historical fiction (with a romantic leaning) seems to be balancing the interior with the exterior. While I sometimes think that Jarman sacrifices clarity in order to play around with prose and really embrace romanticism, it's a style that I've grown to like in this book, although Part 1 was rather weak compared to the later ones.
]]> The Portrait of a Lady 264
]]> 797 Henry James 0141439637 Kathryn 5 epic-proportions
Such sheer emotional power contained in its depths. It's canonical for a reason.

I read it at 30, during a time when life was at a standstill and there were no great events nor adventures to be had, and after having lived the last decade pursuing the very same things Isabel Archer did through the novel. And what can I say, I'm left with nearly the same feeling as the character concerned in the ending:

"Look here, Mr. Goodwood,� she said; “just you wait!�

On which he looked up at her—but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience."

Indeed, there are regrets to be gotten from the past, but does this now mean we now have the power to change our future, and it only gets better? Well, who knows... things are quite a bit more complicated than that.]]> 3.79 1881 The Portrait of a Lady
author: Henry James
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1881
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/30
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves: epic-proportions
review:
Only took a pandemic for me to finish this one.

Such sheer emotional power contained in its depths. It's canonical for a reason.

I read it at 30, during a time when life was at a standstill and there were no great events nor adventures to be had, and after having lived the last decade pursuing the very same things Isabel Archer did through the novel. And what can I say, I'm left with nearly the same feeling as the character concerned in the ending:

"Look here, Mr. Goodwood,� she said; “just you wait!�

On which he looked up at her—but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience."

Indeed, there are regrets to be gotten from the past, but does this now mean we now have the power to change our future, and it only gets better? Well, who knows... things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
]]> <![CDATA[A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggert Family, #13)]]> 73385 A Knight in Shining Armor Jude Deveraux's beloved bestseller has captivated readers the world over; now in a special edition featuring new material, this timeless love story greets a new generation. Abandoned by her lover, thoroughly modern Dougless Montgomery finds herself alone and brokenhearted in an old English church. She never dreamed that a love more powerful than time awaited her there...until Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck, a sixteenth-century knight, appeared. Drawn to him by a bond so sudden and compelling that it defied reason, Dougless knew that Nicholas was nothing less than a a man who would not seek to change her, who found her perfect just as she was. But she could not know how strong were the chains that tied them to the past -- or the grand adventure that lay before them.]]> 464 Jude Deveraux 0743457269 Kathryn 3 4.20 1989 A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggert Family, #13)
author: Jude Deveraux
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/06/01
shelves: romance, impressions-of-an-adolescent
review:

]]> The Old Wives' Tale 2277053
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 615 Arnold Bennett 0141442115 Kathryn 0 to-read 3.99 1908 The Old Wives' Tale
author: Arnold Bennett
name: Kathryn
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism]]> 13187377
Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a newĚýperiod of transition. In Less Than Nothing, the product of a career-long focus onĚýthe part of its author, Slavoj Ĺ˝iĹľek argues it is imperative we not simply return toĚýHegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitationsĚýby being even more Hegelian than the master himself. Such an approach notĚýonly enables Ĺ˝iĹľek to diagnose our present condition, but also to engage in aĚýcritical dialogue with key strands of contemporary thought—Heidegger, Badiou,Ěýspeculative realism, quantum physics, and cognitive sciences. Modernity willĚýbegin and end with Hegel.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 1056 Slavoj Žižek 1844678970 Kathryn 0 4.15 2012 Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism
author: Slavoj Žižek
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/14
date added: 2021/02/14
shelves: currently-reading, philosophical-loves
review:

]]> Madame Bovary 7945374 A literary event: one of the most celebrated novels ever written, in a magnificent new translation.

Seven years ago, the incomparable Lydia Davis brought us an award- winning, rapturously reviewed new translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way that was hailed as "clear and true to the music of the original" (Los Angeles Times) and "a work of creation in its own right" (Claire Messud, Newsday). Now she turns her gifts to the book that defined the novel as an art form.

When Emma Rouault marries dull, provincial doctor Charles Bovary, her dreams of an elegant and passionate life crumble. She escapes into sentimental novels but finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. She spends lavishly and embarks on a series of disappointing affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, Emma takes drastic action with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was embraced by bourgeois women who claimed it spoke to the frustrations of their lives. Davis's landmark translation gives new life in English to Flaubert's masterwork.]]> 384 Gustave Flaubert 0670022071 Kathryn 4 french-literature 4.00 1856 Madame Bovary
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Kathryn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1856
rating: 4
read at: 2018/10/27
date added: 2020/10/10
shelves: french-literature
review:
I don't think I could bear to read this again - but in a good way.
]]>