viola's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 20:11:50 -0700 60 viola's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 viola 2 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: viola
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Time Thief (The Gideon Trilogy, #2)]]> 833332
An accident with an antigravity machine catapulted Peter Schock and Kate Dyer back to 1763. A bungled rescue attempt leaves Peter stranded in the eighteenth century while a terrifying villain, the Tar Man, takes his place and explodes onto twenty-first-century London. Concerned about the potentially catastrophic effects of time travel, the NASA scientists responsible for the situation question whether it is right to rescue Peter. Kate decides to take matters into her own hands, but things don't go as planned. Soon the physical effects of time travel begin to have a disturbing effect on her. Meanwhile, in our century, the Tar Man wreaks havoc in a city whose police force is powerless to stop him.Set against a backdrop of contemporary London and revolutionary France, The Time Thief is the sequel to the acclaimed The Time Travelers.]]> 488 Linda Buckley-Archer 1416915273 viola 3 2008, audio 3.92 2007 The Time Thief (The Gideon Trilogy, #2)
author: Linda Buckley-Archer
name: viola
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2008/06/12
date added: 2023/07/25
shelves: 2008, audio
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Policy Process: A Practical Guide for Natural Resources Professionals]]> 8847950
Susan G. Clark begins by describing the challenges faced by natural resources professionals. She then explains how the substance and process of policy analysis and decision making can be improved by using a policy sciences framework that takes into account biological, social, political, and institutional considerations. Finally she reflects on how issues of human rights and morality should affect natural resources management and policy analysis. The book is very user-friendly.

]]> 224 Tim W. Clark 0300090110 viola 4 4.00 2002 The Policy Process: A Practical Guide for Natural Resources Professionals
author: Tim W. Clark
name: viola
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/10/27
shelves: erudite, grad-school, own, 2010
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal]]> 16193688
In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern “three squares� emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual—as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result.

The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares, also explains how Americans� eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.]]> 344 Abigail Carroll 0465025528 viola 0 to-read 3.50 2012 Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal
author: Abigail Carroll
name: viola
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tabula Rasa (Tabula Rasa, #1) 19535998 Maybe it’s true. Maybe I’m here because I’m a murderer.

Sarah has a rare chance at a new life. That’s what the doctors tell her. She is undergoing a cutting-edge procedure that will render her a tabula rasa—a blank slate. Her troubled past is being removed memory by memory.

But when her final surgery is interrupted and a team of elite soldiers invades the isolated hospital under the cover of a blizzard, their mission is clear: wipe Sarah out of existence.

Why would they bother with a teen delinquent unless there’s something more to her past? Something someone doesn’t want to ever see the light of day?

Familiar halls become a dangerous maze as Sarah teams up with a computer hacker who’s determined to bring down the hospital for his own reasons. The two try to piece together who she is and why someone wants her erased.

And this time she won’t be silenced.]]> 340 Kristen Lippert-Martin 1606845187 viola 0 to-read 3.70 2014 Tabula Rasa (Tabula Rasa, #1)
author: Kristen Lippert-Martin
name: viola
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Norton Critical Editions)]]> 52358 The Observer) is combined with first-rate annotation. No reading knowledge of Old English is assumed. Heaney’s clear and insightful introduction to Beowulf provides students with an understanding of both the poem’s history in the canon and Heaney’s own translation process.]]> 256 Seamus Heaney 0393975800 viola 2 3.75 1000 Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Norton Critical Editions)
author: Seamus Heaney
name: viola
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1000
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son]]> 88362 White Like Me, Tim Wise offers a highly personal examination of the ways in which racial privilege shapes the lives of most white Americans, overtly racist or not, to the detriment of people of color, themselves, and society. The book shows the breadth and depth of the phenomenon within institutions such as education, employment, housing, criminal justice, and healthcare. By critically assessing the magnitude of racial privilege and its enormous costs, Wise provides a rich memoir that will inspire activists, educators, or anyone interested in understanding the way that race continues to shape the experiences of people in the U.S. Using stories instead of stale statistics, Wise weaves a narrative that is at once readable and scholarly, analytical and accessible.]]> 250 Tim Wise 1932360689 viola 3 4.10 2004 White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
author: Tim Wise
name: viola
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2016/01/05
date added: 2016/01/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Requiem (Delirium, #3) 9593913 Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight. After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven. Pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels.

As Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain of the Wilds, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.Requiem is told from the perspectives of both Lena and her friend Hana. They live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.]]> 391 Lauren Oliver 0062014536 viola 5 3.73 2013 Requiem (Delirium, #3)
author: Lauren Oliver
name: viola
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Vanishing Girls 22465597
When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.]]> 357 Lauren Oliver 0062224107 viola 0 to-read 3.57 2015 Vanishing Girls
author: Lauren Oliver
name: viola
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Panic (Panic, #1) 17565845
Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.

Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game, he’s sure of it. But what he doesn't know is that he’s not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for.

For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them—and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most.]]> 408 Lauren Oliver 0062014552 viola 5 3.56 2014 Panic (Panic, #1)
author: Lauren Oliver
name: viola
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Fade (The Darkest Minds, #2)]]> 16150830
When Ruby is entrusted with an explosive secret, she must embark on her most dangerous mission yet: leaving the Children’s League behind. Crucial information about the disease that killed most of America’s children—and turned Ruby and the others who lived into feared and hated outcasts—has survived every attempt to destroy it. But the truth is only saved in one place: a flashdrive in the hands of Liam Stewart, the boy Ruby once believed was her future—and who now wouldn’t recognize her.

As Ruby sets out across a desperate, lawless country to find Liam—and answers about the catastrophe that has ripped both her life and America apart—she is torn between old friends and the promise she made to serve the League. Ruby will do anything to protect the people she loves. But what if winning the war means losing herself?]]> 507 Alexandra Bracken 1423157516 viola 4 4.21 2013 Never Fade (The Darkest Minds, #2)
author: Alexandra Bracken
name: viola
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1)]]> 10576365
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.]]> 488 Alexandra Bracken 1423157370 viola 5 4.17 2012 The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1)
author: Alexandra Bracken
name: viola
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Origin (Corpus, #1) 13455112
Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia's origin―a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost.]]> 395 Jessica Khoury 1595145958 viola 3 3.90 2012 Origin (Corpus, #1)
author: Jessica Khoury
name: viola
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Everything, Everything 18692431
But then one day, a moving truck arrives. New next door neighbors. I look out the window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black t-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. I want to learn everything about him, and I do. I learn that he is funny and fierce. I learn that his eyes are Atlantic Ocean-blue and that his vice is stealing silverware. I learn that when I talk to him, my whole world opens up, and I feel myself starting to change—starting to want things. To want out of my bubble. To want everything, everything the world has to offer.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.]]> 312 Nicola Yoon 0553496646 viola 5 3.96 2015 Everything, Everything
author: Nicola Yoon
name: viola
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Traveller of the Century 13345780
Stuck indefinitely in Wandernburg until his debate with the organ-grinder is concluded, he begins to meet the various characters who populate the town, including a young freethinker named Sophie. Though she is engaged to be married, Sophie and Hans begin a relationship that defies contemporary mores about female sexuality and what can and cannot be said about it.

Traveller of the Century is a deeply intellectual novel, chock-full of discussions about philosophy, history, literature, love and translation. It is a book that looks to the past in order to have us reconsider the conflicts of our present. The winner of Spain’s prestigious Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, Traveller of the Century marks the English-language debut of Andrés Neuman, a writer described by Roberto Bolaño as being “touched by grace.”]]> 584 Andrés Neuman 1906548668 viola 0 to-read 3.90 2009 Traveller of the Century
author: Andrés Neuman
name: viola
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Queen Sugar 18114067
Why exactly Charley Bordelon’s late father left her eight hundred sprawling acres of sugarcane land in rural Louisiana is as mysterious as it was generous. Recognizing this as a chance to start over, Charley and her eleven-year-old daughter, Micah, say good-bye to Los Angeles.

They arrive just in time for growing season but no amount of planning can prepare Charley for a Louisiana that’s mired in the past: as her judgmental but big-hearted grandmother tells her, cane farming is always going to be a white man’s business. As the sweltering summer unfolds, Charley must balance the overwhelming challenges of her farm with the demands of a homesick daughter, a bitter and troubled brother, and the startling desires of her own heart.

Penguin has a rich tradition of publishing strong Southern debut fiction—from Sue Monk Kidd to Kathryn Stockett to Beth Hoffman. In Queen Sugar, we now have a debut from the African American point of view. Stirring in its storytelling of one woman against the odds and intimate in its exploration of the complexities of contemporary southern life, Queen Sugar is an unforgettable tale of endurance and hope.]]> 372 Natalie Baszile 0670026131 viola 0 to-read 3.70 2014 Queen Sugar
author: Natalie Baszile
name: viola
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Americanah 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie viola 0 to-read 4.32 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: viola
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Delirium (Delirium, #1) 11614718 There is an alternate cover edition for this ISBN13 here.

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistake.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the "Wilds" who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?]]> 441 Lauren Oliver 0061726834 viola 4 3.94 2011 Delirium (Delirium, #1)
author: Lauren Oliver
name: viola
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/05/25
shelves:
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]]> Pandemonium (Delirium, #2) 9593911 Zrozpaczona przystępuje do ruchu oporu, by walczyć o wolność i [miłość]. Na jej drodze staje tajemniczy Julian.

Czy można pokochać największego wroga?]]> 375 Lauren Oliver 006197806X viola 4 4.03 2012 Pandemonium (Delirium, #2)
author: Lauren Oliver
name: viola
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2015/05/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Bad Feminist 18813642 Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

Feel me, see me, hear me, reach me --
Peculiar benefits --
Typical first year professor --
To scratch, claw or grope clumsily or frantically --
How to be friends with another woman --
Girls, girls, girls --
I once was Miss America --
Garish, glorious spectacles --
Not here to make friends --
How we all lose --
Reaching for catharsis : getting fat right (or wrong) and Diana Spechler's Skinny --
The smooth surfaces of idyll --
The careless language of sexual violence --
What we hunger for --
The illusion of safety/the safety of illusion --
The spectacle of broken men --
A tale of three coming out stories --
Beyond the measure of men --
Some jokes are funnier than others --
Dear young ladies who love Chris Brown --
So much they would let him beat them --
Blurred lines, indeed --
The trouble with Prince Charming, or, He who trespassed against us --
The solace of preparing fried foods and other quaint remembrances from 1960s Mississippi : thoughts on The help --
Surviving Django --
Beyond the struggle narrative --
The morality of Tyler Perry --
The last day of a young black man --
When less is more --
The politics of respectability --
When Twitter does what journalism cannot --
The alienable rights of women --
Holding out for a hero --
A tale of two profiles --
The racism we all carry --
Tragedy, call, compassion, response --
Bad feminist : take one --
Bad feminist : take two]]> 320 Roxane Gay 0062282719 viola 4 3.93 2014 Bad Feminist
author: Roxane Gay
name: viola
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/05/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

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

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 viola 0 to-read 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: viola
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap]]> 17834864
In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends--growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration--come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime--but it's impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.]]> 416 Matt Taibbi 081299342X viola 0 to-read 4.24 2014 The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
author: Matt Taibbi
name: viola
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Orange Is the New Black 6314763 322 Piper Kerman 0385523386 viola 3 3.71 2010 Orange Is the New Black
author: Piper Kerman
name: viola
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/04/11
shelves:
review:

]]> H is for Hawk 18803640
When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for ÂŁ800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, "H is for Hawk" is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for "The Once and Future King." It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.]]> 300 Helen Macdonald 0224097008 viola 0 to-read 3.73 2014 H is for Hawk
author: Helen Macdonald
name: viola
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (The Twilight Saga, #3.5)]]> 7937462 FANS OF THE TWILIGHT SAGA WILL BE ENTHRALLED BY THIS RIVETING STORY OF BREE TANNER, A CHARACTER FIRST INTRODUCED IN ECLIPSE, AND THE DARKER SIDE OF THE NEWBORN VAMPIRE WORLD SHE INHABITS.

BREE TANNER CAN BARELY REMEMBER LIFE before she had uncannily powerful senses, superhuman reflexes, and unstoppable physical strength. Life before she had a relentless thirst for blood... life before she became a vampire.

ALL BREE KNOWS IS THAT LIVING WITH HER fellow newborns has few certainties and even fewer rules: watch your back, don't draw attention to yourself, and above all, make it home by sunrise or die. What she doesn't know: her time as an immortal is quickly running out.

THEN BREE FINDS AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND in Diego, a newborn just as curious as Bree about their mysterious creator, whom they only know as her. As they come to realize that the newborns are pawns in a game larger than anything they could have imagined, Bree and Diego must choose sides and decide whom to trust. But when everything you know about vampires is based on a lie, how do you find the truth?

IN ANOTHER IRRESISTIBLE COMBINATION of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion.]]> 178 Stephenie Meyer 031612558X viola 3 3.52 2009 The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (The Twilight Saga, #3.5)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: viola
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/04/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Passion (Fallen, #3) 9369720
And she has. Over and over again. Throughout time, Luce and Daniel have found each other, only to be painfully torn apart: Luce dead, Daniel left broken and alone. But perhaps it doesn’t need to be that way� .

Luce is certain that something—or someone—in a past life can help her in her present one. So she begins the most important journey of this lifetime� going back eternities to witness firsthand her romances with Daniel� and finally unlock the key to making their love last.

Cam and the legions of angels and Outcasts are desperate to catch Luce, but none are as frantic as Daniel. He chases Luce through their shared pasts, terrified of what might happen if she rewrites history.

Because their romance for the ages could go up in flames� forever.]]> 420 Lauren Kate 0385739168 viola 2 3.87 2011 Passion (Fallen, #3)
author: Lauren Kate
name: viola
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/04/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Torment (Fallen, #2) 7740152
That’s what it’s like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel. It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts—immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn’t told her everything. He’s hiding something—something dangerous. What if Daniel’s version of the past isn’t actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else?]]> 452 Lauren Kate 0385739141 viola 2 3.86 2010 Torment (Fallen, #2)
author: Lauren Kate
name: viola
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/04/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Fallen (Fallen, #1) 6487308
Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce—and goes out of his way to make that very clear—she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret� even if it kills her.]]> 464 Lauren Kate 0385738935 viola 2 3.73 2009 Fallen (Fallen, #1)
author: Lauren Kate
name: viola
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/04/02
shelves:
review:
Realizing my work stress level is directly and negatively correlated with the quality of reading I'm doing. The past few weeks: very high stress, very terrible books.
]]> Still Alice 2153405 Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...]]> 292 Lisa Genova 0595440096 viola 0 to-read 4.32 2007 Still Alice
author: Lisa Genova
name: viola
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100]]> 8492907 Imagine, if you can, the world in the year 2100.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible—gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics.

In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on a cushion of air, coasting on powerful magnetic fields and ushering in the age of magnetism.

Using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ of the body and cure genetic diseases. Millions of tiny DNA sensors and nanoparticles patrolling our blood cells will silently scan our bodies for the first sign of illness, while rapid advances in genetic research will enable us to slow down or maybe even reverse the aging process, allowing human life spans to increase dramatically.

In space, radically new ships—needle-sized vessels using laser propulsion—could replace the expensive chemical rockets of today and perhaps visit nearby stars. Advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth's atmosphere at the push of a button.

But these astonishing revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. Kaku also discusses emotional robots, antimatter rockets, X-ray vision, and the ability to create new life-forms, and he considers the development of the world economy. He addresses the key questions: Who are the winner and losers of the future? Who will have jobs, and which nations will prosper?

All the while, Kaku illuminates the rigorous scientific principles, examining the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Synthesizing a vast amount of information to construct an exciting look at the years leading up to 2100, Physics of the Future is a thrilling, wondrous ride through the next 100 years of breathtaking scientific revolution. (From the Hardcover Edition)

(Duration: 15:39:15)]]> 416 Michio Kaku 0385530803 viola 5 4.01 2011 Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
author: Michio Kaku
name: viola
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> Every Day (Every Day, #1) 13262783 Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone A wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.]]> 322 David Levithan 0307931889 viola 5 3.91 2012 Every Day (Every Day, #1)
author: David Levithan
name: viola
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/03/24
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Great idea, well executed, and manages to cover both race as a social construct, sexual orientation, and genderqueer-ness. Still mostly a romance-y YA piece, but possibly a great first read for a YA starting to think more critically about this world we live in. Loved it.
]]> <![CDATA[Bradt Eccentric America: All That's Weird and Wacky in the USA (Bradt Travel Guides)]]> 153677
This guide
*The biggest, the best, the wackiest, and the weirdest of America's people and places
*Almost a thousand festivals, attractions, tours, shopping, restaurants, hotels, and eccentric environments
*Region-by-region events, places to visit, and quirky places to sleep and eat
*Peculiar pastimes, eccentric inventors, and collectors of curiosities
*The nuts and bolts on contacts, transportation, Web sites, and regional maps]]> 314 Jan Friedman 1841620904 viola 0 erudite, own, 2010 3.93 2001 Bradt Eccentric America: All That's Weird and Wacky in the USA (Bradt Travel Guides)
author: Jan Friedman
name: viola
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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shelves: erudite, own, 2010
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]]> <![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 259028 447 Erik Larson 0375725601 viola 4 audio, 2008 3.97 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: viola
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2015/03/09
shelves: audio, 2008
review:

]]> Bad Kid: A Memoir 23131101
In the summer of 1989, three Goth kids crossed a street in San Antonio. They had no idea that a deeply confused fourteen-year-old boy was watching. Their dyed hair, fishnets, and eyeliner were his first evidence of another world—a place he desperately wanted to go. He just had no idea how to get there.

Somehow David Crabb had convinced himself that every guy preferred French-braiding his girlfriend’s hair to making out, and that the funny feelings he got watching Silver Spoons and Growing Pains had nothing to do with Ricky Schroeder or Kirk Cameron. But discovering George Michael’s Faith confirmed for David what every bully already knew: he was gay. Surviving high school, with its gym classes, locker rooms, and naked, glistening senior guys, would require impossible feats of denial.

What saved him was finding a group of outlandish friends who reveled in being outsiders. David found himself enmeshed with misfits: wearing black, cutting class, staying out all night, drinking, tripping, chain-smoking, idolizing The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, and Joy Division—and learning lessons about life and love along the way.

Richly detailed with 80s pop-culture, and including black and white photos throughout, Bad Kid is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is poignant. Crabb’s journey through adolescence captures the essence of every person’s struggle to understand his or her true self.]]> 352 David Crabb 0062371282 viola 0 to-read 4.11 2015 Bad Kid: A Memoir
author: David Crabb
name: viola
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
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]]> Unfamiliar Fishes 8857310
Of all the countries the United States invaded or colonized in 1898, Vowell considers the story of the Americanization of Hawaii to be the most intriguing. From the arrival of the New England missionaries in 1820, who came to Christianize the local heathen, to the coup d'etat led by the missionaries' sons in 1893, overthrowing the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American annexation feature a cast of beguiling if often appalling or tragic characters. Whalers who will fire cannons at the Bible-thumpers denying them their god-given right to whores. An incestuous princess pulled between her new god and her brother-husband. Sugar barons, con men, Theodore Roosevelt, and the last Hawaiian queen, a songwriter whose sentimental ode "Aloha 'Oe" serenaded the first Hawaii-born president of the United States during his 2009 inaugural parade.

With Vowell's trademark wry insights and reporting, she lights out to discover the odd, emblematic, and exceptional history of the fiftieth state. In examining the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn, she finds America again, warts and all.]]> 238 Sarah Vowell 1594487871 viola 3 erudite 3.62 2011 Unfamiliar Fishes
author: Sarah Vowell
name: viola
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2015/02/03
date added: 2015/02/03
shelves: erudite
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]]> A Beauty 20342579
In a drought-ridden Saskatchewan of the 1930s, self-possessed, enigmatic Elena Huhtala finds her self living alone, a young Finnish woman in a community of Swedes in the small village of Trevna. Her mother has been dead for many years, and her father, burdened by the hardships of drought, has disappeared, and the eighteen-year-old is an object of pity and charity in her community. But when a stranger shows up at a country dance, Elena needs only one look and one dance before jumping into his Lincoln Roadster, leaving the town and its shocked inhabitants behind. What follows is a trip through the prairie towns, their dusty streets, shabby hotel rooms, surrounded by dry fields that stretch out vastly, waiting for rain. Elena's journey uncovers the individual stories of an unforgettable group of people, all of whom are in one way or another affected by her seductive yet innocent presence. At the centre is Ruth, a girl whose life becomes changed in unexpected ways. She and the girl Elena, distanced and apart, form a strange bond that will come to haunt the decades for them both.

Written in luminous prose, threaded through with a sardonic wit and deep wisdoms, A Beauty is at one time lyrical and tough, moving and mysterious, a captivating tale of a woman who, without intending to, touches many lives, and sometimes alters them forever.]]> 336 Connie Gault 0771036558 viola 0 to-read 3.38 2015 A Beauty
author: Connie Gault
name: viola
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2015
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]]> Black Dog Summer 22609380 The Lovely Bones and Little Bee, a mother watches from the afterlife as her teenage daughter recovers amidst the startling dysfunction of her extended family.

A small, bright thread of a story weaves out from the moment of my passing and seems to tether me to this place. Perhaps this is why I have not left yet. Perhaps I have no choice but to follow the story to its end.

Compulsively readable and stylistically stunning, Black Dog Summer begins with a murder, a farmstead massacre, in the South African bush. Thirty-eight-year-old Sally is but one of the victims. Her life brutally cut short, she narrates from her vantage point in the afterlife and watches as her sister, Adele, her brother-in-law and unrequited love Liam, her niece Bryony, and her teenage daughter, Gigi, begin to make sense of the tragedy.

A suspenseful drama focusing on marriage and fidelity, sisterhood, and the fractious bond between mothers and daughters, Black Dog Summer asks: In the wake of tragedy, where does all that dark energy linger? The youngest characters, Bryony and Gigi, cousins who are now brought together after Sally&#8217;s murder, are forced into sharing a bedroom. Bryony becomes confused and frightened by the violent energy stirred up and awakened by the massacre, while Gigi is unable to see beyond her deep grief and guilt. But they are not the only ones aware of the lurking darkness. Next door lives Lesedi, a reluctant witchdoctor who hides her mystical connection with the dead behind the fa&#231;ade of their affluent Johannesburg suburb.

As Gigi finally begins to emerge from her grief, the fragile healing process is derailed when she receives some shattering news, and in a mistaken effort to protect her cousin, puts Bryony&#8217;s life in imminent danger. Now Sally must find a way to prevent her daughter from making a mistake that could destroy the lives of all who are left behind.

Gorgeously written, with a pace that will leave readers breathless, Black Dog Summer introduces a brilliant new voice in fiction.]]> 256 Miranda Sherry 1476779023 viola 0 to-read 3.54 2014 Black Dog Summer
author: Miranda Sherry
name: viola
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking]]> 16002176 fancy is always best. After a childhood spent dining everywhere from Le Pavillion to La Grenouille, she devoted her life to all things gastronomical, from the rare game birds she served at elaborate dinner parties in an apartment so tiny that guests couldn't turn around to the eight timbale molds she bought while working at Dean & DeLuca, just so she could make tall food.

But love does strange things to people, and when Elissa met Susan � a small-town Connecticut Yankee with parsimonious tendencies and a devotion to simple living � it would change Elissa's relationship with food, and the people who taught her about it, forever. With tender and often hilarious honesty (and 27 delicious recipes), Poor Man's Feast is a universal tale of finding sustenance and peace in a world of excess and inauthenticity, and shows us how all our stories are inextricably bound up with what, and how, we feed ourselves and those we love.]]> 288 Elissa Altman 1452107599 viola 4 3.61 2013 Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking
author: Elissa Altman
name: viola
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story]]> 22537675
"I had nightmares, flashbacks. I dissociated... Changes in self-perception and hallucinations-those are some of my other symptoms. You are poison , I chanted silently to myself. And your poison is contagious ."
So begins Mac McClelland's powerful, unforgettable memoir, Irritable Hearts . When thirty-year-old, award-winning human rights journalist Mac McClelland left Haiti after reporting on the devastating earthquake of 2010, she never imagined how the assignment would irrevocably affect her own life. Back home in California, McClelland cannot stop reliving vivid scenes of violence. She is plagued by waking terrors, violent fantasies, and crippling emotional breakdowns. She can't sleep or stop crying. Her life in shambles, it becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her bewilderment about this sudden loss of control is magnified by the intensity of her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Port-au-Prince and with whom she connected instantly and deeply. With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to investigating the damage in her own mind and repairing her broken psyche. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture's history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country's top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families. McClelland discovers she is far from while we frequently associate PTSD with wartime combat, it is more often caused by other manner of trauma and can even be contagious-close proximity to those afflicted can trigger its symptoms. As she confronts the realities of her diagnosis, she opens up to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment. Irritable Hearts is a searing, personal medical mystery that unfolds at a breakneck pace. But it is also a romance. McClelland fights desperately to repair her heart so that she can give it to the kind, patient, and compassionate man with whom she wants to share a life. Vivid, suspenseful, tender, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is a remarkable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance. It is a riveting and hopeful story of survival, strength, and love.]]> 320 Mac McClelland 1250052890 viola 0 to-read 3.78 2015 Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story
author: Mac McClelland
name: viola
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2015
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]]> Binary Star 21535375
With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road-trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they've found a direction.

Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.]]> 172 Sarah Gerard 1937512258 viola 0 to-read 3.26 2015 Binary Star
author: Sarah Gerard
name: viola
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> The Sellout 22237161
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.]]> 289 Paul Beatty 0374260508 viola 0 to-read 3.75 2015 The Sellout
author: Paul Beatty
name: viola
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
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]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X viola 0 to-read 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
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average rating: 3.56
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]]> A Reunion of Ghosts 22638315 An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here

A Reunion of Ghosts is the shared confessional of three sisters who have decided to kill themselves at the end of the 20th century, honoring the dark legacy that has haunted their extraordinary family for decades

How do three sisters write a single suicide note?

In the waning days of 1999, the Alter sisters—Lady, Vee, and Delph—finalize their plans to end their lives. Their reasons are not theirs alone; they are the last in a long line of Alters who have killed themselves, beginning with their great-grandmother, the wife of a Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who developed the first poison gas used in World War I and the lethal agent used in Third Reich gas chambers. The chemist himself, their son Richard, and Richard’s children all followed suit.

The childless sisters also define themselves by their own bad luck. Lady, the oldest, never really resumed living after her divorce. Vee is facing cancer’s return. And Delph, the youngest, is resigned to a spinster’s life of stifled dreams. But despite their pain they love each other fiercely, and share a darkly brilliant sense of humor.

As they gather in the ancestral Upper West Side apartment to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic story about four generations of one family—inspired in part by the troubled life of German-Jewish Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of chlorine gas—unfolds. A Reunion of Ghosts is a tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the 20th century.]]> 400 Judith Claire Mitchell 0062355880 viola 0 to-read 3.41 2015 A Reunion of Ghosts
author: Judith Claire Mitchell
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average rating: 3.41
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]]> Find Me 22237149 Find Me, her highly anticipated debut novel—a gripping, imaginative, darkly funny tale of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world.

Joy has no one. She spends her days working the graveyard shift at a grocery store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past. But when a sickness that begins with memory loss and ends with death sweeps the country, Joy, for the first time in her life, seems to have an advantage: she is immune. When Joy’s immunity gains her admittance to a hospital in rural Kansas, she sees a chance to escape her bleak existence. There she submits to peculiar treatments and follows seemingly arbitrary rules, forming cautious bonds with other patients—including her roommate, whom she turns to in the night for comfort, and twin boys who are digging a secret tunnel.

As winter descends, the hospital’s fragile order breaks down and Joy breaks free, embarking on a journey from Kansas to Florida, where she believes she can find her birth mother, the woman who abandoned her as a child. On the road in a devastated America, she encounters mysterious companions, cities turned strange, and one very eerie house. As Joy closes in on Florida, she must confront her own damaged memory and the secrets she has been keeping from herself.]]> 280 Laura van den Berg 0374154716 viola 0 to-read 2.86 2015 Find Me
author: Laura van den Berg
name: viola
average rating: 2.86
book published: 2015
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]]> Delicious Foods 22444789
Delicious Foods tells the gripping story of three unforgettable characters: a mother, her son, and the drug that threatens to destroy them. In Darlene's haunted struggle to reunite with Eddie, and in the efforts of both to triumph over those who would enslave them, Hannaham's daring and shape-shifting prose not only infuses their desperate circumstances with grace and humor, but also wrestles with timeless questions of love and freedom.]]> 371 James Hannaham 0316284947 viola 0 to-read 3.81 2015 Delicious Foods
author: James Hannaham
name: viola
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2015
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]]> <![CDATA[Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites]]> 16071779 Blue Plate Special is a deeply personal narrative in which food becomes the vehicle for exploring a life. Here, novelist Kate Christensen tells her own story, from her unorthodox childhood in 1960s Berkeley as the daughter of a legal activist who ruled the house with his fists to her extraordinary success as a PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author. Hungry not just for food, but for love and a sense of belonging, Christensen writes honestly about her struggle to find the contentment she has always yearned for. A beautifully written account of a knockabout life, full of sorrows, pleasures--and, of course, food--Blue Plate Special is a delicious reading experience.]]> 368 Kate Christensen 0385536267 viola 0 currently-reading 3.37 2013 Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites
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name: viola
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)]]> 17673
From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo “velvet grandmothers� whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.]]> 336 Ellen Meloy 0375708138 viola 0 to-read 4.02 2002 The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
author: Ellen Meloy
name: viola
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2002
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]]> <![CDATA[This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland]]> 112118 This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine.

Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words the Inuit have for ice, befriends a polar bear hunter, and comes to agree with the great Danish-Inuit explorer Knud Rasmussen that “all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes.�

This Cold Heaven is at once a thrilling adventure story and a meditation on the clarity of life at the extreme edge of the world.
]]> 377 Gretel Ehrlich 0679758526 viola 0 to-read 3.95 2001 This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
author: Gretel Ehrlich
name: viola
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
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]]> <![CDATA[The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold]]> 216498
Over the course of a year, Ehrlich experiences firsthand the myriad expressions of cold, giving us marvelous histories of wind, water, snow, and ice, of ocean currents and weather cycles. From Tierra del Fuego in the south to Spitsbergen, east of Greenland, at the very top of the world, she explores how our very consciousness is animated and enlivened by the archaic rhythms and erupting oscillations of weather. We share Ehrlich’s experience of the thrills of cold, but also her What will happen to us if we are “deseasoned�? If winter ends, will we survive?]]> 200 Gretel Ehrlich 1400034353 viola 0 to-read 3.78 2004 The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold
author: Gretel Ehrlich
name: viola
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2004
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]]> <![CDATA[A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1)]]> 3682
It's 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to?]]> 403 Libba Bray 0689875347 viola 3 3.80 2003 A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1)
author: Libba Bray
name: viola
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing]]> 17262126 A celebrated food writer captures the flavors of the Soviet experience in a sweeping, tragicomic, multi-generational memoir that brilliantly illuminates the history and culture of a vanished empire.

Proust had his madeleine; Narnia's Edmund had his Turkish delight. Anya von Bremzen has vobla-rock-hard, salt-cured dried Caspian roach fish. Lovers of vobla risk breaking a tooth or puncturing a gum on the once-popular snack, but for Anya it's transporting. Like kotleti (Soviet burgers) or the festive Salat Olivier, it summons up the complex, bittersweet flavors of life in that vanished Atlantis called the USSR. There, born in 1963 in a Kafkaesque communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at her school, and, like most Soviet citizens, longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy-and, finally, intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother. When she was ten, the two of them fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return.

These days Anya lives in two parallel food universes: one in which she writes about four-star restaurants, the other in which a simple banana-a once a year treat back in the USSR-still holds an almost talismanic sway over her psyche. To make sense of that past, she and her mother decided to eat and cook their way through seven decades of the Soviet experience. Through the meals she and her mother re-create, Anya tells the story of three generations-her grandparents', her mother's, and her own. Her family's stories are embedded in a larger historical epic: of Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II hunger and survival, Stalin's table manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's anti-alcohol policies, and the ultimate collapse of the USSR. And all of it is bound together by Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia, and piercing observations.

This is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses.]]> 339 Anya von Bremzen 0307886816 viola 0 to-read 4.01 2013 Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
author: Anya von Bremzen
name: viola
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution]]> 688663
Perhaps more responsible than anyone for the revolution in the way we eat, cook, and think about food, Alice Waters has “single-handedly chang[ed] the American palate� according to the New York Times . Her simple but inventive dishes focus on a passion for flavor and a reverence for locally produced, seasonal foods.

With an essential repertoire of timeless, approachable recipes chosen to enhance and showcase great ingredients, The Art of Simple Food is an indispensable resource for home cooks. Here you will find Alice’s philosophy on everything from stocking your kitchen, to mastering fundamentals and preparing delicious, seasonal inspired meals all year long. Always true to her philosophy that a perfect meal is one that’s balanced in texture, color, and flavor, Waters helps us embrace the seasons� bounty and make the best choices when selecting ingredients. Fill your market basket with pristine produce, healthful grains, and responsibly raised meat, poultry, and seafood, then embark on a voyage of culinary rediscovery that reminds us that the most gratifying dish is often the least complex.]]> 405 Alice Waters 0307336794 viola 0 to-read 3.94 2007 The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
author: Alice Waters
name: viola
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America]]> 17290919 How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of his essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in Mississippi. In this collection, Laymon deals in depth with his own personal story, which is filled with trials and reflections that illuminate under-appreciated aspects of contemporary American life. New and unexpected in contemporary American writing, Laymon’s voice mixes the colloquial with the acerbic, while sharp insights and blast-furnace heat calls to mind a black 21st-century Mark Twain. Much like Twain, Laymon's writing is steeped in controversial issues both private and public. This collection introduces Laymon as a writer who balances volatile concepts on a razor's edge and chops up much-discussed and often-misunderstood topics with his scathing humor and fresh, unexpected takes on the ongoing absurdities, frivolities, and calamities of American life.]]> 146 Kiese Laymon 1932841776 viola 0 to-read 4.30 2013 How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
author: Kiese Laymon
name: viola
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> Euphoria 18467802 Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives...]]> 256 Lily King 0802122558 viola 3 3.84 2014 Euphoria
author: Lily King
name: viola
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/02
date added: 2015/01/02
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]]> Yes, Chef 13069213
“One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner,Ěý The New York Times
Ěý
It begins with a simple Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.ĚýĚýĚý
Ěý
Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister—all battling tuberculosis—walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba. Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Göteborg, Sweden. It was there that Marcus’s new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken. From a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up.
Ěý
Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson’s career ofĚý “chasing flavors,â€� as he calls it, had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fufilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home.
Ěý
With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures—the price of ambition, in human terms—and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew. Yes, Chef is a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors—one man’s struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world.

Praise for Yes, Chef
Ěý
“Such an interesting life, told with touching modesty and remarkable candor.”—Ruth Reichl
Ěý
“Marcus Samuelsson has an incomparable story, a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style—in the kitchen and on the page. I liked this book so very, very much.”—Gabrielle Hamilton
Ěý
“Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top [this] one.� —The Wall Street Journal
Ěý
“Red Rooster’s arrival in Harlem brought with it a chef who has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American. In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food.”—President Bill Clinton]]> 319 Marcus Samuelsson 0385342608 viola 5 2014 3.83 2012 Yes, Chef
author: Marcus Samuelsson
name: viola
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #11)]]> 21412673 458 Anne Rice 0307962520 viola 3 2014 3.80 2014 Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #11)
author: Anne Rice
name: viola
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2015/01/02
shelves: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America]]> 16158510 A New York Times Notable Book of 2013


Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter’s world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls—while the actual world she’s inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it—from Thomas Jefferson’s celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, Wild Ones discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.

The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange’s metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it’s led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear’s image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.

With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism’s older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.]]> 339 Jon Mooallem 159420442X viola 0 to-read 4.06 2013 Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
author: Jon Mooallem
name: viola
average rating: 4.06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands]]> 22210638 240 Jules Pretty 0801453305 viola 0 to-read 3.27 2014 The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands
author: Jules Pretty
name: viola
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food]]> 20663087
On the production line in American packinghouses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Every year, the chain conveyors that set the pace of slaughter have continually accelerated to keep up with America's growing appetite for processed meat. Acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and soaring recession-era demand for its most famous product, Spam, to probe the state of the meatpacking industry, including the expansion of agribusiness and the effects of immigrant labor on Middle America.

Genoways interviewed scores of industry line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists. He reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point and exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant workers.

The narrative moves across the heartland, from Minnesota, to witness the cut-and-kill operation; to Iowa, to observe breeding and farrowing in massive hog barns; to Nebraska, to see the tense town hall meetings and broken windows caused by the arrival of Hispanic workers; and back to Minnesota, where political refugees from Burma give the workforce the power it needs to fight back.

A work of brilliant reporting, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden cost of the food we eat.]]> 320 Ted Genoways 006228875X viola 0 to-read 3.86 The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food
author: Ted Genoways
name: viola
average rating: 3.86
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]]> <![CDATA[This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works]]> 15818399 In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as positive stress? Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other? Those are just some of the 150 questions that the world's best scientific minds answer with elegant simplicity.

With contributions from Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Taleb, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more, everything is explained in fun, uncomplicated terms that make the most complex concepts easy to comprehend.

]]> 411 John Brockman 0062230174 viola 0 to-read 3.63 2013 This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works
author: John Brockman
name: viola
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Strange New Things]]> 20697435
It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings—his Bible is their "book of strange new things." But Peter is rattled when Bea's letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea's faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter.

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.]]> 500 Michel Faber 055341884X viola 0 to-read 3.65 2014 The Book of Strange New Things
author: Michel Faber
name: viola
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere]]> 21976060
Why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room might be the ultimate adventure? Because in our madly accelerating world, our lives are crowded, chaotic and noisy. There’s never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still.

In The Art of Stillness —a TED Books release—Iyer investigate the lives of people who have made a life seeking from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk. Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. He reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people—even those with no religious commitment—seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or seeking silent retreats. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Growing trends like observing an “Internet Sabbath”—turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning—highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives.

The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many—from Marcel Proust to Mahatma Gandhi to Emily Dickinson—have found richness in stillness. Ultimately, Iyer shows that, in this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before.

In 2013, Pico Iyer gave a blockbuster TED Talk. This lyrical and inspiring book expands on a new idea, offering a way forward for all those feeling affected by the frenetic pace of our modern world.]]> 96 Pico Iyer 1476784728 viola 0 to-read 3.70 2014 The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere
author: Pico Iyer
name: viola
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers]]> 31795
Will Durant chronicles the ideas of the great thinkers, the economic and intellectual environments which influenced them, and the personal traits and adventures out of which each philosophy grew. Durant’s insight and wit never cease to dazzle; The Story of Philosophy is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history and development of philosophical ideas in the Western world.]]> 704 Will Durant 0671739166 viola 0 to-read 4.16 1926 The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
author: Will Durant
name: viola
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1926
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality]]> 22435 The fabric of the cosmos 569 Brian Greene 0965900584 viola 0 to-read 4.12 2004 The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
author: Brian Greene
name: viola
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2004
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]]> <![CDATA[The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory]]> 8049273
Today, physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are feverishly working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small--General Relativity and Quantum Theory--is resolved. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. In this brilliantly articulated and refreshingly clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything.

Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.]]> 464 Brian Greene 039333810X viola 0 to-read 4.11 1999 The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
author: Brian Greene
name: viola
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1999
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]]> A Tale for the Time Being 15811545
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.Ěý

Full of Ozeki's signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.]]> 432 Ruth Ozeki 0670026638 viola 5 2014, reallyreally 4.06 2013 A Tale for the Time Being
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: viola
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/10/28
date added: 2014/11/30
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]]> Einstein’s Dreams 14376 Einstein's Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.

Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein's Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.]]> 140 Alan Lightman 140007780X viola 5 changed, 2014 4.08 1993 Einstein’s Dreams
author: Alan Lightman
name: viola
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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]]> Gut Symmetries 15056 Washington Post as "one of our most important writers in English," Jeanette Winterson has firmly established her reputation as an extraordinarily daring and original novelist. In Gut Symmetries, lives and universes run parallel in a complex contemporary love story set in New York and Liverpool and aboard the QE2.]]> 219 Jeanette Winterson 0517286939 viola 0 to-read 3.83 1997 Gut Symmetries
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: viola
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food]]> 18667790 496 Dan Barber 1594204071 viola 0 to-read 4.27 2014 The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food
author: Dan Barber
name: viola
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2014
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]]> <![CDATA[Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America]]> 13586945 Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the control of food production by a handful of large corporations—backed by political clout—that prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices that people can make in the grocery store.

Blending history, reporting, and a deep understanding of American faming and food production, Foodopoly is the shocking and revealing account of the business behind the meat, vegetables, grains, and milk that most Americans eat every day, including some of our favorite and most respected organic and health–conscious brands. Hauter also pulls the curtain back from the little–understood but vital realm of agricultural policy, showing how it has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. Foodopoly demonstrates how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities at home to famines overseas. In the end, Hauter argues that solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift—a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.

Written with deep insight from one of America's most respected food activists, Foodopoly is today's essential guide for anyone who wants to reform our food system, from seed to table.]]> 368 Wenonah Hauter 159558790X viola 0 currently-reading 3.85 2012 Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America
author: Wenonah Hauter
name: viola
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/18
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]]> California 18774020
The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.]]> 393 Edan Lepucki 0316250813 viola 2 2014 3.23 2014 California
author: Edan Lepucki
name: viola
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2014
rating: 2
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date added: 2014/10/18
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]]> Labor Day 6261961
But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy—and the man he later becomes—looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single long, hot, life-altering weekend.]]> 244 Joyce Maynard 0061843407 viola 3 2014 3.57 2009 Labor Day
author: Joyce Maynard
name: viola
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/09/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business]]> 18211204
The biggest takeover in American business that you’ve n ever heard of

The American supermarket seems to represent the best in abundance, freedom, choice. But that turns out to be an illusion. The rotisserie chicken, the pepperoni, the cordon bleu, the frozen pot pie, and the bacon virtually all come from four companies.

In The Meat Racket , investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation’s meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the greatest capitalist country in the world has an oligarchy controlling much of the food we eat and a high-tech sharecropping system to make that possible.

Forty years ago, more than thirty-six companies produced half of all the chicken Americans ate. Now there are only three that make that amount, and they control every aspect of the process, from the egg to the chicken to the chicken nugget. These companies are even able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And tragically, big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system.

We know that it takes big companies to bring meat to the American table. What The Meat Racket shows is that this industrial system is rigged against all of us. In that sense, Leonard has exposed our heartland’s biggest scandal.]]> 384 Christopher Leonard 1451645813 viola 5 2014, erudite 4.12 2014 The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business
author: Christopher Leonard
name: viola
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/22
date added: 2014/09/22
shelves: 2014, erudite
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]]> <![CDATA[Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead]]> 13588356 Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.� —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.]]> 287 Brené Brown 1592407331 viola 2 4.29 2012 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
author: Brené Brown
name: viola
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2014/09/09
date added: 2014/09/09
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]]> Bastard Out of Carolina 25354 320 Dorothy Allison 0452287057 viola 0 to-read 4.14 1992 Bastard Out of Carolina
author: Dorothy Allison
name: viola
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/09/09
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]]> The Circle (The Circle, #1) 18302455 alternate cover for ISBN 9780385351393

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users� personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.]]> 493 Dave Eggers viola 5 2014 3.41 2013 The Circle (The Circle, #1)
author: Dave Eggers
name: viola
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/08/27
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History]]> 17910054
In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.]]> 336 Elizabeth Kolbert 0805092994 viola 0 to-read 4.13 2014 The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
author: Elizabeth Kolbert
name: viola
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Giver (The Giver, #1) 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 viola 4 2014 4.12 1993 The Giver (The Giver, #1)
author: Lois Lowry
name: viola
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/08/20
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> Meals in Jars 20632197
While trying to meet these exact needs for my own family, my husband and I came up with the idea of putting casserole-type foods in jars. I have since been experimenting with what works and what does not� and the benefits of cooking this way. Some benefits are...]]> 32 Kaylin White viola 0 to-read 0.0 2012 Meals in Jars
author: Kaylin White
name: viola
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong]]> 296662 Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages.

From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we've been told. This audiobook, narrated by Brian Keeler (The Hurricane, "All My Children") will forever change your view of the past.]]> 383 James W. Loewen 0684818868 viola 0 to-read 3.96 1995 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
author: James W. Loewen
name: viola
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Twilight (Twilight, #1) 1137327 About three things I was absolutely positive:
First, Edward was a vampire.
Second, there was a part of him—and I didn’t know how dominant that part might be—that thirsted for my blood.
And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

“I’D NEVER GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD DIE—I’d had reason enough in the last few months—but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. . . . Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of something else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.�

When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret.

What Bella doesn’t realize is the closer she gets to him, the more she is putting herself and those around her at risk. And, it might be too late to turn back. . . .

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight will have readers riveted right until the very last page is turned.

An unabridged recording on 11 CDs (12 hours, 52 minutes).]]> 11 Stephenie Meyer 030728090X viola 4 2007, audio
half a star because i'm a recovered vampire obsessed teenage girl and this book details what i essentially spent all of early high school daydreaming about without making it seem too ridiculous, and another half a star because the ending was very satisfying. for whatever reason.]]> 3.74 2005 Twilight (Twilight, #1)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: viola
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2014/08/08
shelves: 2007, audio
review:
three stars for being well written and engaging, but terribly repetitive and frustrating. also, there are a few holes in the plot that are never really filled in or accounted for: the story could be tighter. and the story isn't exactly original.

half a star because i'm a recovered vampire obsessed teenage girl and this book details what i essentially spent all of early high school daydreaming about without making it seem too ridiculous, and another half a star because the ending was very satisfying. for whatever reason.
]]> <![CDATA[Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child]]> 13531538
Now, in Bob Spitz’s definitive, wonderfully affectionate biography, the Julia we know and love comes vividly â€� and surprisingly â€� to life.Ěý In Dearie , Spitz employs the same skill he brought to his best-selling, critically acclaimed book The Beatles , providing a clear-eyed portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential Americans of our time â€� a woman known to all, yet known by only a few.

At its heart, Dearie is a story about a woman’s search for her own unique expression.Ěý Julia Child was a directionless, gawky young woman who ran off halfway around the world to join a spy agency during World War II.Ěý She eventually settled in Paris, where she learned to cook and collaborated on the writing of what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book that changed the food culture of America.ĚýĚý She was already fifty when The French Chef went on the air â€� Ěýat a time in our history when women weren’t making those leaps.Ěý Julia became the first educational TV star, virtually launching PBS as we know it today; her marriage to Paul Child formed a decades-long love story that was romantic, touching, and quite extraordinary.

A fearless, ambitious, supremely confident woman, Julia took on all the pretensions that embellished tony French cuisine and fricasseed them to a fare-thee-well, paving the way for everything that has happened since in American cooking, from TV dinners and Big Macs to sea urchin foam and the Food Channel.Ěý Julia Child’s story, however, is more than the tale of a talented woman and her sumptuous craft.Ěý It is also a saga of America’s coming of age and growing sophistication, from the Depression Era to the turbulent sixties and the excesses of the eighties to the greening of the American kitchen.Ěý Julia had an effect on and was equally affected by the baby boom, the sexual revolution, and the start of the women’s liberation movement.

On the centenary of her birth, Julia finally gets the biography she richly deserves.Ěý An in-depth, intimate narrative, full of fresh information and insights, Dearie is an entertaining, all-out adventure story of one of our most fascinating and beloved figures.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 1008 Bob Spitz 0307990834 viola 2 2014 3.85 2012 Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
author: Bob Spitz
name: viola
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: 2014
review:
oooo, mr. spitz. not being able find your path because you're too stinkin' rich and having one boy break up with you is not struggle, nor is it worth hundreds of pages. i cannot imagine that julia thought it was as bad as you are trying to make it sound, or at least i can't allow myself to believe that because it'll make me dislike her. retiring this one halfway through.
]]> <![CDATA[A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)]]> 62291 An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Here is the third volume in George R.R. Martin's magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. Together, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, victim of the sorceress who holds him in her thrall. Young Robb still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. And as opposing forces manoeuver for the final showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost limits of civilization, accompanied by a horde of mythical Others—a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords...]]> 1177 George R.R. Martin 055357342X viola 0 to-read 4.54 2000 A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: viola
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thirteen Reasons Why 1217100 You can’t stop the future.
You can’t rewind the past.
The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why.

Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.]]> 288 Jay Asher 1595141715 viola 5 2014 4.00 2007 Thirteen Reasons Why
author: Jay Asher
name: viola
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)]]> 10572
It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Here is the second volume in George R.R. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R.R. Martin stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.]]> 1009 George R.R. Martin 0553381695 viola 4 2014 4.42 1998 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: viola
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/06
date added: 2014/07/06
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> Drift 12143200
Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse.

Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power--and who gets to make those decisions.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 288 Rachel Maddow 0307970388 viola 4 2014 4.03 2012 Drift
author: Rachel Maddow
name: viola
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/07/02
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up]]> 15818223
Family physician Daphne Miller long suspected that farming and medicine were intimately linked. Increasingly disillusioned by mainstream medicine's mechanistic approach to healing and fascinated by the farming revolution that is changing the way we think about our relationship to the earth, Miller left her medical office and traveled to seven innovative family farms around the country, on a quest to discover the hidden connections between how we care for our bodies and how we grow our food. Farmacology, the remarkable book that emerged from her travels, offers us a compelling new vision for sustainable health and healing—and a wealth of farm-to-body lessons with immense value in our daily lives.

Miller begins her journey with a pilgrimage to the Kentucky homestead of renowned author and farming visionary Wendell Berry. Over the course of the following year, she travels to a biodynamic farm in Washington state, a ranch in the Ozarks, two chicken farms in Arkansas, a winery in California, a community garden in the Bronx, and finally an aromatic herb farm back in Washington. While learning from forward-thinking farmers, Miller explores such compelling questions as:

What can rejuvenating depleted soil teach us about rejuvenating ourselves?
How can a grazing system on a ranch offer valuable insights into raising resilient children?
What can two laying-hen farms teach us about stress management?
How do vineyard pest-management strategies reveal a radically new approach to cancer care?
What are the unexpected ways that urban agriculture can transform the health of a community?
How can an aromatic herb farm unlock the secret to sustainable beauty?

Throughout, Miller seeks out the perspectives of noted biomedical scientists and artfully weaves in their insights and research, along with stories from her own medical practice. The result is a profound new approach to healing, combined with practical advice for how to treat disease and maintain wellness.]]> 304 Daphne Miller 0062103148 viola 5 2014 4.26 2013 Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up
author: Daphne Miller
name: viola
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/02
date added: 2014/07/02
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> A Long Way Down 10073 New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line.

Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year's Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives.

In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Nick Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances.

Intense, hilarious, provocative, and moving, A Long Way Down is a novel about suicide that is, surprisingly, full of life.

What's your jumping-off point?

Maureen
Why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvelous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queue-jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the post office, people tut. Or sometimes they say "Excuse me, I was here first." They don't say "You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity." That would be a bit strong.

Martin
I'd spent the previous couple of months looking up suicides on the Internet, just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time, the coroner says the same thing: "He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed." And then you read the story about the poor bastard: His wife was sleeping with his best friend, he'd lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some months before . . . Hello, Mr. Coroner? I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it just right.

Jess
I was at a party downstairs. It was a shit party, full of all these ancient crusties sitting on the floor drinking cider and smoking huge spliffs and listening to weirdo space-out reggae. At midnight, one of them clapped sarcastically, and a couple of others laughed, and that was it-Happy New Year to you, too. You could have turned up to that party as the happiest person in London, and you'd still have wanted to jump off the roof by five past twelve. And I wasn't the happiest person in London anyway. Obviously.

JJ
New Year's Eve was a night for sentimental losers. It was my own stupid fault. Of course there'd be a low-rent crowd up there. I should have picked a classier date-like March 28, when Virginia Woolf took her walk into the river, or November 25 (Nick Drake). If anybody had been on the roof on either of those nights, the chances are they would have been like-minded souls, rather than hopeless f*ck-ups who had somehow persuaded themselves that the end of a calendar year is in any way significant.]]> 368 Nick Hornby 1594481938 viola 3 2014 3.45 2005 A Long Way Down
author: Nick Hornby
name: viola
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2014/07/02
date added: 2014/07/02
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 viola 3 2013 I DID IT 4.44 1996 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: viola
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2014/06/10
date added: 2014/06/10
shelves: 2013
review:
I DID IT
]]> The Signature of All Things 17465453 A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed.

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction � into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist � but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.

Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe—from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who � born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution � bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.]]> 512 Elizabeth Gilbert 0670024856 viola 3 2014 3.84 2013 The Signature of All Things
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: viola
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/06/10
date added: 2014/06/10
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything]]> 6346975 The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.]]> 307 Joshua Foer 159420229X viola 5 erudite, 2014 3.86 2011 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
author: Joshua Foer
name: viola
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2014/05/23
date added: 2014/05/23
shelves: erudite, 2014
review:

]]> <![CDATA[High Price: Drugs, Neuroscience, and Discovering Myself]]> 19410301 High Price by Carl Hart is a groundbreaking work on neuroscience and addiction



As a youth, Carl Hart didn't see the value of school, studying just enough to keep him on the basketball team. At the same time, he was immersed in street life, dealing drugs and committing petty larceny. Today, he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist whose landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction.



In this provocative and eye-opening memoir, he recalls his journey of self-discovery, how he escaped a life of crime and drugs and avoided becoming one of the crack addicts he now studies. Interweaving past and present, Hart goes beyond the hype as he examines the relationship between drugs and pleasure, choice, and motivation, both in the brain and in society. His findings shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs and explain why current policies are failing. But while Hart escaped the ghetto, he has not turned his back on it. Determined to make a difference, he tirelessly applies his science to help save real lives. But balancing his former street life with his achievements today has not been easy-a struggle he reflects on publicly for the first time.



Homocide (the inspiration for The Wire) meets Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, this book applies neuroscience to crime, addiction and the most urgent and destructive issues of our times.



Carl Hart is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also a Research Scientist in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He and his work are featured in Eugene Jarecki's acclaimed documentary The House I Live In. The film examines the war on drugs and highlights some of the research that Hart includes in High Price. He lives in New York City.

]]> 350 Carl L. Hart viola 0 to-read 4.26 2013 High Price: Drugs, Neuroscience, and Discovering Myself
author: Carl L. Hart
name: viola
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Annabel 7984373
Kathleen Winter’s luminous debut novel is a deeply affecting portrait of life in an enchanting seaside town and the trials of growing up unique in a restrictive environment.

In 1968, into the devastating, spare atmosphere of Labrador, Canada, a child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor fully girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret—the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and their trusted neighbor and midwife, Thomasina. Though Treadway makes the difficult decision to raise the child as a boy named Wayne, the women continue to quietly nurture the boy’s female side. And as Wayne grows into adulthood within the hypermasculine hunting society of his father, his shadow-self, a girl he thinks of as “Annabel,� is never entirely extinguished.

When Wayne finally escapes the confines of his hometown and settles in St. John’s, the anonymity of the city grants him the freedom to confront his dual identity. His ultimate choice will once again call into question the integrity and allegiance of those he loves most.

Kathleen Winter has crafted a literary gem about the urge to unveil mysterious truth in a culture that shuns contradiction, and the body’s insistence on coming home. A daringly unusual debut full of unforgettable beauty, Annabel introduces a remarkable new voice to American readers.]]> 464 Kathleen Winter 0887842364 viola 4 2014 3.84 2010 Annabel
author: Kathleen Winter
name: viola
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2014/05/07
date added: 2014/05/07
shelves: 2014
review:

]]> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, ĚýI wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never lookedĚýthroughĚýthem for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain viola 3 3.92 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
author: Mark Twain
name: viola
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook's Manifesto]]> 13508547 Michael Ruhlman viola 0 to-read 4.31 2011 Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook's Manifesto
author: Michael Ruhlman
name: viola
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Put 'em Up! 7699520 304 Sherri Brooks Vinton 1603425462 viola 0 to-read 4.09 2010 Put 'em Up!
author: Sherri Brooks Vinton
name: viola
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Farm Together Now 8309382 192 Amy Franceschini 0811867110 viola 0 to-read 3.67 2010 Farm Together Now
author: Amy Franceschini
name: viola
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web]]> 16475926 220 Jeff Lowenfels 1604692545 viola 0 to-read 4.55 2006 Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
author: Jeff Lowenfels
name: viola
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How I Live Now 161426 "Every war has turning points and every person too."

Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she's never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.

As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it's a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy's uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.

A riveting and astonishing story.]]> 194 Meg Rosoff 0553376055 viola 0 to-read 3.59 2004 How I Live Now
author: Meg Rosoff
name: viola
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scent of Butterflies 17683793 288 Dora Levy Mossanen 1402284438 viola 0 to-read 3.32 2014 Scent of Butterflies
author: Dora Levy Mossanen
name: viola
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

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