en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 14:27:02 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 212426504 A delightfully insightful exploration of our obsession with gossip that weaves together journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir, from the host of the massively popular Normal Gossip podcast.

Can you keep a secret? As the pandemic forced us to socialize at a distance, Kelsey McKinney was mourning the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that she’d typically collect over drinks with friends.ĚýShe realized she wasn’t the only one missing these little morsels and her hunger for this aspect of normalcy took on a life of its ownĚýandĚýthe blockbuster Normal Gossip podcast was born.ĚýWith listenership in the millions and gossip quickly becoming her day job, Kelsey found herself with the urge to think more critically about gossip as a form, to better understand the role that it plays in our culture.

In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling. Why is gossip considered a sin and how can we better recognize when gossip is being weaponized against the oppressed? Why do we think we’re entitled to every detail of a celebrity’s personal life because they are a public figure? And how do we even define “gossip,â€� anyway? She dishes on the art of eavesdropping and dives deep into how pop culture has changed the way that we look at hearsay. But as much as the book aims to treat gossip as a subject worthy of rigor, it also hopes to capture the heart of how enchanting and fun it can be to lean over and whisper something a little salacious into your friend’s ear. With wit and honesty, McKinney unmasks what we're actually searching for when we demand to know the truth â€� and how much the truth really matters in the first place. Ěý±Ő±Ő> 288 Kelsey McKinney 1538757400 Ash 0 essays, currently-reading 3.90 2025
author: Kelsey McKinney
name: Ash
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: essays, currently-reading
review:

]]> 48890225 A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.]]> 337 Torrey Peters 0593133374 Ash 0 currently-reading 3.94 2021
author: Torrey Peters
name: Ash
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 37533587 How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Rate your overall mood from 1 to 5, 1 being poor. Rate your stress level from 1 to 5, 5 being severe. Are you experiencing depression or thoughts of suicide? Is there anything in your personal life that is affecting your duty?

When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and the boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister, Sandra, struggles to fill her days as she waits in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation shown through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.

The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. Presenting an indictment of our modern state, Drnaso contemplates the dangers of a fake-news climate. Timely and articulate, Sabrina leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.]]> 204 Nick Drnaso 177046316X Ash 4 comics
In some ways this felt like a spiritual successor to Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth - the dull dread of the art style especially. I don't feel as empty as I did after that one. I do think this was good at capturing the anxiety that undercuts American life right now, whether we're caught up in a disaster or just encountering one between ads on social media.]]> 3.83 2018
author: Nick Drnaso
name: Ash
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: comics
review:
I added this to my list on the recommendation of a podcast a while back, and if I ever knew what it was about I'd forgotten by the time I got around to reading it - I really had no idea what I was expecting.

In some ways this felt like a spiritual successor to Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth - the dull dread of the art style especially. I don't feel as empty as I did after that one. I do think this was good at capturing the anxiety that undercuts American life right now, whether we're caught up in a disaster or just encountering one between ads on social media.
]]> 33385438 The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

"Where are you, Madison Culver? Flying with the angels, a silver speck on a wing? Are you dreaming, buried under snow? Or—is it possible—you are still alive?"

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.]]> 274 Rene Denfeld 0062659057 Ash 2
Aside from that, reading this in 2025 it's hard not to see it in relation to a wider conservative project that has grown over the past decade. Child molesters around every corner, human trafficking in Target parking lots, the play on our fear of the worst thing most of us can imagine that greases the way for fascism.

This book came out eight years ago and would have been written maybe years before that; I don't want to suggest that Denfeld is a fascist, conservative or propagandist. And I don't think that the use of these themes in conservative propaganda necessarily means that they can't be explored in art. But Pizzagate and the related fear mongering were a specter looming over this book that I could never fully disconnect from.]]> 3.91 2017
author: Rene Denfeld
name: Ash
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
I didn't love this one. The writing was somehow purple and stilted, emotionally austere. The dialogue was ... strange. Things seemed to fall into place because of authorial intervention rather than Naomi being a skilled investigator.

Aside from that, reading this in 2025 it's hard not to see it in relation to a wider conservative project that has grown over the past decade. Child molesters around every corner, human trafficking in Target parking lots, the play on our fear of the worst thing most of us can imagine that greases the way for fascism.

This book came out eight years ago and would have been written maybe years before that; I don't want to suggest that Denfeld is a fascist, conservative or propagandist. And I don't think that the use of these themes in conservative propaganda necessarily means that they can't be explored in art. But Pizzagate and the related fear mongering were a specter looming over this book that I could never fully disconnect from.
]]> 50690241
Stan Lee—born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922—is one of the most beloved and influential entertainers to emerge from the twentieth century. He served as editor in chief of Marvel Comics for three decades and, in that time, launched more pieces of internationally recognizable intellectual property than anyone other than Walt Disney: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor... the list seems to never end. On top of that, his carnival-barker marketing prowess more or less single-handedly saved the comic-book industry and superhero fiction. Without him, the global entertainment industry would be wildly different—and a great deal poorer.

But Lee's unprecedented career was also pitted with spectacular failures, controversy, and bitter disputes. Lee was dogged by accusations from his long-time collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko over who really created Marvel's signature characters—icons for whom Lee had always been suspected of taking more than his due share of credit. A major business venture, Stan Lee Media, resulted in stock manipulation, bankruptcy, and criminal charges. And in his final years, after the death of his beloved wife, Joan, rumors swirled that Lee was a virtual prisoner in his own home, issuing cryptic video recordings as a battle to control his fortune and legacy ensued.

Abraham Riesman is a veteran culture reporter who has conducted extensive new interviews and research, turning up never-before-published revelations about Lee's life and work. Lee's most famous motto was: "With great power comes great responsibility." True Believer chronicles every triumph and every misstep of an extraordinary life, and leaves it to readers to decide whether Lee lived up to the responsibilities of his own talent.]]> 416 Abraham Riesman 0593135717 Ash 0 to-read 3.78 2021
author: Abraham Riesman
name: Ash
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61884838
Princess, Warrior, Lover, Hero

When Princess Atalanta is born, a daughter rather than the son her parents hoped for, she is left on a mountainside to die. But even then, she is a survivor. Raised by a mother bear under the protective eye of the goddess Artemis, Atalanta grows up wild and free, with just one condition: if she marries, Artemis warns, it will be her undoing.

Although she loves her beautiful forest home, Atalanta yearns for adventure. When Artemis offers her the chance to fight in her name alongside the Argonauts, the fiercest band of warriors the world has ever seen, Atalanta seizes it. The Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece is filled with impossible challenges, but Atalanta proves herself equal to the men she fights alongside. As she is swept into a passionate affair, in defiance of Artemis's warning, she begins to question the goddess's true intentions. Can Atalanta carve out her own legendary place in a world of men, while staying true to her heart?

Full of joy, passion, and adventure, Atalanta is the story of a woman who refuses to be contained. Jennifer Saint places Atalanta in the pantheon of the greatest heroes in Greek mythology, where she belongs.]]> 291 Jennifer Saint 1250855578 Ash 0 to-read 3.74 2023
author: Jennifer Saint
name: Ash
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59629744 A prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about a woman in Japan who avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she's pregnant

When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her new workplace--a company that manufactures cardboard tubes--she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups--because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is . . . Ms. Shibata is not pregnant.

Pregnant Ms. Shibata doesn't have to serve coffee to anyone. Pregnant Ms. Shibata isn't forced to work overtime. Pregnant Ms. Shibata rests, watches TV, takes long baths, and even joins an aerobics class for expectant mothers. But pregnant Ms. Shibata also has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Helped along by towel-stuffed shirts and a diary app on which she can log every stage of her "pregnancy," she feels prepared to play the game for the long haul. Before long, though, the hoax becomes all-absorbing, and the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.

A surreal and wryly humorous cultural critique, Diary of a Void is bound to become a landmark in feminist world literature.]]> 213 Emi Yagi 0143136879 Ash 0 to-read 3.51 2020
author: Emi Yagi
name: Ash
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41021622 274 Cristina GarcĂ­a Ash 3 3.66 1992
author: Cristina GarcĂ­a
name: Ash
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 220160561 When Jada Williams is relentlessly pursued by the Debt Police, she is left with no choice but to take down her student loan company with the help of two mall coworkers—from the author of the “lethally witty� (The New York Times Book Review) The Survivalists.

Jada Williams is good at judging people by their looks. From across the mall, she can tell not only someone’s inseam and pants size, but exactly what style they need to transform their life. Too bad she’s no longer using this superpower as a wardrobe designer to Hollywood stars, but for minimum wage plus commission at the Glendale mall.

When Jada is fired yet again, she is forced to outrun the newly instated Debt Police who are out for blood. But Jada, like any great antihero, is not going to wait for the cops to come kick her around. With the help of two other debt-burdened mall coworkers, she hatches a plan for revenge. Together the three women plan a heist to erase their student loans forever and get back at the system that promised them everything and then tried to take it back.

The Payback is a razor-sharp and hilarious dissection of race and capitalism from one of the most original and exciting writers at work today.]]> 256 Kashana Cauley 1668075539 Ash 0 to-read 3.79 2025
author: Kashana Cauley
name: Ash
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151495 From RuPaul’s Drag Race winner and host of ±áµţ°żâ€™s We’re Here comes an inventive, wondrous novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and music.

In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say.

Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way—by following in the footsteps of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Harriet wants to put on a show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her.

She calls upon Darnell Williams, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed by a rival at the BET Awards. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have one week to write a Broadway caliber musical she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only mount a show that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future.

Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).]]> 240 Bob the Drag Queen 166806197X Ash 0 to-read 4.14 2025
author: Bob the Drag Queen
name: Ash
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207567756 An investigation into the rise of the Christian right over the last half-century that lays out the grim vision Evangelicals are enforcing on our democracy.

All across America, a storm is gathering: from book bans in school libraries to anti-trans laws in state legislatures; firebombings of abortion clinics and protests against gay rights. The Christian Right, a cunning political force in America for more than half a century, has never been more powerful than it is right now—it propelled Donald Trump to power, and it won’t stop until it’s refashioned America in its own image.

In Wild Faith, critically acclaimed author Talia Lavin goes deep into what motivates the Christian Right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic ideology.

Using primary sources and firsthand accounts, Lavin introduces you to “deliverance ministers� who carry out exorcisms by the hundreds; modern-day, self-proclaimed prophets and apostles; Christian militias, cults, zealots, and showmen; and the people in power who are aiding them to achieve their goals.

Along the way, she explores anti-abortion terrorists, the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.

From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.]]> 304 Talia Lavin 0306829193 Ash 0 to-read 4.26
author: Talia Lavin
name: Ash
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 77092 245 Cristina GarcĂ­a 0345381432 Ash 3 college 3.69 1992
author: Cristina GarcĂ­a
name: Ash
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: college
review:

]]> 28734 351 Mercedes Lackey 0886774268 Ash 5 4.26 1990
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: Ash
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 85157760
GOTH Ěý isĚýan entertaining and engaging historical memoir of the genre of Goth music and culture, exploring creative giants like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and many more great bands that offered a place of refuge for the misfits of the 80s and ever since. Written by Lol Tolhurst, co-founder of The Cure, this book offers a fascinating deep dive into the movers and shakers of goth with stories and anecdotes from Tolhurst’s personal memories as well as the musicians, magicians, and artists, who made it all happen—the people, places, and events that made goth an inevitable and enduring movement.

Starting with the Origins of Goth, Tolhurst explores early art and literature that inspired the genre and looks into the work of T.S Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath , Albert Camus and more. He also outlines the path of Gothic Forebears and shows how many musicians played in punk bands before transitioning into goth endeavors. Next, he introduces readers to the "Architects of Darkness "—Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy division Ěýand The Cure—the godfathers of goth who established the genre's roots. Following these early bands, Tolhurst discusses a group he calls the " Spiritual Alchemists ", consisting of bands like Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and more, who helpedĚý the darkness expand into the culture. He also tracks the expansion of the genre overseas, from England to New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Gothic fashion was an important part of the movement as well, and Tolhurst discusses Ěýthe clothing that accompanied and complemented the music. Finally, Tolhurst examines the legacy of goth music, and shows how its influence can still be seen to this day across music, film, TV, visual arts, social media, and so much more finally concluding “Why Goth matters!â€�
Ěý±Ő±Ő> 257 Lol Tolhurst 0306828421 Ash 0 to-read 3.66 2023
author: Lol Tolhurst
name: Ash
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 475853
Babitz’s inimitable voice propels these stories forward, corralling everything that gets in their sex, rage, the Château Marmont, youth, beauty, Jim Morrison, men, women, and black swans. This exciting reissue further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.]]> 256 Eve Babitz 051714445X Ash 0 to-read 3.86 1993
author: Eve Babitz
name: Ash
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30089748
Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.]]> 304 Todd McGowan 0231178727 Ash 0 to-read 4.34
author: Todd McGowan
name: Ash
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63331415 Who is Mister Magic? Former child stars reunite to uncover the tragedy that ended their show—and discover the secret of its enigmatic host—in this dark supernatural thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.

Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent their lives searching for the happiness they felt while they were on it. The friendship. The feeling of belonging. And the protection of Mister Magic.

But with no surviving video of the show, no evidence of who directed or produced it, and no records of who—or what—the beloved host actually was, memories are all the former Circle of Friends has.

Then a twist of fate brings the castmates back together at the remote desert filming compound that feels like it’s been waiting for them all this time. Even though they haven’t seen each other for years, they understand one another better than anyone has since.

After all, they’re the only ones who hold the secret of that circle, the mystery of the magic man in his infinitely black cape, and, maybe, the answers to what really happened on that deadly last day. But as the Circle of Friends reclaim parts of their past, they begin to wonder: Are they here by choice, or have they been lured into a trap?

Because magic never forgets the taste of your friendship. . . .]]> 295 Kiersten White 0593359267 Ash 0 to-read 3.55 2023
author: Kiersten White
name: Ash
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44436221 A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration�Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.]]> 288 Charles Yu Ash 0 to-read 3.95 2020
author: Charles Yu
name: Ash
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Ash 0 to-read 4.17 2000
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Ash
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Ash 0 to-read 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Ash
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37857065 If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.]]> 256 Audre Lorde 0241351081 Ash 0 to-read 4.47 1982
author: Audre Lorde
name: Ash
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Ash 0 to-read 4.02 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Ash
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199130345 “Kingsolver is a writer who can help us understand and navigate the chaos of these times.� —Minneapolis Star Tribune

From the New York Times bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behavior, a brilliant novel which enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity.

“Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.�

Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It’s the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens� anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0063282569 Ash 0 to-read 4.44 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Ash
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 606028 256 Robin Rose 0870714287 Ash 0 to-read 4.53 1998
author: Robin Rose
name: Ash
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8694389
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.]]> 352 Catherynne M. Valente 0765326302 Ash 0 to-read 3.97 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Ash
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Ash 0 to-read 4.12 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Ash
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220195721 When Jada Williams is relentlessly pursued by the Debt Police, she is left with no choice but to take down her student loan company with the help of two mall coworkers—from the author of the “lethally witty� (The New York Times Book Review) The Survivalists.

Jada Williams is good at judging people by their looks. From across the mall, she can tell not only someone’s inseam and pants size, but exactly what style they need to transform their life. Too bad she’s no longer using this superpower as a wardrobe designer to Hollywood stars, but for minimum wage plus commission at the Glendale mall.

When Jada is fired yet again, she is forced to outrun the newly instated Debt Police who are out for blood. But Jada, like any great antihero, is not going to wait for the cops to come kick her around. With the help of two other debt-burdened mall coworkers, she hatches a plan for revenge. Together the three women plan a heist to erase their student loans forever and get back at the system that promised them everything and then tried to take it back.

“A novel of great fun and unforgettable fury� (Megha Majumdar, bestselling author of A Burning) The Payback is a razor-sharp and hilarious dissection of race, power, and the daily grind, from one of the most original and exciting writers at work today.]]> Kashana Cauley 1668075555 Ash 0 to-read 4.08 2025
author: Kashana Cauley
name: Ash
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222139808 Most visitors to Skerry Island see only its lush greenery, picturesque cemetery, and quaint downtown. Yet generations of local women know that on Skerry, their benevolent witchcraft is at its most powerful.
ĚýĚý
Beatrice Barnard doesn't believe in magic. She definitely doesn't believe the predictions of the celebrity psychic who claims that she will experience seven miracles and soon after she will die. When she discovers her husband is cheating on her, Bea flees to Skerry Island, off the Pacific Northwest coast, in desperate need of solitude—taking her husband's birthday vacation by herself. Immediately upon arrival, she finds her life on the line as a rogue woodchopper blade almost kills her. Her survival feels like a miracle.

And then things get more miraculous when she discovers her twin sister, Cordelia, whom she never knew about, and her mother Astrid, who supposedly died when Beatrice was two years old. Astrid and Cordelia reveal that Beatrice (given name Beatrix) is an immensely powerful witch who can commune with the dead, like all the local Holland family witches. When their twin magic is joined, it shines like a beacon to the Velamen family, whose malevolent spirits are locked in an age-old struggle for magical dominance over the Hollands.

Beatrice doesn't know what to believe, but she begins to fear that the seven predicted miracles may occur, and that her imminent death will rip her away from her rediscovered family. Beatrice resolves to learn everything she can about her own power, in the hope of saving herself. But when her niece, Minna, goes missing, Bea's own life suddenly seems much less important. Beatrice must join her mother and her sister to save Minna even if she dies in the process.]]> 400 Rachael Herron 1538767325 Ash 0 to-read 4.20 2025
author: Rachael Herron
name: Ash
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28760 Ěý
Wild magic is taking its toll on the land. Many Heralds and Herald-Mages have died fighting to preserve the peace. Even Vanyel, the most powerful of the Herald-Mages is almost at the end of his strength, in need of a respite from the dual threats of war and dark magic.
Ěý
But for Vanyel, there can be no rest. Not when his Companion, Yfandes, receives a summons which can’t be ignored � a desperate cry of a magical holocaust in the neighboring kingdom. Almost overwhelmed by the devastations they discover there, Herald-Mage and Companion must try to unravel this tragic mystery.
Ěý
Is the young Prince Tashir, a newly Chosen Herald who can’t control his magic, responsible for the destruction? Or is Tashir a pawn in a deeper, more deadly game—and, if so, will Vanyel be able to find and defeat the true destroyer before this master of dark powers can strike again?]]> 320 Mercedes Lackey 0886774012 Ash 5 4.21 1990
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: Ash
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:
Can't tell if my brain is just smoothed out by trauma or if this book is like ... really good????
]]> 28759
Though Vanyel has been born with near-legendary abilities to work both Herald and Mage magic, he wants no part of such things. Nor does he seek a warrior's path, wishing instead to become a Bard. Yet such talent as his if left untrained may prove a menace not only to Vanyel but to others as well. So he is sent to be fostered with his aunt, Savil, one of the famed Herald-Mages of Valdemar.

But, strong-willed and self-centered, Vanyel is a challenge which even Savil can not master alone. For soon he will become the focus of frightening forces, lending his raw magic to a spell that unleashes terrifying wyr-hunters on the land. And by the time Savil seeks the assistance of a Shin'a'in Adept, Vanyel's wild talent may have already grown beyond anyone's ability to contain, placing Vanyel, Savil, and Valdemar itself in desperate peril...]]> 349 Mercedes Lackey 0886773520 Ash 5
I got the strangest urge to reread this trilogy today. It seems like a bad idea. I loved this in highschool but I am sure it is not going to live up...................................

Here is everything that I disjointedly remember about these books:

They are basically a torrid gay love story for teenage girls. Vanyel is the main character and he is very pretty and VERY angsty and NO ONE UNDERSTANDS HIM so he goes to live with his aunt or something. He wants to be a Bard - Bards are like magical musicians who make people SEE the songs in their MINDS. But he doesn't have the gift so he's just like a really good lute player or whatever. Lame.

Anyway he meets his TRUE LOVE named like Tiraniel or some shit. In this 'verse if you meet your true love it's weird and magical and you're like, life-bonded (in one of her other books a dude became life bonded to his magical horse friend and oh my god why am I considering reading this again?) So anyway Tiraniel gets MURDERED BY DARK FORCES and Vanyel like feels his death and shit, and it causes him to angst out SO HARD that he suddenly has EVERY SINGLE KIND of magic. So he's not a NORMAL mage he's a HERALD-MAGE. They're SUPER rare because something has been killing them off. SOME DARK FORCE.

Anyway Vanyel remains angsty as fuck but he starts making mage friends. They all have like... power stones that they use to FOCUS THEIR ENERGY. And also every mage has a magical horse friend that is I think telepathic? LIKE I SAID. Shit is porn for teenage girls.

ANYWAY I remember very little of the actual plot. Vanyel gets kidnapped and raped at some point, but then he meets SOMEONE NEW!!!!!! to love!!!!!!! And he gets angsty about how he can forget about Tiraniel for this STEFAN fool, but then he realizes that STEFAN IS TIRANIEL REBORN!!!!!!!! Which, the age difference between them is NOT great. Meaning, it is great as in fairly large, but it is not, y'know, good. Anyway so they become life-bonded or whatever? I think Van refuses to tell Stefan that he's the reborn Tiraniel because it might ~*~traumatize him~*~. And then I think Vanyel dies, because he sacrifices himself or something... it's hell of dramatic. Maybe he tells Stefan after all because there's definitely some "I had to live without YOU so now you have to live without ME" going on.

In the end, Stefan is old as fuck and riding a horse (a regular one) through the woods where he knew Van's spirit would linger, so that he can die and they can be TOGETHER FOREVER. Okay it's SO trashy, but I had legit feelings about those woods and what they represented? It's the same way I feel when I listen to Iron & Wine songs. Like - weirdly nostalgic somehow? Look, I don't know man, this series had an Effect on me back in the day.]]> 4.20 1989
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: Ash
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Updated review (2024): look it's not the Great American Novel but it kind of felt like it after the two ACOTAR books I read this year. Let a book be three hundred pages long and get to the damn point imo.

I got the strangest urge to reread this trilogy today. It seems like a bad idea. I loved this in highschool but I am sure it is not going to live up...................................

Here is everything that I disjointedly remember about these books:

They are basically a torrid gay love story for teenage girls. Vanyel is the main character and he is very pretty and VERY angsty and NO ONE UNDERSTANDS HIM so he goes to live with his aunt or something. He wants to be a Bard - Bards are like magical musicians who make people SEE the songs in their MINDS. But he doesn't have the gift so he's just like a really good lute player or whatever. Lame.

Anyway he meets his TRUE LOVE named like Tiraniel or some shit. In this 'verse if you meet your true love it's weird and magical and you're like, life-bonded (in one of her other books a dude became life bonded to his magical horse friend and oh my god why am I considering reading this again?) So anyway Tiraniel gets MURDERED BY DARK FORCES and Vanyel like feels his death and shit, and it causes him to angst out SO HARD that he suddenly has EVERY SINGLE KIND of magic. So he's not a NORMAL mage he's a HERALD-MAGE. They're SUPER rare because something has been killing them off. SOME DARK FORCE.

Anyway Vanyel remains angsty as fuck but he starts making mage friends. They all have like... power stones that they use to FOCUS THEIR ENERGY. And also every mage has a magical horse friend that is I think telepathic? LIKE I SAID. Shit is porn for teenage girls.

ANYWAY I remember very little of the actual plot. Vanyel gets kidnapped and raped at some point, but then he meets SOMEONE NEW!!!!!! to love!!!!!!! And he gets angsty about how he can forget about Tiraniel for this STEFAN fool, but then he realizes that STEFAN IS TIRANIEL REBORN!!!!!!!! Which, the age difference between them is NOT great. Meaning, it is great as in fairly large, but it is not, y'know, good. Anyway so they become life-bonded or whatever? I think Van refuses to tell Stefan that he's the reborn Tiraniel because it might ~*~traumatize him~*~. And then I think Vanyel dies, because he sacrifices himself or something... it's hell of dramatic. Maybe he tells Stefan after all because there's definitely some "I had to live without YOU so now you have to live without ME" going on.

In the end, Stefan is old as fuck and riding a horse (a regular one) through the woods where he knew Van's spirit would linger, so that he can die and they can be TOGETHER FOREVER. Okay it's SO trashy, but I had legit feelings about those woods and what they represented? It's the same way I feel when I listen to Iron & Wine songs. Like - weirdly nostalgic somehow? Look, I don't know man, this series had an Effect on me back in the day.
]]> 215749222 An investigation of the New Age movement in America that aims to understand its appeal to women and the self-proclaimed prophetesses, like Love Has Won'sĚýAmy Carlson, who've created kingdoms for themselves within it.
Ěý Known for deep dives into true crime, extremist ideologies and fringe subcultures, journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward American New Age culture. Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere —Ěýfrom Instagram and TikTok, toĚýupscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Sottile investigates how the recent surge of interest in New Age ideas speaks to a culture that is woven into the very fabric of America, and how self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha have built devout followings because of it. For more than a century, this pastel-colored world of love, light and enlightenment has been built upon a foundation of conspiracies, antisemitism, nationalism and a rejection of science. Ěý


In BLAZING EYE SEES ALL, Sottile seeks to understand the quest for New Age spirituality in an era of fear that has made us open to anything that claims to bring relief � from war, the climate crisis, COVID 19, or the myriad of other issues we face. At the same time, she attempts to draw a line between truly helpful, healing ideas and snake oil. The new New Age is everywhere, and Sottile helps us sort through the crystals to find true clarity.]]> 304 Leah Sottile 1538742608 Ash 0 to-read 4.22
author: Leah Sottile
name: Ash
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61111274 A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: when Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?

From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own--ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life.]]> 284 Lamya H. 0593448766 Ash 0 to-read 4.47 2023
author: Lamya H.
name: Ash
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210318906 256 Susanna Clarke 163973547X Ash 0 to-read 4.02 2006
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Ash
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37946414
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.]]> 343 Kate Atkinson 031617663X Ash 4 arc 3.44 2018
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Ash
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: arc
review:
I got fairly confused at all of the revelations in the last twenty or so pages. Possibly by design, probably because personally speaking I've had a bit of an awful week and my mind isn't really firing on all cylinders. Overall I enjoyed this although the pacing was a bit odd. Probably a 3.5 for me.
]]> 54810141 The book begins with the stories of migrant workers and organizers fighting against Donald Trump's immigration regime, many of whom have themselves been targeted for deportation, likely as a result of their efforts to build a better world.
The book then investigates the recent history and political economy of U.S. nativism, from the dark money-funded think tanks and nonprofits that have provided policy and personnel for the Trump administration to the militant reactionaries doing battle with antifascists in the streets and online.
Ultimately, as longstanding American traditions of white supremacy and nationalism respond to the ongoing crises of neoliberal capitalism and climate change, The book argues that a new ideological formation, border fascism, is emerging--one that any internationalist movement for working class liberation will have to reckon with in the struggles to come.]]> 350 Brendan O'Connor 1642593818 Ash 0 to-read 4.17
author: Brendan O'Connor
name: Ash
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197299349
A new short story by Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin

A demolition derby driver’s perspective on 2 Fast 2 Furious’s derby scene

An essay contemplating the queer symbolism of Cipher’s bowl cut

The scoop on the franchise’s only canonically nonbinary character

Instructions for an F&F-themed tabletop roleplaying game

A contemplation of which Taylor Swift album represents each F&F character

Plus: Bingo cards! Comics! Haiku! And, of course, hot gay erotica…]]> 160 Tuck Woodstock Ash 0 to-read 4.81 2023
author: Tuck Woodstock
name: Ash
average rating: 4.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63249715 The Nib, a hilarious trans-"final girl" horror graphic novel about a bachelor party gone very, very wrong.

Newly-out trans artist’s assistant Sammie is invited to an old friend’s bachelor weekend in El Campo, a hedonistic wonderland of a city floating in the Atlantic Ocean's international waters—think Las Vegas with even fewer rules. Though they have not identified as a man for over a year, Sammie’s college buddies haven't quite gotten the message—as evidenced byĚýtheir formerly closest friend Adam asking them to be his “best man.â€�

Arriving at the swanky hotel, Sammie immediately questions their decision to come. Bad enough that they have to suffer through a torrent of passive-aggressive comments from the groom's pals—all met with zero pushback from supposed "nice guy" Adam. But also, they seem to be the only one who's noticed the mysterious cult that's also staying at the hotel, and is ritually dismembering guests and demanding fealty to their bloodthirsty god.

Part satire, part horror, Boys Weekend explores what it’s like to exist as a transfemme person in a man’s world, the difficulty of maintaining friendships through transition, and the more cult-like effects of masculinity, “hustle� culture, and capitalism—all through the vibrant lens of a surreal, scary, and immensely imaginative romp.]]> 232 Mattie Lubchansky 0593316711 Ash 4 comics 4.00 2023
author: Mattie Lubchansky
name: Ash
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: comics
review:

]]> 34198648
All her life, Teodora has hidden the fact that she secretly turns her family’s enemies into music boxes, mirrors, and other decorative objects. After all, everyone in Vinalia knows that stregas—wielders of magic—are figures out of fairytales. Nobody believes they’re real.

Then the Capo, the land’s new ruler, sends poisoned letters to the heads of the Five Families that have long controlled Vinalia. Four lie dead and Teo’s beloved father is gravely ill. To save him, Teo must travel to the capital as a DiSangro son—not merely disguised as a boy, but transformed into one.

Enter Cielo, a strega who can switch back and forth between male and female as effortlessly as turning a page in a book. Teo and Cielo journey together to the capital, and Teo struggles to master her powers and to keep her growing feelings for Cielo locked in her heart. As she falls in love with witty, irascible Cielo, Teo realizes how much of life she’s missed by hiding her true nature. But she can’t forget her mission, and the closer they get to the palace, the more sinister secrets they uncover about what’s really going on in their beloved country—and the more determined Teo becomes to save her family at any cost.]]> 352 Amy Rose Capetta Ash 0 to-read 3.67 2018
author: Amy Rose Capetta
name: Ash
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18659623 'It came from the woods. Most strange things do.'

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.

These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.

Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there...]]> 208 Emily Carroll 1442465956 Ash 0 to-read 3.94 2014
author: Emily Carroll
name: Ash
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61484875 In this graphic novel by Emily Carroll, a young woman marries a kind dentist only to discover a dark mystery surrounding his former wife’s death.

After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband―a recently widowed dentist―when he arrived in town with his young daughter seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up, and Abby starts to wonder...was Sheila’s death really by natural causes?

As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life.]]> 256 Emily Carroll 125025552X Ash 4 comics 4.06 2023
author: Emily Carroll
name: Ash
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: comics
review:

]]> 212464996
It's fucking things up for everyone. Collin's polycule is falling apart. Andrew, now Cathy, is a detrans tradwife making headlines for her infertility journey. And both of them are being pursued by New York Times journalist Leon Donegal, who's "just asking questions."

After Leon sets his sights on Vivian's story for his new book, the three former friends are forced to come to terms with their past and figure out how to move on for good.]]> 350 Hal Schrieve Ash 0 to-read 4.81 2023
author: Hal Schrieve
name: Ash
average rating: 4.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50659468
Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil.

Bestselling author Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her dazzling, sexy, action-packed series to new heights.]]> 626 Sarah J. Maas 1635575583 Ash 0 4.65 2016
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Ash
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves:
review:
I think an editor could have made this good.
]]> 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Ash 0 to-read 3.25 2023
author: Zadie Smith
name: Ash
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Ash 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Ash
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Ash 0 to-read 3.35 2024
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ash
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50659467
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.]]> 419 Sarah J. Maas 1635575567 Ash 0 4.16 2015
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Ash
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 26530360 A thrilling work of sophisticated suspense set amid the Vietnamese underworld in Las Vegas.

Robert, an Oakland cop, still can't let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she's disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who's blackmailing Robert into finding her for him. As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny's sadistic son, "Junior," and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage. He finds himself chasing the ghosts of her past, one that reaches back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, as his investigation soon uncovers the existence of an elusive packet of her secret letters to someone she left behind long ago. Although Robert starts illuminating the dark corners of Suzy’s life, the legacy of her sins threatens to immolate them all.

Vu Tran has written a thrilling and cinematic work of sophisticated suspense and haunting lyricism, set in motion by characters who can neither trust each other nor trust themselves. This remarkable debut is a noir page-turner resonant with the lasting reverberations of lives lost and lives remade a generation ago.]]> 320 Vu Tran 0393352870 Ash 3 3.22 2015
author: Vu Tran
name: Ash
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 62326621 In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.


Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach is her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Creatures that called sailors to their doom. That dragged them down and drowned them. That feasted on their flesh. The creature that she's always longed to the mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine, the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.]]> 248 Jade Song 0063257629 Ash 0 to-read 3.73 2023
author: Jade Song
name: Ash
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 165395 246 Rita Mae Brown 0553146963 Ash 0 to-read 3.92 1973
author: Rita Mae Brown
name: Ash
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41104077
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women�, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.]]> 448 Caroline Criado Pérez 1419729071 Ash 0 to-read 4.35 2019
author: Caroline Criado PĂ©rez
name: Ash
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60048960
Most notable among them is his teenage daughter, Koko, who idolizes him and is awakening to her own sexuality even as her mentally fragile mother struggles to overcome her long-failed marriage and rejection by Circus. Delivering a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Warrell spins a provocative, soulful, and gripping story of passion and risk, fathers and daughters, wives and single women, and, finally, hope and reconciliation.]]> 336 Laura Warrell 0593316444 Ash 0 to-read 3.51 2022
author: Laura Warrell
name: Ash
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 24612118
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.]]> 390 Lauren Groff 1594634475 Ash 3 audio 3.55 2015
author: Lauren Groff
name: Ash
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: audio
review:
I really liked parts of this and really disliked parts of it. Sometimes I really liked and really disliked the same thing at once.
]]> 8131513
Ěý

Told from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and Sheila, the talent wrangler who must keep it all under control, Snuff is a dark, wild, and lethally funny novel that brings the presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction.]]> 210 Chuck Palahniuk 038552692X Ash 4 3.31 2008
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Ash
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/11
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
Pretty fucked up but I guess that's probably what you're looking for if you want to read Chuck Palahniuk.
]]> 60142750 In the propulsive debut novel from the host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie, a journalist uncovers her hometown’s dark secrets when she becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her childhood neighbor—and the disappearance of another girl twenty years later.

You can’t ever know for sure what happens behind closed doors.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

When Margot returns home to help care for her uncle after he is diagnosed with early-onset dementia, she feels like she’s walked into a time capsule. Wakarusa is exactly how she remembers—genial, stifled, secretive. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who’s gone missing under circumstances eerily similar to January’s. With all the old feelings rushing back, Margot vows to find Natalie and to solve January’s murder once and for all.

But the police, Natalie’s family, the townspeople—they all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into Natalie’s disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder January’s case feels. Could January’s killer still be out there? Is it the same person who took Natalie? And what will it cost to finally discover what truly happened that night twenty years ago?

Twisty, chilling, and intense, All Good People Here is a searing tale that asks: What are your neighbors capable of when they think no one is watching?]]> 312 Ashley Flowers 0593496477 Ash 3 audio 3.81 2022
author: Ashley Flowers
name: Ash
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves: audio
review:

]]> 52185452 From the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater is a devastating story told over twenty-four hours in the Scottish highlands, and a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty in these divided times.

On the longest day of the summer, twelve people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents.

A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisce about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them. One particular family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, starts to draw the attention of the others. Tensions rise and all watch on, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead as night finally falls.]]> 208 Sarah Moss 1529035430 Ash 4 3.52 2020
author: Sarah Moss
name: Ash
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/09
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:
I still think of this book often. Moss is very good at writing an oppressive sense of dread that builds and builds and then lingers long after I've set the book aside and forgotten many of the finer details.
]]> 17345344
“An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind.� � Entertainment Weekly

To many people, hallucinations imply madness, but in fact they are a common part of the human experience. These sensory distortions range from the shimmering zigzags of a visual migraine to powerful visions brought on by fever, injuries, drugs, sensory deprivation, exhaustion, or even grief. Hallucinations doubtless lie behind many mythological traditions, literary inventions, and religious epiphanies.

Drawing on his own experiences, a wealth of clinical cases from among his patients, and famous historical examples ranging from Dostoevsky to Lewis Carroll, the legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks investigates the mystery of these sensory what they say about the working of our brains, how they have influenced our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination is present in all humans.]]> 323 Oliver Sacks 0307947432 Ash 0 to-read 3.95 2012
author: Oliver Sacks
name: Ash
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Ash 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Ash
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60468244 From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting, Dana Mattioli's The Everything War is the shocking, explosive, and untold exposé of Amazon's endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination�, by any means necessary. There is simply no way to understand what befell the global economy, and America's cultural and economic landscape, without seeing what Amazon has wrought.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 416 Dana Mattioli 0316269778 Ash 0 to-read 4.08 2024
author: Dana Mattioli
name: Ash
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35487745
All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . .

Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.

A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.

A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.]]> 432 Chelsey Johnson 0062666681 Ash 0 arc, currently-reading 3.78 2018
author: Chelsey Johnson
name: Ash
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: arc, currently-reading
review:

]]> 159979
Cover design by Matt Dorfman.]]> 336 Daniel J. Boorstin 0679741801 Ash 0 to-read 4.07 1961
author: Daniel J. Boorstin
name: Ash
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199793688 From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.

The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.

The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.

As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women’s Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.]]> 272 Daniel M. Lavery 0063343533 Ash 0 to-read 2.85 2024
author: Daniel M. Lavery
name: Ash
average rating: 2.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65213595 A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.]]> 320 Alix E. Harrow 1250799058 Ash 4 3.77 2023
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Ash
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves:
review:
do I even like books or do I just like thinking about Big Sentient House
]]> 28503616 A true graphic milestone: the epic trilogy that began with X'ed Out, continued in The Hive, and concluded in Sugar Skull--now in one volume.

The long strange trip of Doug in all its mind-bending, heartbreaking totality. The fragments of the past collide with the reality of the present, nightmarish dreams evolve into an even more dreadful reality, and when you finally find out where all of this has been going, and what it means . . . it will make you go right back to the first page and read it all again with new eyes. Just like Doug.

(With full-color illustrations throughout) ]]> 176 Charles Burns 0375715177 Ash 0 comics, currently-reading 4.08 2016
author: Charles Burns
name: Ash
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: comics, currently-reading
review:

]]> 3381114 Soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart (as JT) and Laura Dern.

The JT LeRoy scandal is a story of our times. In January 2006, the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT's fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay-male-ex-truck-stop-prostitute-turned literary-wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco, whose sister-in-law wrote the books.
Girl Boy Girl is the story of how Savannah Knoop led this bizarre double life for six years, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists--Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Mary Ellen Mark, Winona Ryder, Asia Argento, Sharon Olds, Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt, Calvin Klein, and Shirley Manson, to name a few--and traveled the world. Telling her side of the story for the first time, Savannah reveals how being perceived as a boy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. Her love affair with Asia Argento is particularly wrenching, as they embark on an intimate relationship that causes more alienation than closeness.
As Savannah and Laura struggle over control of the JT character, Savannah realizes the limits of the game - - and inadvertently finds herself through the adventure of being someone else.]]> 224 Savannah Knoop 1583228519 Ash 2 arc, audio
There is a level where you can look at all of this as some form of art, however unethical, but I find philosophical conversations about the boundaries of performance art somewhat self-important and very boring. I'm more interested in the ways that the hoax ties into conversations we're still having about literature today - who gets to write about marginalized people, and why do we think that? There is a (perhaps growing) idea that marginalized people are now given WAY more opportunities in publishing than nonmarginalized people although that's absolutely not true; we maybe hear from more marginalized people now than we used to but they're still underrepresented and largely don't reap the same financial benefits of their nonmarginalized peers.

Of course that's why it's so irritating that two white women from San Francisco carried on this ruse for so long. But this isn't even a new read on the situation. This is from the article Beachy published in the early two thousands, speculating that JTL wasn't who he said he was:

"And perhaps no other culture has valued the contrived happy ending as much as ours. For all its abuse and kinky sex, the JT story is really just another heartwarming rags-to-riches tale for the punk generation. But what if America isn’t really the sort of place where a street urchin can charm his way to the top, through diligence and talent; what if instead it’s the sort of place where heartwarming stories of abused children who triumph through adversity are made up and marketed?" -Beachy,

And so I don't want to rehash it too much, although the temptation is there because I love a literary scandal and this one is absurd.

Instead I'll focus on this book specifically which I found lacking. It's primarily a rote retelling of events from Savannah's POV with a small glimpse into how she claims to have felt at the time and several body hair related diversions. It ends on what is supposed to be a hopeful note, when Savannah decides to finally live truly as herself, but it falls a bit flat. I can't tell how much responsibility she feels like she has for how things unfolded; I have no sense of how she feels about it now or if she would do it again.

I spent most of my adolescence online, and parts of this resonated - I had friends who turned out not to be who they had said that they were. And I've had friends with powerful personalities who can seem to pull you into a reality that isn't quite real. I would have enjoyed this more had Savannah explored those or other topics about how or why this happened, rather than just focusing on what she did and complaining that it's hard to live a double life and detailing her various hair removal treatments.

ETA you know the other thing that got me about this were the very surface level "people don't take you seriously if you're a woman" interjections. Like there is a criticism to be levelled at the way we want to consume the stories of people worse off than ourselves but I think "it's easier being a sex trafficked child who's a boy than it is being a girl who lives in her parents loft" is really not making the right argument.]]> 3.10 2008
author: Savannah Knoop
name: Ash
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: arc, audio
review:
I didn't know anything about JT Leroy going into this; mostly I read it because I have a bad case of covid and an old audio ARC. The whole JTL thing, now that I know more, makes me viscerally uncomfortable although I can't quite say why. I have a fluid view of gender and gender experimentation, I like drag, I've read about a ton of other scammers with something closer to mild interest. Maybe some of the discomfort was with myself, because had I realized that this was just another money making layer of the scam I probably wouldn't have started reading it.

There is a level where you can look at all of this as some form of art, however unethical, but I find philosophical conversations about the boundaries of performance art somewhat self-important and very boring. I'm more interested in the ways that the hoax ties into conversations we're still having about literature today - who gets to write about marginalized people, and why do we think that? There is a (perhaps growing) idea that marginalized people are now given WAY more opportunities in publishing than nonmarginalized people although that's absolutely not true; we maybe hear from more marginalized people now than we used to but they're still underrepresented and largely don't reap the same financial benefits of their nonmarginalized peers.

Of course that's why it's so irritating that two white women from San Francisco carried on this ruse for so long. But this isn't even a new read on the situation. This is from the article Beachy published in the early two thousands, speculating that JTL wasn't who he said he was:

"And perhaps no other culture has valued the contrived happy ending as much as ours. For all its abuse and kinky sex, the JT story is really just another heartwarming rags-to-riches tale for the punk generation. But what if America isn’t really the sort of place where a street urchin can charm his way to the top, through diligence and talent; what if instead it’s the sort of place where heartwarming stories of abused children who triumph through adversity are made up and marketed?" -Beachy,

And so I don't want to rehash it too much, although the temptation is there because I love a literary scandal and this one is absurd.

Instead I'll focus on this book specifically which I found lacking. It's primarily a rote retelling of events from Savannah's POV with a small glimpse into how she claims to have felt at the time and several body hair related diversions. It ends on what is supposed to be a hopeful note, when Savannah decides to finally live truly as herself, but it falls a bit flat. I can't tell how much responsibility she feels like she has for how things unfolded; I have no sense of how she feels about it now or if she would do it again.

I spent most of my adolescence online, and parts of this resonated - I had friends who turned out not to be who they had said that they were. And I've had friends with powerful personalities who can seem to pull you into a reality that isn't quite real. I would have enjoyed this more had Savannah explored those or other topics about how or why this happened, rather than just focusing on what she did and complaining that it's hard to live a double life and detailing her various hair removal treatments.

ETA you know the other thing that got me about this were the very surface level "people don't take you seriously if you're a woman" interjections. Like there is a criticism to be levelled at the way we want to consume the stories of people worse off than ourselves but I think "it's easier being a sex trafficked child who's a boy than it is being a girl who lives in her parents loft" is really not making the right argument.
]]> 61937038
The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in many generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds a dragon’s egg and bonds with its hatchling. Her people are delighted, for all remember the tales of the days when dragons lived among them and danced away the storms of autumn, enabling the people to thrive. To them, Anequs is revered as Nampeshiweisit—a person in a unique relationship with a dragon.

Unfortunately for Anequs, the Anglish conquerors of her land have different opinions. They have a very specific idea of how a dragon should be raised, and who should be doing the raising—and Anequs does not meet any of their requirements. Only with great reluctance do they allow Anequs to enroll in a proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland. If she cannot succeed there, her dragon will be killed.

For a girl with no formal schooling, a non-Anglish upbringing, and a very different understanding of the history of her land, challenges abound—both socially and academically. But Anequs is smart, determined, and resolved to learn what she needs to help her dragon, even if it means teaching herself. The one thing she refuses to do, however, is become the meek Anglish miss that everyone expects.

Anequs and her dragon may be coming of age, but they’re also coming to power, and that brings an important realization: the world needs changing—and they might just be the ones to do it.]]> 511 Moniquill Blackgoose 0593498283 Ash 3 4.11 2023
author: Moniquill Blackgoose
name: Ash
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 27208 The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.]]> 200 Flann O'Brien 156478214X Ash 0 4.00 1967
author: Flann O'Brien
name: Ash
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/18
shelves: audio, work-bookclub, currently-reading
review:

]]> 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 Ash 0 audio 4.11 2021
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Ash
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/18
shelves: audio
review:
This was pretty cute once I got over how absurd the fake dating premise was, which is a trope I don't even mind but this one was SO ridiculous. Also I hated the whole Tom subplot.
]]> 43212849 Bringing Nature Home, sparked a national conversation about the link between healthy local ecosystems and human well-being. In Nature's Best Hope, he takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots, home-grown approach to conservation.Ěý

Nature's Best Hope advocates for homeowners everywhere to turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. This home-based approach doesn’t rely on the federal government and protects the environment from the whims of politics. It is also easy to do, and readers will walk away with specific suggestions they can incorporate into their own yards.

Nature's Best Hope is nature writing at its best—rooted in history, progressive in its advocacy, and above all, actionable and hopeful. By proposing practical measures that ordinary people can easily do, Tallamy gives us reason to believe that the planet can be preserved for future generations.
Ěý±Ő±Ő> 256 Douglas W. Tallamy 1604699000 Ash 0 to-read 4.36 2019
author: Douglas W. Tallamy
name: Ash
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20174424
Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched � along with her terrifying “secretary�, Sigrud � to solve a murder.

But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem, and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.

A tale of vast conspiracies, dead gods, and buried histories, City of Stairs is at once a gripping spy novel and a stunningly original work of fantasy.

]]> 452 Robert Jackson Bennett 080413717X Ash 0 to-read 4.07 2014
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Ash
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60784365 An original and probing debut work of nonfiction by a brilliant new writer, rooted in her years-long quest to study the cultural legacy of the wolf

In this enthralling, kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves both real and symbolic, Erica Berry weaves historic and scientific findings alongside criticism, journalism, and memoir to illuminate the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both.

From 17th-century Europeans referring to mysterious bodily sores as wolves, to contemporary xenophobia about wolves crossing national borders, wolves have long been made to carry our most entrenched sociopolitical, environmental, and bodily fears. Intimate and thought-provoking, Wolfish is a lyrical inquiry into the relationship between humans and wolves, anchored in the dual stories of one legendary tagged wolf, OR-7, and the author.

Charting OR-7’s long-distance solo journey after he leaves his pack in northeastern Oregon beside the author’s own roaming trajectory away from her Oregon home, Wolfish wrestles with inherited narratives around fear, danger, and the body. From her grandfather’s sheep farm to a wolf sanctuary on an aristocratic English estate, Erica Berry untangles binaries of predator and prey, self and other, and wild and domestic, finding new expressions for how to be a brave woman, human, and animal in our warming world.

Perfect for readers of cultural criticism, environmental writing, Rebecca Solnit, H is for Hawk, or anybody trying to navigate a world that is often scary. A timely and necessary book for current and future generations.]]> 432 Erica Berry 1250821622 Ash 0 to-read 3.57 2023
author: Erica Berry
name: Ash
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57540 But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.]]> 320 Ilan Pappé 1851684670 Ash 0 to-read 4.54 2006
author: Ilan Pappé
name: Ash
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62991302
Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence, culture reporter Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office.

From a hatchery in Iowa to a chicken show in Ohio to a rooster rescue in Minnesota, Danovich interviews the people breeding, training, healing, and, most importantly, adoring chickens. With more than 60 billion chickens killed every year on industrial farms around the world, they’re easy to dismiss as just another dinner ingredient. Yet Danovich’s reporting reveals the hidden cleverness, quiet sweetness, and irresistible personalities of these birds, as well as the complex human-chicken relationship that has evolved over centuries. This glimpse into the lives of backyard chickens doesn’t just help us to understand chickens better—it also casts light back on ourselves and what we’ve ignored throughout the explosive growth of industrial agriculture. Woven with delightful and sometimes heartbreaking anecdotes from Danovich’s own henhouse, Under the Henfluence proves that chickens are so much more than what they bring to the table.]]> 232 Tove Danovich 1572843217 Ash 0 nonfic, currently-reading 4.17 2023
author: Tove Danovich
name: Ash
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: nonfic, currently-reading
review:

]]> 34850447 Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,� to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing� and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,� Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.]]> 256 C. Riley Snorton 1517901723 Ash 0 to-read 4.01 2017
author: C. Riley Snorton
name: Ash
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 91239751
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.]]> 240 Melissa Broder 1668024845 Ash 4
No one really knows the ones they love
If you knew everything they thought
I bet that you would wish that they'd just shut up

The narrator of Death Valley has a familiar mind - a neurotic tendency to second-guess every thought and feeling, an all encompassing dread, a desire for some supernatural guidance that she isn't able to fully give herself over too. And from here it was easy to think my god girl you've gotta stop thinking about yourself for a second and r e l a x but her internal monologue isn't so different from my own and anyway we both already know that it's gauche to spend so much time thinking about our own thoughts.

That's all to say that despite its taking place in the wide open American west, this book is a little claustrophobic. The narrator is mostly interacting with herself or with a variety of standins - the rocks she names and who speak to her a la Tom Robbins' Can o' Beans and friends, or the ghosts of fathers past present and future - and if it is a little bit exhausting at times I think that it paid off here. By the end of her journey we'd both gone somewhere.

I'm not sure where this sits in my personal Broder rankings. The Pisces will be hard to beat and I still think about Milk Fed all of the time. I think that I'll need some time for this one to really sink in but the last quarter of the book really won me over.

Note: I received this book from a Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ giveaway.]]> 3.46 2023
author: Melissa Broder
name: Ash
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:
There is this line from a Modest Mouse song that I think of when I read Melissa Broder:

No one really knows the ones they love
If you knew everything they thought
I bet that you would wish that they'd just shut up

The narrator of Death Valley has a familiar mind - a neurotic tendency to second-guess every thought and feeling, an all encompassing dread, a desire for some supernatural guidance that she isn't able to fully give herself over too. And from here it was easy to think my god girl you've gotta stop thinking about yourself for a second and r e l a x but her internal monologue isn't so different from my own and anyway we both already know that it's gauche to spend so much time thinking about our own thoughts.

That's all to say that despite its taking place in the wide open American west, this book is a little claustrophobic. The narrator is mostly interacting with herself or with a variety of standins - the rocks she names and who speak to her a la Tom Robbins' Can o' Beans and friends, or the ghosts of fathers past present and future - and if it is a little bit exhausting at times I think that it paid off here. By the end of her journey we'd both gone somewhere.

I'm not sure where this sits in my personal Broder rankings. The Pisces will be hard to beat and I still think about Milk Fed all of the time. I think that I'll need some time for this one to really sink in but the last quarter of the book really won me over.

Note: I received this book from a Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ giveaway.
]]> 199793426 Polostan follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.]]> 303 Neal Stephenson 0062334492 Ash 0 to-read 3.70 2024
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Ash
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54614429 WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk 0525541349 Ash 0 to-read 3.89 2009
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Ash
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 98653925 James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.

For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.

Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.]]> 389 James Frankie Thomas 1419769146 Ash 5
ETA two months later: still thinking about this basically every day. Feeling the compulsion to read it again...]]> 4.06 2023
author: James Frankie Thomas
name: Ash
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves:
review:
This was fucking incredible.

ETA two months later: still thinking about this basically every day. Feeling the compulsion to read it again...
]]> 55746188 290 Danielle Henderson 0525559353 Ash 0 to-read 4.22 2021
author: Danielle Henderson
name: Ash
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174147294
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.]]> 315 Tommy Orange 0593318250 Ash 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Tommy Orange
name: Ash
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45992229
It's 4:30 in the morning, and the "book woman" and her horse are already on their way. Hers is an important job, for the folks along her treacherous route are eager for the tattered books and magazines she carries in her saddlebags.

During the Great Depression, thousands lived on the brink of starvation. Many perished. In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration under his 1933 New Deal initiative. The WPA was designed to get people back on their feet. One of its most innovative programs was the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky.

Thoroughly researched and illustrated with period photographs, this is the story of one of the WPA's greatest successes. People all over the country supported the project's goals. But it was the librarians themselves—young, determined, and earning just $28 a month—who brought the hope of a wider world to people in the crooks and hollows of Kentucky's Cumberland Mountains.]]> 58 Kathi Appelt 1948959100 Ash 0 to-read 4.27 2001
author: Kathi Appelt
name: Ash
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11455485 Satantango is proof that “the devil has all the good times.�

The story of Satantango, spread over a couple of days of endless rain, focuses on the dozen remaining inhabitants of an unnamed isolated hamlet: failures stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Schemes, crimes, infidelities, hopes of escape, and above all trust and its constant betrayal are Krasznahorkai’s meat. “At the center of Satantango,� George Szirtes has said, “is the eponymous drunken dance, referred to here sometimes as a tango and sometimes as a csardas. It takes place at the local inn where everyone is drunk. . . . Their world is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the comic and the tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.�

“You know,� Mrs. Schmidt, a pivotal character, tipsily confides, “dance is my one weakness.”]]> 274 László Krasznahorkai 0811217345 Ash 0 to-read 4.19 1985
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Ash
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61419650 368 Erik J. Brown 0063054981 Ash 0 to-read 4.35 2022
author: Erik J. Brown
name: Ash
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40496 How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics

Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons - at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Poetic and nostalgic, it is an elegy to a lost world.

Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (1906-1983), better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, claimed to have been born in St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales; after his death he was discovered to have been born of Welsh parents in Hendon, Middlesex. His famous first novel How Green Was My Valley (1939) was begun in St David's from a draft he had written in India, and was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film by director John Ford. None But the Lonely Heart, his second novel, was published in 1943, and subsequently made into a film starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore. As well as novels including Green, Green My Valley Now (1975) and I Stand on a Quiet Shore (1982), Llewellyn wrote two highly successful plays, Poison Pen and Noose

If you enjoyed How Green Was My Valley, you might like Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Vivid, eloquent, poetical, glowing with an inner flame of emotion'
The Times Literary Supplement]]> 448 Richard Llewellyn Ash 0 to-read 4.18 1939
author: Richard Llewellyn
name: Ash
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Ash 0 to-read 3.29 2023
author: Emma Cline
name: Ash
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 781653 182 Larry Watson 0671507036 Ash 0 to-read 3.82 1993
author: Larry Watson
name: Ash
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 117942 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 160 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0451523105 Ash 4 3.92 1962
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Ash
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves:
review:
Yikes, Russia. What's wrong with you.
]]> 56179364 The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.]]> 384 Thomas Olde Heuvelt 1250780934 Ash 4 3.71 2013
author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt
name: Ash
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 60133986 Bestselling author S. A. Chakraborty's acclaimed Daevabad Trilogy gets expanded with this new compilation of stories from before, during, and after the events of The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, and The Empire of Gold, all from the perspective of characters both beloved and hated, and even those without a voice in the novels. The River of Silver gathers material both seen and new--including a special coda fans will need to read--making this the perfect complement to those incredible novels.

Now together in one place, these stories of Daevabad enrich a world already teeming with magic and wonder. Explore this magical kingdom, hidden from human eyes. A place where djinn live and thrive, fight and love. A world where princes question their power, and powerful demons can help you...or destroy you.

A prospective new queen joins a court whose lethal history may overwhelm her own political savvy...

An imprisoned royal from a fallen dynasty and a young woman wrenched from her home cross paths in an enchanted garden...

A pair of scouts stumble upon a secret in a cursed winter wood that will turn over their world...

From Manizheh's first steps towards rebellion to adventures that take place after The Empire of Gold, this is a must-have collection for those who can't get enough of Nahri, Ali, and Dara and all that unfolded around them.]]> 242 S.A. Chakraborty 0063093731 Ash 0 4.25 2022
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: Ash
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: audio, short-stories, currently-reading
review:

]]> 56304423 The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out in this chilling YA psychological thriller and modern take on the classic haunted house story from New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson!

Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty ten-year-old stepsister, Piper.

The renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its . . . secrets. That’s only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone.

But “running from ghosts� is just a metaphor, right?

As the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn’t limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks.]]> 373 Tiffany D. Jackson 006302909X Ash 3 audio, kidz-bookz 3.81 2021
author: Tiffany D. Jackson
name: Ash
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: audio, kidz-bookz
review:

]]> 25490313 NAMED A BEST BOOK of the YEAR by O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, REFINERY 29, and KIRKUS REVIEWS SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE The “wondrous� (O, The Oprah Magazine), “scathingly funny� (Entertainment Weekly) debut from Whiting Award winner and author of Big Swiss Jen Beagin about a cleaning lady named Mona and her quest for self-acceptance.Jen Beagin’s funny, moving, fearless debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. She falls for a man she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways. In search of healing, she decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of cast-offs, all of whom have something to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past. The story of Mona’s quest for belonging in this world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunning, one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.]]> 208 Jen Beagin 0810132079 Ash 4 arc The Girls, but it did the same thing to me where I'd read something that I hadn't articulated about myself and relate to it so strongly I physically recoiled. There were things in this book that felt like looking in a mirror and simultaneously left me thinking "but we don't just say that out loud! UNWRITE THIS." (This is a compliment, mostly.) It happened less with this book than with The Girls, which is probably good because it meant that I finished this in less than eight months, but at times they definitely shared a sort of exhilirating, nauseating honesty that I haven't found anywhere else.

This left me wanting for something, although I don't know what. I can't think of anything that would have made it better for me; perhaps it's just a matter of seeing what she does with her next book.

]]> 3.71 2015
author: Jen Beagin
name: Ash
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2018/06/06
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves: arc
review:
This book wasn't really like The Girls, but it did the same thing to me where I'd read something that I hadn't articulated about myself and relate to it so strongly I physically recoiled. There were things in this book that felt like looking in a mirror and simultaneously left me thinking "but we don't just say that out loud! UNWRITE THIS." (This is a compliment, mostly.) It happened less with this book than with The Girls, which is probably good because it meant that I finished this in less than eight months, but at times they definitely shared a sort of exhilirating, nauseating honesty that I haven't found anywhere else.

This left me wanting for something, although I don't know what. I can't think of anything that would have made it better for me; perhaps it's just a matter of seeing what she does with her next book.


]]> 58329296 What If It's Us meets They Both Die at the End in this postapocalyptic, queer YA adventure romance from debut author Erik J. Brown. Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera, Alex London, and Heartstopper by Alice Oseman.

When Andrew stumbles upon Jamie's house, he's injured, starved, and has nothing left to lose. A deadly pathogen has killed off most of the world's population, including everyone both boys have ever loved. And if this new world has taught them anything, it's to be scared of what other desperate people will do . . . so why does it seem so easy for them to trust each other?

After danger breaches their shelter, they flee south in search of civilization. But something isn't adding up about Andrew's story, and it could cost them everything. And Jamie has a secret, too. He's starting to feel something more than friendship for Andrew, adding another layer of fear and confusion to an already tumultuous journey.

The road ahead of them is long, and to survive, they'll have to shed their secrets, face the consequences of their actions, and find the courage to fight for the future they desire, together. Only one thing feels certain: all that's left in their world is the undeniable pull they have toward each other.]]> 345 Erik J. Brown 0063054973 Ash 0 to-read 4.23 2022
author: Erik J. Brown
name: Ash
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127654211 367 Mariely Lares 006325431X Ash 0 to-read 3.38 2024
author: Mariely Lares
name: Ash
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63249718 New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys� club running the film industry in �90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.]]> 323 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593355369 Ash 3
My main qualm with it is that it felt like the whole thing was just talking. Three hundred straight pages of dialogue. Talking about magic, talking about monsters, talking about film, talking talking talking talking. And I just got kind of bored!

In a lot of ways this seemed structurally similar to Mexican Gothic. I think that this is actually the better book although I enjoyed the other more - it feels like maybe she's stretching more as a writer, so this was rougher around the edges but ultimately more ambitious? It was less of a page turner for me but at the end of the day I'd still recommend this.

[spoilers removed]]]> 3.56 2023
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Ash
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/20
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves:
review:
Man I wanted to like this more. and to be fair three stars feels stingy! I liked the main characters and i really liked the way that she wove historical Nazi esotericism into the fabric of this book. She is great at making horror out of socio-political fact. I think that is probably one of the sentences I say that makes people want to punch me, but it's the best way I can think to phrase it. This book was really clever and I think very well imagined and put together.

My main qualm with it is that it felt like the whole thing was just talking. Three hundred straight pages of dialogue. Talking about magic, talking about monsters, talking about film, talking talking talking talking. And I just got kind of bored!

In a lot of ways this seemed structurally similar to Mexican Gothic. I think that this is actually the better book although I enjoyed the other more - it feels like maybe she's stretching more as a writer, so this was rougher around the edges but ultimately more ambitious? It was less of a page turner for me but at the end of the day I'd still recommend this.

[spoilers removed]
]]> 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Ash 4 3.48 1928
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Ash
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 101144869 A disgraced soccer exec reluctantly enlists the help of a retired soccer star in coaching a children’s team in this smalltown love story in the vein of Ted Lasso and It Happened One Summer —from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception.

Adalyn Reyes has spent years perfecting her daily routine: wake up at dawn, drive to the Miami Flames FC offices, try her hardest to leave a mark, go home, and repeat.

But her routine is disrupted when a video of her in an altercation with the team’s mascot goes viral. Rather than fire her, the team’s owner—who happens to be her father—sends Adalyn to middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, where she’s tasked with turning around the struggling local soccer team, the Green Warriors, as a way to redeem herself. Her plans crumble upon discovering that the players wear tutus to practice (impractical), keep pet goats (messy), and are terrified of Adalyn (counterproductive), and are nine-year-old kids.

To make things worse, also in town is Cameron Caldani, goalkeeping prodigy whose presence is somewhat of a mystery. Cam is the perfect candidate to help Adalyn, but after one very unfortunate first encounter involving a rooster, Cam’s leg, and Adalyn’s bumper, he’s also set on running her out of town. But banishment is not an option for Adalyn. Not again. Helping this ragtag children’s team is her road to redemption, and she is playing the long game. With or without Cam’s help.]]> 373 Elena Armas 1668011301 Ash 0 3.54 2023
author: Elena Armas
name: Ash
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/11
date added: 2023/10/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 151908136 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor.

Tornado Onwubiko is one of seven people on Earth paired with sentient ships to explore and research the cosmos for twenty million euros. A decade of solitary life for a lifetime of wealth. Five years into the ten-year mission of total isolation comes a a temporary meetup among fellow travelers. A lot can happen in a week. For Tornado, who left a normal life behind, a little company can be life-changing.

Nnedi Okorafor’s Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 45 Nnedi Okorafor 1662516789 Ash 0 to-read 3.84 2023
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Ash
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]> 304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Ash 0 to-read 4.27 2023
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Ash
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12000852
Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel’s sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories—the remnants—of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.]]> 174 Alexis M. Smith 193563920X Ash 0 to-read 3.76 2012
author: Alexis M. Smith
name: Ash
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59411559 A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER

From the author of the "original, politically daring and passionately written" (Vogue) novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets" the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.

This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the secrets."

In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.]]> 306 Ingrid Rojas Contreras 0385546661 Ash 0 to-read 4.04 2022
author: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
name: Ash
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 75668276
After publishing his debut novel,ĚýThe Shattered Man,Ěýto disappointing sales and reviews, Campbell P. Marion is struggling to find inspiration for a follow-up. When Edenville College invites him to join as a writer-in-residence, he’s convinced that his bad luck has finally taken a turn.

His girlfriend Quinn isn’t so sure—she grew up near Edenville and has good reasons for not wanting to move back. Cam disregards her skepticism and accepts the job, with Quinn reluctantly following along. But there’s something wrong in Edenville. Despite the charming old ladies milling about Main Street and picturesque sunflowers dotting the sidewalks, poison lurks beneath the surface. As a series of strange and ominous events escalate among Edenville and its residents, Cam and Quinn find themselves entangled in a dark and disturbing history. Told with equal parts horror and humor,Ěý EdenvilleĚý explores the urban legends that fuel our nightmares and the ways in which ambition can overshadow our best instincts. Sam Rebelein is an exciting, sharp new voice, sure to terrify readers for years to come.]]> 336 Sam Rebelein 0063252244 Ash 0 to-read 3.15 2023
author: Sam Rebelein
name: Ash
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>