en-US Tue, 25 Mar 2025 07:21:32 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 34480293 A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller!

"the glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still."-NPR Books

The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive - until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...]]> 496 Kate Moore 1492649376 Kathi 0 currently-reading 4.26 2016
author: Kate Moore
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 43269446 This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner's conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead 0345804341 Kathi 5 favorites 4.35 2019
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Kathi 0 to-read 4.33 2025
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Kathi 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 222585980 Nobelpreis für Literatur 2024

Der neue große Roman von Han Kang

»Unmöglicher Abschied« erzählt die Geschichte einer Freundschaft zwischen zwei Frauen und beleuchtet zugleich ein jahrzehntelang verschwiegenes Kapitel koreanischer Geschichte.

Eines Morgens ruft Inseon ihre Freundin Gyeongha zu sich ins Krankenhaus von Seoul. Sie hatte einen Unfall und bittet Gyeongha, ihr Zuhause auf der Insel Jeju aufzusuchen, weil ihr kleiner weißer Vogel sterben wird, wenn ihn niemand füttert. Als Gyeongha auf der Insel ankommt, bricht ein Schneesturm herein. Der Weg zu Inseons Haus wird zu einem Überlebenskampf gegen die Kälte, die mit jedem Schritt mehr in sie eindringt. Noch ahnt sie nicht, was sie dort die verschüttete Geschichte von Inseons Familie, die eng verbunden ist mit einem lang verdrängten Kapitel koreanischer Geschichte. Han Kangs neuer Roman ist eine Hymne an die Freundschaft und das Erinnern, die Geschichte einer tiefen Liebe im Angesicht unsäglicher Gewalt �� und eine Feier des Lebens, wie zerbrechlich es auch sein mag.]]> 315 Han Kang 3351041845 Kathi 0 to-read 4.14 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 205571635 'A writer of sentences so elegant that they gleam.'
ALI SMITH

'Entirely original.'
STYLIST

'Oyeyemi has mastered the art of bold, expansive storytelling.'
IRENOSEN OKOJIE

'A writer we should be delirious to have as a contemporary.'
INDEPENDENT

The new novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi.

Oyeyemi treats you to a kaleidoscopic weekend in Prague, as dazzling as it is effortlessly unique. Get lost in the story like you would an unfamiliar city and let it reward you with moments of philosophical clarity, wheelbarrow rides, raw emotion and raw onions.

This novel is a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide. It is a story about the lies behind the lies we tell and a city as a living thing, sustained by the lives of its inhabitants. Suffused with warmth and joy, Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague, and to the art of storytelling.]]> 272 Helen Oyeyemi 0571366635 Kathi 4 3.36 2024
author: Helen Oyeyemi
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 18964701 ASIN B007KOHV2Y moved to this edition.
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable tale about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”]]> 227 William Golding Kathi 5 favorites 3.87 1954
author: William Golding
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> 215010428
It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters�� lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters�� lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield 0008608040 Kathi 3 3.78 2024
author: Julia Armfield
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> 134915247
The city of dreaming spires.

It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.

And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift.

Until it became a prison��

But can a student stand against an empire?]]> 546 R.F. Kuang 0008501858 Kathi 4 4.14 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
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]]> 60911018 From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 175 T. Kingfisher 1803360070 Kathi 4 3.87 2022
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> 57070404 Claire Nelson��made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive.

������THINGS I LEARNED FROM FALLING��Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling. What led this successful thirty-something to a desert trail on the other side of the globe from her home where no one knew she would be that day? At once the unbelievable story of an impossible event, and the human journey of a young woman wrestling with the agitation of past and anxiety of future.����]]> 272 Claire Nelson 0063118378 Kathi 3 4.44 2020
author: Claire Nelson
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> 48730027 An alternate cover for this ASIN can be found here.

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.
]]> 596 Sarah Waters Kathi 0 to-read, sapphic-tbr 3.96 2002
author: Sarah Waters
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 123314421 A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey,��Orbital��is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours


"Ravishingly beautiful."��—��Joshua Ferris,��New York Times

A slender novel of epic power,�����������ٲ�����deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space.��Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.��

Profound and contemplative,��Orbital��is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.]]> 212 Samantha Harvey 0802161553 Kathi 0 to-read 3.90 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> 205999565 Willkommen zu einem mörderischen Escape �ٱ����KI-Thriller��»Die Burg« von��Bestseller-Autorin Ursula Poznanski����dz������Ծ���������Ѿ��ٳٱ�������ٱ��-���ٳ��Dz����ä������mit einem top-aktuellen KI-Szenario zu��Nervenkitzel, der atemlos macht!

Es hat ihn buchstäblich Unsummen gekostet �� doch Milliardär Nevio hat die halbverfallene Burg Greiffenau nicht nur einfach instandsetzen Die unterirdischen Geheimgänge, Gruften und Verliese wurden mithilfe modernster Technik zu einer einzigartigen Escape-Welt ausgebaut. Eine künstliche Intelligenz sorgt dafür, dass das Spiel auf jede Besuchergruppe individuell zugeschnitten ist. Ob mittelalterliche Festung, Vampirschloss oder Fantasywelt �� Burg Greiffenau kann alles sein, was sich die Spieler wünschen. Um sein grandioses Werk zu testen, lädt Nevio eine bunt zusammengewürfelte Gruppe von Experten ein. Niemand ahnt, dass die KI längst beschlossen hat, ihr eigenes Spiel zu spielen. Und darin ist ein Happy End nicht vorgesehen.

Was passiert, wenn eine KI über dein Schicksal entscheidet �� auf eine Weise, die niemand vorhersagen kann?��Wendungsreich und hochspannend spielt Ursula Poznanskis KI-Thriller mit Szenarien, die ganz nah am Puls der Zeit sind.]]> 397 Ursula Poznanski Kathi 0 to-read, my-irl-tbr 3.71 2024
author: Ursula Poznanski
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 62897700 This is an alternate cover edition for 9781529115543

This is not a romance, but it is about love

Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world -- of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over.

When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.

This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.]]> 482 Gabrielle Zevin Kathi 0 to-read, my-irl-tbr 4.10 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 183932798
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.]]> 256 Jeanette Winterson 1784879045 Kathi 0 3.84 1985
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 18758418
What, exactly, does Nina see in Emma? What does she want? And how far will she go in pursuit of it?]]> 235 Harriet Lane 0297865056 Kathi 3 3.31 2014
author: Harriet Lane
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 57693582 Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things.

Security consultant “Jane Smith�� receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.

Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out—for her and possibly for the world.

Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.]]> 384 Jeff VanderMeer 1250829771 Kathi 0 to-read 3.36 2021
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 220863649
When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast-before Area X was called Area X-had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0008725985 Kathi 4 3.67 2024
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
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]]> 193839069 What did we want? To begin with, we wanted what half the population had got by just being born.

It’s 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her �� the man she has been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name and, alongside it, her life.

1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted. But she is sure she can sell a painting �� and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.

In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller �� and fuller.

Told in a series of cascading vignettes, featuring a multitude of voices, After Sappho reimagines the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as they battle for liberation, justice and control over their own lives.

Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Eileen Gray, Lina Poletti: these are just a few of the women (some famous, others hitherto unsung) sharing the pages of a novel as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic, furious and funny, After Sappho celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past �� and offers hope for our present, and our futures.]]> 288 Selby Wynn Schwartz 1913111393 Kathi 0 3.72 2022
author: Selby Wynn Schwartz
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> 13528343 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316175661.

In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep.

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart -- he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone -- but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.]]> 389 Eowyn Ivey Kathi 0 to-read 4.10 2012
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> 25970139
For thirty years, Area X, monitored by the secret agency known as the Southern Reach, has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border�� an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness. Eleven expeditions have been sent in to investigate; even for those that have made it out alive, there have been terrible consequences.

‘Annihilation�� is the story of the twelfth expedition and is told by its nameless biologist. Introverted but highly intelligent, the biologist brings her own secrets with her. She is accompanied by a psychologist, an anthropologist and a surveyor, their stated mission: to chart the land, take samples and expand the Southern Reach’s understanding of Area X.

But they soon find out that they are being manipulated by forces both strange and all too familiar. An unmapped tunnel is not as it first appears. An inexplicable moaning calls in the distance at dusk. And while each member of the expedition has surrendered to the authority of the Southern Reach, the power of Area X is far more difficult to resist.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer Kathi 5 favorites forever iconic 3.76 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: favorites
review:
forever iconic
]]> 57285975 From the author of The Undoing'Remarkable.' Stephen King'Breathtakingly suspenseful.' Megan Abbott'Smart, surprising and stealthily unsettling.' The TimesWhen a young writer dies before completing his first novel, his teacher, Jake, (himself a failed novelist) helps himself to its plot. The resulting book is a phenomenal success. But what if somebody out there knows?Somebody does. And if Jake can't figure out who he's dealing with, he risks something far worse than the loss of his career.What readers are saying'It builds to a legitimately great ending that I may never forget. Highly recommended.''This book is thrilling, exciting and totally nerve-racking! It definitely had me on the edge of my seat and reading well past my bedtime.''Addictive . . . I read it quickly without coming up much for air.''Wow! This book blew me away- I read it so fast and the ending is so good! No spoilers- just read it.''I was pleasantly surprised to find that the best plot ever really is THAT good.']]> 323 Jean Hanff Korelitz Kathi 0 to-read 3.95 2021
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/31
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]]> 59693959 In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh’s most exciting leap yet

Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life’s few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him as a baby, as she did so many of the village’s children. Ina’s gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place.

Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, civility and savagery, will prove to be very thin indeed.]]> 313 Ottessa Moshfegh Kathi 2 3.53 2022
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 11233289 319 Jon Krakauer 1447200187 Kathi 0 to-read 4.43 1997
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217028131 381 Olga Tokarczuk 331115097X Kathi 0 to-read 3.80 2022
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59454594 The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book.

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.]]> 387 Louise Erdrich 1472156994 Kathi 4 3.80 2021
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 60318580 Three’s Company.


When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision—to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity—takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three’s Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.]]> 273 Ashley Hutson 0393866653 Kathi 4 3.83 2022
author: Ashley Hutson
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/13
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 215985588 Prize-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin’s debut confronts familial love, duty, mortality, and generational schism through the incendiary gaze of a tradition-bound mother faced with her daughter’s queer relationship.

When a widowed, aging mother allows Green, her thirty-something daughter, to move into her apartment, all she wants for her is a stable and quiet existence like her own. Ideally, a steady income and, most importantly, a good husband with whom to start a family.

But when Green turns up with her long-term girlfriend in tow, her mother is enraged and unwilling to welcome their relationship into her home. Having centered her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. Green’s involvement in a campus protest against unfair dismissals of gay colleagues throws her into deeper shambles.

Meanwhile, the nursing home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for Jen, an elderly dementia patient who traveled the world as a successful diplomat, chose not to have children, and has no family. Outraged, Green’s mother begins to reconsider the unfair consequences of choosing one’s own path.

With bracing honesty, Kim Hye-jin taps into the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics while unearthing the mechanisms of violence that target LGBTQ communities in traditional societies. Elegantly translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, Concerning My Daughter shines a light on all facets of familial love and conflict.]]> 171 Kim Hye-jin 3453427203 Kathi 3 3.64 2017
author: Kim Hye-jin
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 125480298 A Simon & Schuster book. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader. ]]> 335 Julia Fox 1668011522 Kathi 0 to-read 4.36 2023
author: Julia Fox
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57682087 The “glitzy sequel filled with drama and self-discovery�� (Kirkus Reviews) to the instant New York Times bestseller Shine! Crazy Rich Asians meets Gossip Girl in this knockout series from Jessica Jung, K-pop legend, fashion icon, and founder of the international luxury brand, Blanc & Eclare.

Couture gowns, press parties, international travel. Rachel Kim is at the top of her game. Girls Forever is now the number-one K-pop group in the world, and her fame skyrockets after her viral airport styling attracts the attention of fashion’s biggest names. Her life’s a swirl of technicolor glamour and adoring fans. Rachel can’t imagine shining any brighter.

The only thing that’s missing is love—but Rachel’s determined to follow the rules. In her world, falling in love can cost you everything.

Enter Alex. When Rachel literally falls head over designer heels into his lap on a crowded metro, she’s tempted to give up her anti-love vows. Alex is more than just heart-stopping dimples and adorably quirky banter. He believes in Rachel’s future—both in music and in fashion.

But the higher you rise, the farther you have to fall. And when a shocking act of betrayal shatters her world, Rachel must finally listen to her heart.]]> 397 Jessica Jung 1534462562 Kathi 0 to-read 3.73 2022
author: Jessica Jung
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Kathi 5 favorites 4.10 2018
author: Richard Powers
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 61991807 A story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial��that reveals a shocking truth.

On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s ship The Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain.��While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, The Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell.��The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes �� they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.]]> 329 David Grann 1471183688 Kathi 0 to-read 4.23 2023
author: David Grann
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59851410
Four strangers and six weeks: this is all that separates Mara from one life-changing payday. She was surprised when reality TV producers came knocking at Primal Instinct—the survival school where she teaches rich clients not to die during a night outdoors—and even more shocked to be cast in their new show, Civilization. Now she just has to live off the land with her fellow survivors for long enough to get the prize money.

Whisked by helicopter to an undisclosed location, Mara meets her teammates: The grizzled outdoorsman. The Eagle Scout. The white-collar professional. And Ashley, the beautiful but inexperienced one who just wants to be famous. Mara’s unusual, rugged childhood has prepared her for the discomforts and hard work ahead. But trusting her fellow survivors? Not part of Mara’s skill set.

When the cast wakes one morning to find something has gone horribly wrong, fear ripples through the group. Are the producers giving them an extra challenge? Or are they wrapped up in something more dangerous? Soon Mara and the others face terrifying decisions as “survival�� becomes more than a game.

A provocative exploration of the comforts, rituals, and connections we depend upon, Small Game is a gripping page-turner and a poignant story about finding the courage to build a new life from the ground up.]]> 288 Blair Braverman 006306619X Kathi 3 3.77 2022
author: Blair Braverman
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/08
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 195791689 From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance…but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,�� May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights�� respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”]]> 262 Helen Phillips 1668008831 Kathi 0 to-read 3.49 2024
author: Helen Phillips
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8557654 Mit dem Werkbeitrag aus dem Neuen Kindlers Literatur Lexikon.
Mit Daten zu Leben und Werk, exklusiv verfasst von der Redaktion der Zeitschrift für Literatur TEXT + KRITIK.]]> 256 Jules Verne 3596903041 Kathi 0 3.87 1872
author: Jules Verne
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: books-i-bought-but-never-read-oops, bei-mama
review:

]]> 124029202
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 the end of the holidays moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.]]> 296 Emma Cline 0593597249 Kathi 4 brat summer 3.53 2023
author: Emma Cline
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves:
review:
brat summer
]]> 57646921 464 Fredrik Backman 3442315700 Kathi 0 to-read 4.11 2019
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54750317
The End of Everything is a unique exploration of the destruction of the cosmos. Drawing on cutting edge technology and theory, as well as hot-off-the-presses results from the most powerful telescopes and particle colliders, astrophysicist Katie Mack describes how small tweaks to our incomplete understanding of reality can result in starkly different futures. Our universe could collapse in upon itself, or rip itself apart, or even - in the next five minutes - succumb to an inescapable expanding bubble of doom.

This fascinating, witty story of cosmic escapism examines a beautiful but unfamiliar physics landscape while sharing the excitement a leading astrophysicist feels when thinking about the universe and our place in it. Amid stellar explosions and bouncing universes, Mack shows that even though we puny humans have no chance of changing how it all ends, we can at least begin to understand it.]]> 226 Katie Mack 0141989580 Kathi 0 4.31 2020
author: Katie Mack
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
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]]> 181133 317 page edition

First, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion:

"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 250 Agatha Christie Kathi 4 4.31 1939
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/25
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 486995 326 Friedrich Nietzsche 3150071151 Kathi 0 to-read 4.13 1882
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1882
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43299951 276 John Lanchester 0571298737 Kathi 0 to-read 3.51 2019
author: John Lanchester
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57421087 Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism,��a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.

When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s��Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.

Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.

Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart,��Swimming in the Dark��is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.]]> 230 Tomasz Jedrowski 1526604981 Kathi 4 4.37 2020
author: Tomasz Jedrowski
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 42647016 The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 256 Virginia Woolf 1847497810 Kathi 0 4.04 1931
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1931
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 382 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Kathi 0 to-read 4.67 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22754100 326 Paula Hawkins Kathi 3 4.07 2015
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 177192267
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?]]> 224 R.O. Kwon 0593190025 Kathi 0 to-read 3.14 2024
author: R.O. Kwon
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53025967
Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction, infusing all with her characteristic wit, playfulness and openness to enquiry. The result is a powerful book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.]]> 283 Carmen Maria Machado 1788162250 Kathi 5 favorites 4.51 2019
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 176442668
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.

When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.]]> 304 Scott Alexander Howard 1668023563 Kathi 0 to-read 3.92 2024
author: Scott Alexander Howard
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 124962424 ��
It’s��2011:��America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead��seeking��to regain relevance.�� ��
����
When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether.��

With��a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their��future.]]> 384 Antonia Angress 0593496450 Kathi 2 3.96 2022
author: Antonia Angress
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
pretentious and clichéd. reads like mediocre satire
]]> 52585192
Akutagawa-award-winning author Yu Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.]]> 192 Yū Miri 0593187520 Kathi 0 to-read 3.41 2014
author: Yū Miri
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202468406
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 411 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593469313 Kathi 3 4.20 2023
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 182484343 Two neighbors-at-war band together to stop a dangerous criminal in their midst in this enthralling new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Lost Ticket.

Twenty-five-year-old Kat Bennett has never felt at home anywhere, and especially not in crumbling Shelley House. According to her neighbors, she’s prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat is plagued by guilt from her past.

Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling is Shelley House’s longest resident, and if you believe the other tenants, she’s as cantankerous and vindictive as they come. Except there’s a good reason Dorothy spends her days spying on her neighbors—a closely guarded secret that no else knows and the reason Dorothy barely leaves her beloved home.

When their building faces demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy become unlikely allies in their quest to save their historic home. But when someone starts to play dirty and viciously targets one of the residents, Dorothy and Kat suspect foul play in their community. After the police close the investigation, it's up to this improbable pair to bring a criminal to justice.]]> 384 Freya Sampson 0593550528 Kathi 0 to-read 3.76 2024
author: Freya Sampson
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 197307928
Outside the island there is the world destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the it is idyllic. 122 villagers and 3 scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And they learn the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay.

If the murder isn't solved within 92 hours, the fog will smother the island �� and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer �� and they don't even know it��

The outstanding new high concept murder mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling and Costa Book Award winning author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

An ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, an audacious solution.]]> 320 Stuart Turton 1526634953 Kathi 4 3.72 2024
author: Stuart Turton
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 68045215 224 Chelsea Manning 1529110629 Kathi 4 4.38 2022
author: Chelsea Manning
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 18295942 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 13: 9780099512820

Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distance between those who ought to be closest of all.

Following the success of Kafka on the Shore comes a collection that gives full rein to Murakami's inventive mastery. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of the human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising and relentlessly entertaining.]]> 436 Haruki Murakami Kathi 0 to-read, bei-mama 3.76 2006
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read, bei-mama
review:

]]> 54562948 320 Olga Tokarczuk 3311150031 Kathi 4 3.87 2009
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 25667848 The Sexual Politics of Meat is Carol Adams' inspiring and controversial exploration of the interplay between contemporary society's ingrained cultural misogyny and its obsession with meat and masculinity. First published in 1990, the book has continued to change the lives of tens of thousands of readers into the second decade of the 21st century.

Published in the year of the book's 25th anniversary, the Bloomsbury Revelations edition includes a substantial new afterword, including more than 20 new images and discussions of recent events that prove beyond doubt the continuing relevance of Adams' revolutionary book.]]> 281 Carol J. Adams 1501312839 Kathi 0 to-read 3.99 1990
author: Carol J. Adams
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200285620
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women�� taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.

Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.]]> 304 Victor LaValle 0525512101 Kathi 0 to-read 3.80 2023
author: Victor LaValle
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62230944 "Dieser Beitrag wurde entfernt" ist ein faszinierender, aufwühlender Roman darüber, wer oder was bestimmt, wie wir die Welt sehen, in der wir heute leben.]]> 112 Hanna Bervoets 3446273794 Kathi 3 3.00 2021
author: Hanna Bervoets
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/15
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 10376116 Alternate cover version for ISBN 0963270702 / 9780963270702.

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner.]]> 549 Salman Rushdie Kathi 0 to-read, my-irl-tbr 3.59 1988
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves: to-read, my-irl-tbr
review:

]]> 23482836 What would happen if society was run by women? In Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines the result.

When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man's knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority.

This edition also includes The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman’s chilling autobiographical story of a woman’s descent into madness.]]> 216 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1784870528 Kathi 0 to-read 3.55 1915
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues�� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]> 338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 Kathi 0 to-read 3.75 2024
author: Natalie Sue
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 172979818 From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, a propulsive, beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.

Eight translators arrive at a house in a forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets �� and deceptions �� of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.

This hilarious, thought-provoking second outing by award-winning translator and author Jennifer Croft is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.]]> 320 Jennifer Croft 1639731709 Kathi 0 to-read 3.18 2024
author: Jennifer Croft
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 39218044
Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs's poignant story of a childhood spent between two imperfect but extraordinary homes. Scrappy, wise, and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide through her parents' fascinating and disparate worlds. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling book by an insightful new literary voice.]]> 383 Lisa Brennan-Jobs 0802128238 Kathi 0 to-read 3.76 2018
author: Lisa Brennan-Jobs
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208556916 Everything that comes from the ground has to go back down�� eventually

Merryn grew up on the wilds of Bodmin moor, raised by her mother and her aunt in an old farmhouse. Here, the locals never leave the village, fear for the future of their farms and cling desperately to the folkloric tales that are woven into their history. Except Merryn, who has escaped to Manchester for university, briefly untethering herself from her past.

When Merryn returns home for the memorial service of her ex-girlfriend Claud, she finds her childhood home stranger and more secretive than ever. She’s sure that her mother is hiding something. The villagers are hunting on the moors at night, but for what? And then there’s a notebook, found in an old chest of drawers, full of long-forgotten folklore that seems to be linked somehow to Claud…]]> 304 Jodie Matthews 0008585016 Kathi 0 to-read, sapphic-tbr 4.20
author: Jodie Matthews
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: to-read, sapphic-tbr
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]]> 43208407 ‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed��

Deep underground, thirty-nine 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 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.]]> 188 Jacqueline Harpman 152911179X Kathi 5 favorites 4.24 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 48984813 **Finalist for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction**

A timely and haunting novel from an exciting new voice in international literature, set in present-day Syria

In her therapist's waiting room in Damascus, Suleima meets a strange and reticent man named Naseem, and they soon begin a tense affair. But when Naseem, a writer, flees Syria for Germany, he sends Suleima the unfinished manuscript of his novel. To Suleima's surprise, she and the novel's protagonist are uncannily similar. As she reads, Suleima's past overwhelms her and she has no idea what to trust--Naseem's pages, her own memory, or nothing at all?
Narrated in alternating chapters by Suleima and the mysterious woman portrayed in Naseem's novel, The Frightened Ones is a boundary-blurring, radical examination of the effects of oppression on one's sense of identity, the effects of collective trauma, and a moving window into life inside Assad's Syria.]]> 208 Dima Wannous 0525655131 Kathi 0 to-read 3.25 2017
author: Dima Wannous
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33819993 The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

J.D. Salinger's classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 214 J.D. Salinger Kathi 3 3.71 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/03/01
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]]> 108518662
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 0063323176 Kathi 4 3.85 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 2103566 408 3518387715 Kathi 0 to-read 4.32 1975
author: Walter Seitter Michel Foucault
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 176443282
Like his earlier novel Golden Hill , Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.

On a snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis, filled with people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of jazz clarinets and wailing streetcars, either to destruction or rebirth.]]> 464 Francis Spufford 1668025450 Kathi 0 to-read 4.00 2023
author: Francis Spufford
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60784729 From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.

When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.

Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey, one of our most acclaimed literary innovators, pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.]]> 416 Catherine Lacey Kathi 0 to-read, sapphic-tbr 3.83 2023
author: Catherine Lacey
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read, sapphic-tbr
review:

]]> 51015009
Candice started blogging about motherhood in 2016 after making the simple but powerful observation that the way motherhood is portrayed in the British media is wholly unrepresentative of our society at large. The author writes with humour, but with straight-talk about facing hurdles such as white privilege, racial micro-aggression and unconscious bias at every point.]]> 240 Candice Brathwaite 1529406277 Kathi 5 favorites 4.35 2020
author: Candice Brathwaite
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 375013 Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, an Aryan who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who conrinually defied and outwitted the SS, and who was transformed by the war into an angel of mercy. It is an unforgettable tale, all the more extraordinary for being true.]]> 429 Thomas Keneally 0340606517 Kathi 0 to-read, my-irl-tbr 4.34 1982
author: Thomas Keneally
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves: to-read, my-irl-tbr
review:

]]> 53867504
Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter.

But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?]]> 256 Rumaan Alam 0062667653 Kathi 2 3.27 2020
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/12
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves:
review:
obama having this on his summer reading list is everything i need to know about him
]]> 57978022 368 Kristen Arnett Kathi 2 3.26 2019
author: Kristen Arnett
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 59710987 My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.

Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant�� (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.]]> 384 Susan Abulhawa 1526618818 Kathi 4 4.57 2019
author: Susan Abulhawa
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 41432931 191 Viktor E. Frankl 3328102779 Kathi 0 to-read 4.28 1946
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202656512 412 Italo Calvino 3596523362 Kathi 4 4.25 1979
author: Italo Calvino
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Kathi 0 to-read 3.85
author: Carys Davies
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59366260
In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants.

Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).

Charming, original, and emotionally moving -- gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.]]> 304 Nell Stevens 1982190949 Kathi 0 to-read, sapphic-tbr 3.74 2022
author: Nell Stevens
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves: to-read, sapphic-tbr
review:

]]> 62898168 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

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

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 331 Celeste Ng 1408716925 Kathi 3 3.68 2022
author: Celeste Ng
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves:
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]]> 37632716
But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden �� one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party �� can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...]]> 511 Stuart Turton 1408889544 Kathi 5 favorites 4.02 2018
author: Stuart Turton
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/22
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 60758169
Every time we eat, we have the power to radically transform the world we live in.

Our choices can help alleviate the most pressing issues we face today: the climate crisis, infectious and chronic diseases, human exploitation and, of course, non-human exploitation. Undeniably, these issues can be uncomfortable to learn about but the benefits of doing so cannot be overstated. It is quite literally a matter of life and death.

Through exploring the major ways that our current system of animal farming affects the world around us, as well as the cultural and psychological factors that drive our behaviors, This Is Vegan Propaganda answers the pressing question, is there a better way? Whether you are a vegan already or curious to learn more, this book will show you the other side of the story that has been hidden for far too long.

Based on years of research and conversations with slaughterhouse workers and farmers, to animal rights philosophers, environmentalists, and everyday consumers, vegan educator and public speaker Ed Winters will give you the knowledge to understand the true scale and enormity of the issues at stake.

This Is Vegan Propaganda is the empowering and groundbreaking book on veganism that everyone, vegan and skeptic alike, needs to read.]]> 320 Ed Winters 1785044249 Kathi 5 favorites 4.46 2022
author: Ed Winters
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/11
date added: 2024/01/13
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If you claim you love animals, care about the environment and global health, this is a must-read.
]]> 123212685 Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593713095 Kathi 5 favorites 3.89 2022
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/03
date added: 2024/01/13
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review:

]]> 74397797 232 Julia Armfield 1529017254 Kathi 5 favorites 3.81 2022
author: Julia Armfield
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/18
date added: 2024/01/13
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review:

]]> 61030787
NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, Glory shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. By immersing listeners in the daily lives of a population in upheaval, Bulawayo reveals the dazzling life force and irresistible wit that lie barely concealed beneath the surface of seemingly bleak circumstances.

And at the center of this tumult is Destiny, a young goat who returns to Jidada to bear witness to revolution - and to recount the unofficial history and the potential legacy of the females who have quietly pulled the strings here. The animal kingdom - its connection to our primal responses and its resonance in the mythology, folktales, and fairy tales that define cultures the world over - unmasks the surreality of contemporary global politics to help us understand our world more clearly, even as Bulawayo plucks us right out of it.

Although Zimbabwe is the immediate inspiration for this thrilling story, Glory was written in a time of global clamor, with resistance movements across the world challenging different forms of oppression. Thus it often feels like Bulawayo captures several places in one blockbuster allegory, crystallizing a turning point in history with the texture and nuance that only the greatest fiction can.]]> 416 NoViolet Bulawayo 0593492498 Kathi 5 favorites 4.30 2022
author: NoViolet Bulawayo
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/22
date added: 2024/01/13
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review:

]]> 58256542 ‘The Sun always has ways to reach us.��

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

In Klara and The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 057136490X Kathi 5 favorites 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/17
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 58427704 Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.

A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.]]> 357 Zakiya Dalila Harris 1526630389 Kathi 5 favorites 3.14 2021
author: Zakiya Dalila Harris
name: Kathi
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/17
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 55854381 372 Laura Bates Kathi 5 favorites 4.41 2020
author: Laura Bates
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/05
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 59136297
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 245 Susanna Clarke Kathi 5 favorites 4.32 2020
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/03
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 48656935 The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.

Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States�� victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.

The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.]]> 546 Adam Higginbotham Kathi 5 favorites 4.47 2019
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/01
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 58881327
High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. He holds the life savings of an artist named Olivia Collins, the fortunes of a Saudi prince and his extended family, and countless retirement funds, including Leon Prevant's. The collapse of the financial empire is as swift as it is devastating, obliterating fortunes and lives, while Vincent walks away into the night. Until, years later, she steps aboard a Neptune-Avramidis vessel, the Neptune Cumberland, and disappears from the ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 301 Emily St. John Mandel Kathi 5 favorites 4.00 2020
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/23
date added: 2024/01/13
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review:

]]> 40718351 WINNER OF THE 2019 MOORE PRIZE **

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

‘A riveting account of the multiple outrages of the criminal justice system of Alabama. A harrowing masterpiece�� Guardian

‘Hinton somehow navigates through his rage and despair to a state of forgiveness and grace�� Independent

At age 29, Anthony Ray Hinton was wrongfully charged with robbery and murder, and sentenced to death by electrocution for crimes he didn’t commit. The only thing he had in common with the perpetrator was the colour of his skin.

Anthony spent the next 28 years of his life on death row, watching fellow inmates march to their deaths, knowing he would follow soon.

Hinton’s incredible story reveals the injustices and inherent racism of the American legal system, but it is also testament to the hope and humanity in us all.

‘You will be swept away in this unbelievable, dramatic true story�� Oprah Winfrey]]> 350 Anthony Ray Hinton 1846045746 Kathi 5 favorites 4.75 2018
author: Anthony Ray Hinton
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/08
date added: 2024/01/13
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]]> 40060637
She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in doctors or hospitals. According to the state and federal government, she didn’t exist.

As she grew older, her father became more radical, and her brother, more violent. At sixteen Tara decided to educate herself. Her struggle for knowledge would take her far from her Idaho mountains, over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d travelled too far. If there was still a way home.

EDUCATED is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.]]> 384 Tara Westover 0099511029 Kathi 5 favorites 4.46 2018
author: Tara Westover
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/14
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 49014041
Ein Junge ist gestorben, und die Hinterbliebenen müssen weiterleben. Doch was ist ihnen ihr Leben noch wert? Han Kang beschreibt in ihrem neuen Roman, wie dehnbar die Grenzen menschlicher Leidensfähigkeit sind. Ein höchst mutiges Buch und ein brennender Aufruf gegen jede Art von Gewalt.]]> 215 Han Kang 3746635187 Kathi 5 favorites 4.18 2014
author: Han Kang
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/05
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Kathi 5 favorites 4.28 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/27
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 31848391 432 Matthew Desmond 0141983310 Kathi 5 favorites 4.46 2016
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/05
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 21017847 265 Malala Yousafzai 1780226586 Kathi 5 favorites 4.19 2012
author: Malala Yousafzai
name: Kathi
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/17
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]>