en-US Tue, 08 Apr 2025 19:08:13 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 54377375
When Vanessa Price quit her job to pursue her dream of traveling the globe, she wasn't expecting to gain millions of YouTube followers who shared her joy of seizing every moment. For her, living each day to its fullest isn't just a motto. Her mother and sister never saw the age of 30, and Vanessa doesn't want to take anything for granted.

But after her half-sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her infant daughter, life goes from "daily adventure" to "next-level bad" (now with bonus baby vomit in hair). The last person Vanessa expects to show up offering help is the hot lawyer next door, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows him. No one warned her that he was the Secret Baby Tamer or that she'd be spending a whole lot of time with him and his geriatric Chihuahua.

Now she's feeling things she's vowed not to feel. Because the only thing worse than falling for Adrian is finding a little hope for a future she may never see.]]> 384 Abby Jimenez 1538715686 Erica 4 4.13 2021
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Erica
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 61407616 A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home in this new novel from Ella Berman. . . .

Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.

While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . .

Except now Joni is tangled up in a crime eerily similar to that one fateful night in Greece. And when she asks Bess to come back to LA to support her, Bess has a decision to make.

Is it finally time to face up to what happened that night, exposing herself as the young woman she once was and maybe still is? And what happens if she doesn’t like what she finds?]]> 384 Ella Berman 0593099540 Erica 0 currently-reading 3.36 2023
author: Ella Berman
name: Erica
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 214269394
Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.]]> 277 Holly Brickley 0593799089 Erica 4 3.80 2025
author: Holly Brickley
name: Erica
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 55539565 Think Again is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams.

New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. Section 1 explores why we struggle to think again and how we can learn to do it as individuals, arguing that 'grit' alone can actually be counterproductive. Section 2 discusses how we can help others think again through learning about 'argument literacy'. And the final section 3 looks at how schools, businesses and governments fall short in building cultures that encourage rethinking.

In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever.]]> 307 Adam M. Grant 1984878107 Erica 0 currently-reading 4.12 2021
author: Adam M. Grant
name: Erica
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 195888784 A genre-bending story about love and loss, hope and heartbreak, and the healing to be found in life’s little limbos, those in-between spaces where you’re no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be
��
Following a breakup, Kate and Finn decide to keep sharing their house until the lease runs out in twelve weeks, alternating week by week so that they are occupying the same space but never at the same time. Practically, the plan makes sense, but coming back each Sunday to a home where Finn has been feels far too much like living with a ghost. Soon Kate finds herself adrift in her own subconscious, trapped in the liminal space between loving someone and letting go.]]> 320 Hazel Hayes 0593472950 Erica 4 3.74 2024
author: Hazel Hayes
name: Erica
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
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]]> 213918847 Natasha Brown, author of Assembly

‘A fresh, tender, and resonant bildungsroman from the wonderfully large-hearted Jenny Mustard�� �� R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit

‘Jenny Mustard writes with honesty and wit about the strange, mundane, and wondrous aspects of youth�� �� Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists

‘Enchanting and piercing, a dance and a delight. Mustard's prose captures the effervescent and the luminescent, a joy to read and share�� �� Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

Twenty-one, friendless, without money but not without hope, Sickan's arrival at Stockholm University represents a new start. Her lonely childhood in a small southern town has left her utterly unprepared for intimacy: for friends, for sex, for love even. But Sickan is determined to build a new version of herself from the ground up, to make up for lost time. To simply be normal.

Just as Sickan seems to be finding her first ever friends, in whose company she finally feels safe, she meets Abbe: beautiful, charming - and by some miracle he wants her too. Unlike Sickan, Abbe seems completely at ease in his own skin. A solid foundation then, on which to build a relationship? Maybe?

What a Time to Be Alive is a story of class, sex, loneliness, and the trials of young womanhood. But above all, it's a story of firsts: the first party you're actually invited to, the first moment you fall in love, the first time you betray a friend. The first time you ask yourself, how much of myself am I willing to sacrifice, to finally fit in?

‘A beautifully plangent coming-of-age novel, What a Time to be Alive is written with an openness and a melancholy that frequently catches you off guard, and will go straight to your heart.�� �� Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

‘I loved it �� beautifully forthright, unexpected, and totally absorbing�� �� Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy

‘Playful and witty, a charming meditation on coming-of-age, privilege, and grief. With her sharp prose, Mustard conveys a vivid sense of longing�� �� Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls

‘Fresh, sharp, graceful... the work of such an original writer. I loved it�� �� Wendy Erskine, author of The Benefactors

‘Reminiscent of the power and grace of writers like Rachel Cusk and Raven Leilani. Tender and enigmatic�� �� Molly Aitken, author of Bright I Burn

‘Subtle, fresh and authentic. A coming-of-age without pretensions�� �� Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives]]> 0 Jenny Mustard 1399740849 Erica 0 to-read 4.24 2025
author: Jenny Mustard
name: Erica
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> 203578775 Eliza Moss's intoxicating debut novel is a dark, intense, and compelling account of what happens when a young woman falls in love with the wrong kind of man.

Enola is approaching 30 and everything feels like a lot. The boxes aren’t ticked and she feels adrift in a way she thought she would have beaten by now. She wants to be a writer but can't finish a first draft; she romanticizes her childhood but won’t speak to her mother; she has never been in a serious relationship but yearns to be one half of a couple that DIYs together at the weekends.

Enter: enigmatic writer. Enola falls in love and starts to dream about their perfect future: the wedding, the publishing deals, the house in Stoke Newington. But the reality is far from perfect. He’s distant. But she’s a Cool Girl, she doesn’t need to hear from him every day. He hangs out with his ex. But she's a Cool Girl, she’s not insecure. Is she? He has dark moods. But he’s a creative, that’s part of his ‘process��. Her best friend begs her to end it, but Enola ������’t. She's a Cool Girl.

She might feel like she’s going crazy at times, but she wants him. She needs him. She would die without him...That's what love is, isn’t it? Over the next twenty-four hours (and two years), everything that Enola thinks she knows is about to unravel, and she has to think again about how she sees love, family, and friendship and—most importantly—herself.

With notes of Fleabag & I May Destroy You but with the sparseness and emotional accuracy of writers like Ali Smith and Lily King, What It's Like In Words is a close examination of what it means to experience the intense emotional uncertainty of first love.]]> 320 Eliza Moss 1250355052 Erica 0 to-read 3.65 2024
author: Eliza Moss
name: Erica
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 50705453
As a young woman boxes up her ex-boyfriend’s belongings and prepares to see him one last time, she wonders where it all went wrong, and whether it was ever right to begin with. Burdened with a broken heart, she asks herself the age-old question . . . is love really worth it?

Out of Love is a bittersweet romance told in reverse. Beginning at the end of a relationship, each chapter takes us further back in time, weaving together an already unravelled tapestry, from tragic break-up to magical first kiss.

In this dazzling debut Hazel Hayes performs a post-mortem on love, tenderly but unapologetically exploring every angle, from the heights of joy to the depths of grief, and all the madness and mundanity in between. This is a modern story with the heart of a classic: truthful, tragic and ultimately full of hope.]]> 384 Hazel Hayes 1783528966 Erica 4 describe the protagonist’s heartaching feelings. i understand the idea behind this book and the concept. but it just wasn’t for me. it felt redundant and confusing as the author jumps to different time ‘periods�� within the matter of a few pages. i had no idea what is considered present or past or past-past.
if you’re going through a breakup, read this book. if not, you may feel the same was as i do. i wish i found this book a few months ago when i was actually heartbroken in a similar way to the protagonist lol ]]> 3.83 2020
author: Hazel Hayes
name: Erica
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
i was excited to read this book. i tried and failed, though, because reading about a breakup backwards is an interesting yet irritating thing to do. the writing has some overused clichés and too many metaphors to
describe the protagonist’s heartaching feelings. i understand the idea behind this book and the concept. but it just wasn’t for me. it felt redundant and confusing as the author jumps to different time ‘periods�� within the matter of a few pages. i had no idea what is considered present or past or past-past.
if you’re going through a breakup, read this book. if not, you may feel the same was as i do. i wish i found this book a few months ago when i was actually heartbroken in a similar way to the protagonist lol
]]> 59366193 All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.]]> 384 Mona Awad 1982169672 Erica 3 3.78 2021
author: Mona Awad
name: Erica
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> 205825264 The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills�� wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.]]> M.L. Rio Erica 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: M.L. Rio
name: Erica
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/07
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]]> 216426697 An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.]]> 304 Jessica Soffer 0593851269 Erica 0 to-read 3.21
author: Jessica Soffer
name: Erica
average rating: 3.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 124943221 He had her, he lost her…and he’ll do anything to win her back.

Powerful, brilliant, and ambitious, Dominic Davenport clawed his way up from nothing to become the King of Wall Street.

He has everything—a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and more money than he could spend in a lifetime. But no matter how much he accumulates, he’s never satisfied.

In his endless quest for more, he drives away the only person who saw him as enough.

It isn’t until she’s gone that he realizes there may be more to life than riches and glory…but by then, it may be too late.

***

Kind, intelligent, and thoughtful, Alessandra Davenport has played the role of trophy wife for years.

She stood by her husband while he built an empire, but now that they’ve reached the top, she realizes he’s no longer the man she fell for.

When it becomes clear that she’ll always come second to his work, she finally takes charge of her life and puts herself first—even if it means leaving the only man she’s ever loved.

But what she didn’t count on was his refusal to let her go…or for him to fight for their marriage, no matter what it takes.

King of Greed is a steamy marriage in trouble/second chance romance. It's book three in the Kings of Sin series but can be read as a standalone.]]> 352 Ana Huang Erica 3 3.91 2023
author: Ana Huang
name: Erica
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
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review:

]]> 56377192 June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way.

Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother.

Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.

To save the place and the books that mean so much to her, June must finally make some changes to her life. For once, she's determined not to go down without a fight. And maybe, in fighting for her cherished library, June can save herself, too.]]> 336 Freya Sampson 0593201388 Erica 0 to-read 3.70 2021
author: Freya Sampson
name: Erica
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> 62919394
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.]]> 288 Sarah Rose Etter 1668011638 Erica 4 3.60 2023
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: Erica
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
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]]> 219153318
Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.]]> 288 Holly Brickley 0385699905 Erica 0 to-read 3.85 2025
author: Holly Brickley
name: Erica
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/23
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]]> 204593567 A gripping story of motherhood and motherloss and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, MADWOMAN marks the arrival of a major fiction talent.

The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world��

Clove has��gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.��

But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we��race��between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to��finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?]]> 336 Chelsea Bieker 0316573299 Erica 4 3.71 2024
author: Chelsea Bieker
name: Erica
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Erica 0 to-read 4.14 2021
author: Claire Keegan
name: Erica
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> 7201017
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind , one of the most beloved and bestselling inspirational guides of all time, shows how changing your thought patterns can produce dramatic improvements in your life. Using practical, easy-to-understand techniques and real-world case studies, Dr. Joseph Murphy reveals the vast influences of the subconscious mind on all aspects of existence-money, relationships, jobs, happiness-and how you can apply and direct its power to achieve your goals and dreams.

A life-changing classic since its initial publication in 1963, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind has opened millions of readers to the unseen force within them. Now, the fully intact, original text is redesigned and repackaged in this affordable, handsome volume-which also features one of Murphy's most irresistible works, How to Attract Money . This is the flagship edition of a self-help landmark.]]> 384 Joseph Murphy 1585427683 Erica 0 currently-reading 4.22 1963
author: Joseph Murphy
name: Erica
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin��-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass�� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,�� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ������’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Erica 4 4.29 2023
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Erica
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 205363941 A feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the allure of Colette, to the streets of Paris, by the inimitable Deborah Levy.

Deborah Levy’s vital literary voice speaks about many things.

On footwear: “It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers.�� On public parks: “A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles.�� On Elizabeth Hardwick: “She understands what is at stake in literature.�� On the conclusion of a marriage: “It doesn’t take an alien to tell us that when love dies we have to find another way of being alive.��

Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations; each page is a beautiful, questioning composition of the self. The Position of Spoons is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.]]> 176 Deborah Levy 0374614970 Erica 4 3.53 2023
author: Deborah Levy
name: Erica
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 216437557 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer comes a new playful yet deeply emotional contemporary romance.

There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong��

. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.

Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 0349442827 Erica 0 to-read 4.23 2025
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Erica
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217245639
I never anticipated Charlie Florek.

Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.

Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.

Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.

Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.]]> 400 Carley Fortune 0593638913 Erica 0 to-read 4.48 2025
author: Carley Fortune
name: Erica
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere�� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she ������’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Erica 4 4.26 2022
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Erica
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Erica 0 to-read 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: Erica
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 123186253
Twenty years as an army brat and Ember Howard knew, too. The soldiers at the door meant her dad was never coming home. What she didn't know was how she would find the strength to singlehandedly care for her crumbling family when her mom falls apart.

Then Josh Walker enters her life. Hockey star, her new next-door neighbor, and not to mention the most delicious hands that insist on saving her over and over again. He has a way of erasing the pain with a single look, a single touch. As much as she wants to turn off her feelings and endure the heartache on her own, she can't deny their intense attraction.

Until Josh's secret shatters their world. And Ember must decide if he's worth the risk that comes with loving a man who could strip her bare.

The Flight & Glory series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Full Measures
Book #2 Eyes Turned Skyward
Book #3 Beyond What is Given
Book #4 Hallowed Ground
Book #5 The Reality of Everything]]> 352 Rebecca Yarros 1622665376 Erica 3 4.08 2014
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Erica
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> 65502618 In this irreverent and hilariously inverted bildungsroman, award-winning and bestselling Italian author Veronica Raimo transforms neurosis, sex and family disaster into brilliant comedy reminiscent of Fleabag and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon

Already a bestseller and award winner in Italy, Lost on Me is a burningly witty novel of a young woman’s coming of age in a neurotic family from one of Italy’s most celebrated young writers working today.

Born into a family with an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the center of their attention, our heroine Vero languishes in boredom in her childhood home. Peering through tiny windows at children in the streets below while cramped in her family coven, Vero periodically attempts to strike out but is no match for her mother’s relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery. Vero’s every venture outside their Rome apartment ends in her being unceremoniously returned home. It’s no wonder then that she becomes a writer - and a liar �� inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity.

Spikey and clever, Vero delights in her own devious schemes. As she guides us through her failed attempts at emancipation, her discovery of sex and fixations with unwitting men, and ultimately her contentious relationship with reality, she also brings alive Rome from the 1980s through the early 2000’s. With restless intelligence and covert tenderness Veronica Raimo takes the traditional family novel tropes and flips them inside out. Pointed, feisty, and pulsing with energy, Lost on Me takes on the uncertain enterprise of becoming a woman.]]> 224 Veronica Raimo 0802162045 Erica 0 to-read 3.56 2022
author: Veronica Raimo
name: Erica
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 26893819 355 Emma Cline 081299860X Erica 4 3.48 2016
author: Emma Cline
name: Erica
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 123023492
Since her sister's death, twenty-year-old Paisley Donovan has been treated like delicate glass by her parents. She may share her sister's heart condition, but nothing will stop her from completing her Bucket List, even if it kills her. And it almost does, until Jagger Bateman pulls her from the ocean and breathes more than air into her lungs―he sets her soul on fire.

Jagger is enrolled in the country's toughest flight school. He's wickedly hot, reckless, and perfect for a girl looking to live life to the fullest. Except that Paisley is the commanding general's daughter, and her boyfriend is Jagger's biggest rival. Now Paisley must decide just how much to risk for a guy who makes her heart pound a little too hard.

They're flying through dangerous territory―and one wrong move could make them crash and burn...

The Flight & Glory series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading
Book #1 Full Measures
Book #2 Eyes Turned Skyward
Book #3 Beyond What is Given
Book #4 Hallowed Ground
Book #5 The Reality of Everything]]> 342 Rebecca Yarros 1649375670 Erica 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Erica
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 123023490
Lt. Grayson Masters is focused on graduating the Apache helicopter course, and the last thing he needs is his gorgeous new roommate Samantha Fitzgerald distracting him. While her smart mouth and free spirit are irresistibly irritating, he can't deny their off-the-charts chemistry, no matter how hard he tries.

Having just been expelled from college, Sam has no business digging for Grayson's secrets while she's hiding her own, but that doesn't stop her from trying to tear down his walls. Each barrier she busts through drops one of her own, though, and she's not prepared for the another woman laid claim to Grayson's heart long ago.

Falling in love is something neither Grayson nor Sam can afford, and when that line is crossed and secrets are exposed, they'll learn that sometimes it's the answered prayers that will put you through hell.

The Flight & Glory series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading
Book #1 Full Measures
Book #2 Eyes Turned Skyward
Book #3 Beyond What is Given
Book #4 Hallowed Ground
Book #5 The Reality of Everything]]> 400 Rebecca Yarros 1649375689 Erica 0 to-read 4.22 2015
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Erica
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 123023491
Josh Walker is loyal, reckless, and every girl's dream. But he only has eyes for December Howard, the girl he has yearned for since his high school hockey days. Together they have survived grief, the military, distance, and time as they've fought for stolen weekends between his post at Ft. Rucker and her schooling at Vanderbilt. Now that Josh is a medevac pilot and Ember is headed toward graduation, they're moving on―and in―together.

Ember never wanted the Army life, but loving Josh means accepting whatever the army dictates―even when that means saying goodbye as Josh heads to Afghanistan, a country that nearly killed him once before and that took her father. But filling their last days together with love, passion, and plans for their future doesn't temper Ember's fear, and if there's one thing she's learned from her father's death, it's that there are some obstacles even love can't conquer.

Flight school is over.

This is war.

The Flight & Glory series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading
Book #1 Full Measures
Book #2 Eyes Turned Skyward
Book #3 Beyond What is Given
Book #4 Hallowed Ground
Book #5 The Reality of Everything]]> 400 Rebecca Yarros 1649375697 Erica 0 to-read 4.20 2016
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Erica
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195820807
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?]]> 432 Abby Jimenez 1538704439 Erica 5 4.35 2024
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Erica
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 173404023
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 352 Tia Williams 153872670X Erica 4 3.98 2024
author: Tia Williams
name: Erica
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 200262015
In Sticky, Sexy, Sad, Orchard uses her skills as both an anthropologist who studies sexuality and a sex-positive feminist to explore what it feels like to want love while also resisting the addictive pull of platforms designed to make us swipe-dependent. She asks important questions for those searching for love in the modern What are the social and human impacts of using dating apps? How can we maintain our integrity and warm-blooded desire for intimacy while swiping? Can we resist some of the problematic aspects of swipe culture? Is love on dating apps even possible?

Revealing how dating apps are powerful social and sexual technologies that are radically transforming sexuality, relationships, and how we think about ourselves, this remarkable book cracks the code of modern romance. Told with humor and vulnerability, Sticky, Sexy, Sad is a riveting and inspiring guide to staying true to ourselves amid the digitization of love in the twenty-first century.]]> 256 Treena Orchard 148754930X Erica 3 3.78
author: Treena Orchard
name: Erica
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 212012812
Wrestling with longstanding compulsive and harmful behaviours, as well as severe self-doubt, Fawn is confronted with the reality of her mother’s death. It is her responsibility to catalogue the furniture and possessions in the room, then sell or dispose of them. Instead, Fawn becomes fixated on archiving her mother’s writing and documents, searching for signs, and drawing tenuous connections to help her understand more about the enigmatic woman in the pages.

"I am surrounded by mocking evidence of her inhabitancy of this room. Quickly, it is expiring. Today she was alive. When the day runs out that will no longer be true. Tomorrow I will be able to say that yesterday she was alive, at least. The next day, nothing. She will just be dead. The fact seems to be at its smallest now, growing with time. For now she is many things, and there are many places left to find her."

In Hi, It’s Me, Fawn Parker is unafraid to explore the bewildering relationship between the living and the dead. Strikingly original, provocative, and engrossing Hi, It’s Me takes us into the furthest corners of grief—and with astonishing precision and emotional force invokes the physicality and painful embodiment of terminal illness. This mesmerizing, devastating novel asks: why must it be this way?]]> 347 Fawn Parker 0771005164 Erica 0 to-read 3.63 2024
author: Fawn Parker
name: Erica
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 33154385 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781847941831.

Transform your life with tiny changes in behaviour �� starting now.

*The instant New York Times bestseller*
*Financial Times Book of the Month*

People think when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions �� doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call.

He calls them atomic habits.

In this ground-breaking book, Clears reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter. Along the way, he tells inspiring stories of Olympic gold medalists, leading CEOs, and distinguished scientists who have used the science of tiny habits to stay productive, motivated, and happy.

These small changes will have a revolutionary effect on your career, your relationships, and your life.
________________________________

��A supremely practical and useful book.�� Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck

‘James Clear has spent years honing the art and studying the science of habits. This engaging, hands-on book is the guide you need to break bad routines and make good ones.�� Adam Grant, author of Originals

��Atomic Habits is a step-by-step manual for changing routines.�� Books of the Month, Financial Times

‘A special book that will change how you approach your day and live your life.�� Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle is the Way]]> 309 James Clear Erica 0 currently-reading 4.38 2018
author: James Clear
name: Erica
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 50213170 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780099561545.

Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deserves. Have you read it yet?William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture., A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman., His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life., A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured.]]> 288 John Williams Erica 4 4.43 1965
author: John Williams
name: Erica
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
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]]> 86121173 She’s the wife he never wanted…and the weakness he never saw coming.

Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.

Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.

The billionaire CEO never planned to marry��
until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.

Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.

There’s only one problem: now that he has her...he can't bring himself to let her go.

***
Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.

Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society.

Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.

While the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.

Craving his touch was never part of the plan.

Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.

King of Wrath is a steamy billionaire/arranged marriage romance. It contains explicit sexual content, profanity, and mild violence. Recommended for mature readers only.]]> 407 Ana Huang 1728289726 Erica 4 4.11 2022
author: Ana Huang
name: Erica
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/18
date added: 2024/11/19
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]]> 211350358
Maya was a rising star in the political world until her ex-husband’s high-profile sex scandal nearly derailed her career. Landing a gubernatorial candidate like Teresa Powell is the fresh start she desperately needs �� a chance to focus on meaningful work and leave the drama behind.

But then an email from her past sends her world spinning: Charlie, former lead singer of Mischief, the boy band that fueled her teenage obsession, is staging a solo comeback and wants Maya’s help to make it happen. Turns out, she likes the grown-up Charlie and his genuine engagement with the world.

Maya’s not about to ditch her political ambitions for a teenage crush, but if she can leverage Charlie to draw attention to the policies she cares about, shouldn’t she give it a try?]]> 176 Alexandra Romanoff Erica 0 to-read 3.79
author: Alexandra Romanoff
name: Erica
average rating: 3.79
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/10
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]]> 424 The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.

It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

It contains Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That".]]> 238 Joan Didion Erica 4 4.20 1968
author: Joan Didion
name: Erica
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 29358559 Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing. ��

As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world.��

This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.]]> 178 Mary Oliver 1594206708 Erica 4 4.17 2016
author: Mary Oliver
name: Erica
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> 63387764
Nearly twenty years after the death of her infant daughter, Rosy is still reeling from all that she's lost. Desperate to repair the connections to the family she does have—her husband, Desmond, and her eighteen-year-old son, Eddie—she's determined to lay her grief to rest by the twentieth anniversary of her daughter’s death.

At the same time, Isaura dreads what may be coming for her teenage daughter, Mivi. For centuries in her homeland of Honduras, the young women in Isaura's family have been subjected to a curse of teenage motherhood and the untimely death of the men they loved. But even after moving thousands of miles away from Pespire to Toronto, Isaura fears that her daughter will not be spared.

Soon, Rosy and Isaura, essentially strangers, become connected in a way neither of them could predict. As they try to look to their future and their children’s, they struggle to put the past behind them—all while Eddie and Mivi contend with the weight of their mothers�� pain and guilt.

Tender and compassionate, The Afterpains is a moving debut novel on motherhood, grief, identity, and belonging.]]> 272 Anna Julia Stainsby 1039006949 Erica 4 4.15
author: Anna Julia Stainsby
name: Erica
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 203578770 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]> 144 M.L. Rio 1250356792 Erica 0 to-read 3.19 2024
author: M.L. Rio
name: Erica
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> 209311051
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair and possibility—a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 442 Sally Rooney 0571365469 Erica 5 4.03 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Erica
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> 58687128 368 Justin Baldoni 0063055600 Erica 0 to-read 4.38 2021
author: Justin Baldoni
name: Erica
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43263540 A nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For the Love of Men provides actionable steps for how to be a man in the modern world while also exploring how being a man has evolved.

In 2019, traditional masculinity is both rewarded and sanctioned. Men grow up being told that boys ��Dz�’t cry and dolls are for girls. They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners. They must be the romantic pursuers. This hasn’t been good for the culture at large: 99% of school shooters are male; men in fraternities are 300% more likely to rape; a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than to be killed by enemy fire.

In For the Love of Men, author Liz Plank offers a smart, insightful, and deeply researched guide for what we're all going to do about toxic masculinity. For both women looking to guide the men in their lives and men who want to do better and just ��Dz�’t know how, For the Love of Men will lead the conversation on men's issues in a society where so much is changing but gender roles have remained strangely stagnant.

What are we going to do about men? Plank has the answer--and it has the possibility to change the world for men and women alike.]]> 325 Liz Plank 1250196248 Erica 0 to-read 4.29 2019
author: Liz Plank
name: Erica
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/30
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]]> 53492652 Passion According to GH with a book that looks suspiciously like a romance novel?

In The Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector tries to discover how to bridge the gap between people, or how to even begin to try.

A woman struggles to emerge from solitude and sadness into love, including sexual love: her guide on this journey is Ulisses, who (yes) leads her patiently into the fullness of life.

The Apprenticeship was a bestseller and, as her biographer Benjamin Moser writes, "This accessible love story surprised many readers. When it came out, an interviewer said: 'I thought The Book of Pleasures was much easier to read than any of your other books. Do you think there’s any basis for that?' Clarice answered: 'There is. I humanized myself, the book reflects that.'”]]> 176 Clarice Lispector 0811230619 Erica 0 to-read 4.24 1969
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Erica
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
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]]> 40235456
“Memorable and meaningful.”—Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl

Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well-liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be. They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that feels to Lauren like she is reclaiming her lost adolescence.

When Siri invites her along on a trip home to Sweden for the summer, Lauren impulsively accepts, intrigued by how Siri describes it: “Everything will be green, fresh, new, just thawing out.�� But once there, Lauren finds herself drawn to Siri’s enigmatic, brooding brother Magnus. Siri is resentful, and Lauren starts to see a new side of her friend: selfish, reckless, self-destructive, even cruel. On the last night of her trip, Lauren accompanies Siri and her friends on a seaside camping trip to celebrate Midsommar’s Eve, a night when no one sleeps, boundaries blur, and under the light of the unsetting sun, things take a dark turn.

Ultimately Lauren must acknowledge the truth of what happened with Siri and come to terms with her own tragic past in this gorgeously written, deeply felt debut about the relationships that come to us when things feel darkest–and the transformative power of female friendship.]]> 336 Diane Zinna 198485416X Erica 0 to-read 3.66 2020
author: Diane Zinna
name: Erica
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> 208459761 A tense and compulsive novel of unnatural fixation

Anna is smart. Smarter than you, probably. But when she falls for the beautiful, enigmatic Caden, her need to get under his skin, to truly know him becomes overpowering.

Anna’s new life in Cambridge is full of promise �� she’s the top student in her PhD cohort, she has great friends and she has met an exhaustingly attractive man �� but something is a little off. Perhaps it’s the routine violence of her lab work with animals, or maybe it’s something to do with her boyfriend’s icy reserve but it seems there is a kind of menace hiding beneath the Cambridge dream.

When Anna and Caden's lives become tightly entangled, her obsession with Caden’s seemingly ever-present ex-girlfriend reaches a dangerous pitch�� Just how far will she go to satiate her curiosity?]]> 336 Bea Setton 0857528009 Erica 0 to-read 3.52 2024
author: Bea Setton
name: Erica
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 165938553
When Anne Elliott broke up with Ben Wentworth, it seemed like the right thing to do . . . but now, eight years later, she’s not so sure.

In her scenic hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Anne is comfortable focusing on her successful filling her late mother’s shoes as town councilor and executive director of her theater company.��She certainly keeps busy as the all-around wrangler of eccentric locals, self-centered family members, elaborate festivals, and the occasional attacking goose.��But the more she tries to convince herself that her life is fine as is, the more it all feels like a show—and not nearly as good as the ones put on by her theater company. She’s the always responsible Anne, always taken for granted and cleaning up after other people, and the memories of happier times with Ben Wentworth still haunt her.

So when the nearby Kellynch Winery is bought by Ben’s aunt and uncle, Anne’s world is set ablaze as her old flame crashes back into her life—and it’s clear he hasn’t forgiven her for breaking his heart. A joint project between the winery and Anne’s theater forces both Ben and Anne to confront their complicated history, and as they spend more time together, Anne ������’t help but wonder if there might be hope for their future after all.]]> 352 Melodie Edwards 059344079X Erica 3 3.95 2024
author: Melodie Edwards
name: Erica
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Erica 4 3.94 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Erica
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 44284906 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Hello and welcome to my book. Inside you will find:

× The smell of honeysuckle
× Heartbreak
× A French-kissing rabbit
× A haunted house
× Death
× A vagina singing sad old songs
× Young geraniums in an ancient castle
× Birth
× A dog who appears in dreams as a spiritual guide
× Divorce
× Electromagnetic energy fields
× Emotional horniness
× The ghost of a sea captain
× And more

I hope you enjoy these little weirds.

Love,
Jenny Slate]]> 224 Jenny Slate Erica 0 to-read 3.87 2019
author: Jenny Slate
name: Erica
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58386758
In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses-and finds-herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant conflagration.

Exceeding the extraordinary promise of Bennett's mold-shattering debut, Checkout 19 is a radical affirmation of the power of the imagination and the magic escape those who master it open to us all.]]> 288 Claire-Louise Bennett 0593420497 Erica 4 3.11 2021
author: Claire-Louise Bennett
name: Erica
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie ������’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just ������’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 Erica 5 3.91 2023
author: Claire Daverley
name: Erica
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 56646330 Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?]]> 112 Natasha Brown 0316268267 Erica 4 3.84 2021
author: Natasha Brown
name: Erica
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 63946904
A Taiwanese American woman’s coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about “Chinese-y�� things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell.
��
But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda.
��
In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid—including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he’s translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time�� As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions—and, most of all, herself.
��
For readers of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown , this uproarious and bighearted satire is a blistering send-up of privilege and power in America, and a profound reckoning of individual complicity and unspoken rage. In this electrifying debut novel from a provocative new voice, Elaine Hsieh Chou asks who gets to tell our stories—and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves.]]> 416 Elaine Hsieh Chou 0593298373 Erica 4 3.83 2022
author: Elaine Hsieh Chou
name: Erica
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 201033505 From Eliza Clark, the author of the brilliant novels Boy Parts and Penance and one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, comes a fierce, visionary and darkly comic story collection.

A woman welcomes a parasite into her body.

A teenager longs for perfect skin.

A scientist tends to fragile alien flora.

A young man takes the night into his own hands.

Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humor, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.]]> 240 Eliza Clark 0063393263 Erica 0 to-read 3.81 2024
author: Eliza Clark
name: Erica
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199927666 A ferocious novel by one of the boldest voices in American fiction and the author of The New Me, the “definitive work of millennial literature�� (The New Yorker)

Margaret Anne (“Moddie��) Yance had just returned to her native land in the Midwestern town of X, to mingle with the friends of her youth, to get back in touch with her roots, and to recover from a stressful decade of living in the city in a small apartment with a man she now believed to be a megalomaniac or perhaps a covert narcissist.

So begins Halle Butler's sadistically precise and hilarious Banal Nightmare, which follows Moddie as she abruptly ends her long-term relationship and moves back to her Midwestern hometown, throwing herself at the mercy of her old friends as they, all suddenly tipping toward middle age, go to parties, size each other up, obsess over past slights, and dream of wild triumphs and elaborate revenge fantasies. When her friend Pam invites a mysterious East Coast artist to take up a winter residency at the local university, Moddie has no choice but to confront the demons of her past and grapple with the reality of what her life has become. As the day of reckoning approaches, friends will become enemies, enemies will become mortal enemies, and old loyalties will be tested to their extreme.

Banal Nightmare is filled with complicated characters who will dazzle you in their rendering just as often as they will infuriate you with their decisions. Halle Butler singularly captures the volatile, angry, aggrieved, surreal and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the modern era.]]> 336 Halle Butler 0593730356 Erica 0 to-read 3.44 2024
author: Halle Butler
name: Erica
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59721793 A magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles

Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.

Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life--literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle's aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James' world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.

Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.]]> 288 Meg Howrey 038554877X Erica 4 4.07 2022
author: Meg Howrey
name: Erica
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 199347400 There are two sides to every love story—and every breakup. Get ready for an emotional roller coaster of family, marriage, and divorce that will have you both laughing and crying, from the bestselling author of Before We Were Strangers.

After twenty-two years together, Danielle and Alex are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, they can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. Instead of shuttling the kids between two broken homes, Alex and Dani decide to share a nesting apartment while swapping days with their two teenage boys at the family home.

In the apartment, Dani and Alex, on their own, begin to reflect on the last two decades—why they fell in love and why the marriage fell, spectacularly, apart. With the newfound space and time, they are given a chance to rediscover their autonomous selves again. They both get back in the dating pool. Dani finds major success at work as a showrunner on her own TV project, while Alex faces the challenges of a new relationship.

Still, they find that they just ������’t stay away from each other, and somehow, the distance allows them to remember (for the first time in years) what each used to love about the other. When a family crisis draws them back into each other’s orbit, Dani and Alex are once again put to the test, which leads to a dramatic conclusion that will have listeners weeping.]]> 384 Renee Carlino 0593729285 Erica 4 4.00
author: Renee Carlino
name: Erica
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves:
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]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine��editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Erica 4 4.07 2020
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Erica
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 175407425 354 Jess Taylor 1771668792 Erica 3 4.23
author: Jess Taylor
name: Erica
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 29607494 Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set...

Set in a 1930s Paris of shabby hotel rooms, seedy bars and drunken encounters, Jean Rhys's semi-autobiographical portrayal of a young woman's sexual encounters is a searingly honest exploration of loneliness and yearning.

Ten new titles in the colourful, small-format, portable new Pocket Penguins series]]> 176 Jean Rhys 0241261406 Erica 5 3.68 1939
author: Jean Rhys
name: Erica
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
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]]> 193559888
Ella's with you at the party when you first kiss a girl.

And Ella takes you to the hospital the first time you're diagnosed.

Over the next few years you have a string of relationships and jobs, but you can always count on Ella to be there for you - until the drinking and the parties, the hospital visits and late-night calls, blur the lines of your friendship into something unbalanced and fragile, at risk of breaking altogether.

The worst part is you can see it coming. The worst part is you don't know how to stop.

Gender Theory is the dizzying debut from Madeline Docherty, an incisive, affecting novel about illness, finding your place, and how we care for those around us.]]> 186 Madeline Docherty 1399812211 Erica 0 to-read 4.02 2024
author: Madeline Docherty
name: Erica
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 205977982 A lost tarot card is the key to unravelling decades of secrets in this dazzling novel about art and deception, from Governor General's Award–winning author Sarah Henstra.

Theresa Bateman, a struggling junior art historian in Toronto, receives a single tarot card in the mail. The image is unmistakably the work of celebrated avant-garde artist Lark Ringold, and its discovery would mean a breakthrough in Theresa's career. But the legendary Ringold Tarot doesn't exist.��.��.��. Its paintings were lost in a fire that claimed Lark's life along with dozens of others—the final, horrific implosion of a notorious cult called the Shown.

Sixty years earlier in England, Lark and his twin sister Nell join a bohemian commune led by their charismatic uncle. While Lark settles happily into his work on the tarot project to aid in his uncle's occult teachings, Nell finds it harder to adjust. Just beneath the Shown's golden surface she uncovers secrets that, if revealed, threaten to erupt into chaos.

Why was the tarot card sent to Theresa? How can she prove its connection to Ringold when her art-world superiors declare it a fake? And who has been holding onto it for all these years—and why? As Theresa follows the trail of the lost tarot, she is drawn into the deeply entwined mysteries of Nell, Lark and the Shown. What begins as the tale of one artist and the battle over his legacy unspools into a web of passion, violence and deceit. In twist after startling twist, and in vibrant, exquisite prose, The Lost Tarot is a landmark novel about love, creativity, power and perception.]]> 352 Sarah Henstra 0385688113 Erica 0 to-read 3.73 2024
author: Sarah Henstra
name: Erica
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197797193 A glorious and tantalizing new escape from #1 New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune.This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won’t give into temptation. This summer will be different.Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.It’s easier said than done.Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.If Lucy ������’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.]]> 348 Carley Fortune 0735247269 Erica 4 to-read 4.14 2024
author: Carley Fortune
name: Erica
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 19031299 changes while staying true to your narrative voice. In this practical dayby-
day guide to revising your manuscript, you will:
�� End procrastination by breaking your work into manageable tasks
�� Learn the technical skills necessary to bring your prose to life
�� Discover how to write compelling dialogue
�� Solve narrative problems of structure, point of view and pacing
�� Learn how to sell and market your book once it is completed]]> 308 Alan Watt 0983141223 Erica 0 currently-reading 4.22 2012
author: Alan Watt
name: Erica
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 124029281 In Claudia Dey’s Daughter, a woman long caught in her father's web strives to make a life—and art—of her own.

To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.

So says Mona Dean—playwright, actress, and daughter to a man famous for one great novel, whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half-sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona’s childhood, setting her in opposition to a stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and a fledgling artist, he begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delights—painfully, parasitically—in this attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father’s crimes and ejected from the family.

Mona’s tenuous stability is thrown into chaos. Only when she suffers an incalculable loss—one far deeper and more defining than family entanglements—can she begin supplanting absent love with real love. Pushed to the precipice, she must decide how she wants to live, what she most needs to say, and the risks she will take to say it.

Claudia Dey chronicles our most intimate lives with penetrating insight and devilish humor. Daughter is an obsessive, blazing examination of the forces that drive us to become, to create, and to break free.]]> 272 Claudia Dey 0374609705 Erica 0 to-read 3.93 2023
author: Claudia Dey
name: Erica
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 75491526 He'd never wanted anyone enough to chase them...until he met her.

Charming, easygoing, and rich beyond belief, Xavier Castillo has the world at his fingertips.��

He also has no interest in taking over his family’s empire (much to his father’s chagrin), but that hasn’t stopped women from throwing themselves at him…unless the woman in question is his publicist.��

Nothing brings him more joy than riling her up, but when a tragedy forces them closer than ever, he must grapple with the uncertainty of his future—and the realization that the only person immune to his charms is the only one he truly wants. ��

***
Cool, intelligent, and ambitious, Sloane Kensington is a high-powered publicist who’s used to dealing with difficult clients.��

However, none infuriate—or tempt—her more than a certain billionaire heir, with his stupid dimples and laid-back attitude.��

She may be forced to work with him, but she’ll never fall for him…no matter how fast he makes her heart beat or how thoughtful he is beneath his party persona.��

He’s her client, and that’s all he’ll ever be. Right?]]> 466 Ana Huang Erica 0 to-read 4.00 2024
author: Ana Huang
name: Erica
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197577126 This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won’t give into temptation. This summer will be different.

Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.

It’s easier said than done.

Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.

If Lucy ������’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.

When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.]]> 368 Carley Fortune 0593638883 Erica 4 3.94 2024
author: Carley Fortune
name: Erica
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 123183412
This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain . With writing that is both eloquent and accessible, Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural her parents�� volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist��; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all here, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.

More than a year before the book’s publication, Fox’s description of it as “a masterpiece�� in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. Down the Drain is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.]]> 318 Julia Fox 1668011506 Erica 4 4.38 2023
author: Julia Fox
name: Erica
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
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]]> 195888551
Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger felt a new urgency in her devotion to the women in her life—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairytales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls�� of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.

Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.]]> 224 Lilly Dancyger 0593447573 Erica 0 to-read 3.90 2024
author: Lilly Dancyger
name: Erica
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212069868
'What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way.' �� Nigel Slater

‘A garden contains secrets, we all know that: buried elements that might put on strange growth or germinate in unexpected places. The garden that I chose had walls, but like every garden it was interconnected, wide open to the world . . .��

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.

But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

The result is a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.]]> 317 Olivia Laing 1529066670 Erica 0 to-read 4.09 2024
author: Olivia Laing
name: Erica
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199598434 204 Erin Brubacher 1771669004 Erica 3 4.04
author: Erin Brubacher
name: Erica
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 124027587
"Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had been."

Nell—funny, brave and so much loved—is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

This is a meditation on spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter - sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.]]> 288 Anne Enright 0771010052 Erica 4 3.49 2023
author: Anne Enright
name: Erica
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Erica 4 want-to-read-romance 4.21 2024
author: Emily Henry
name: Erica
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2024/04/26
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]]> 59085460
At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.

None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It's about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.]]> 304 Catherine Prasifka Erica 0 to-read 3.07 2022
author: Catherine Prasifka
name: Erica
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/16
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]]> 60417483 Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.

Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family's pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who's made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment - Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married - Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish. ]]> 304 Louise Kennedy 0593540891 Erica 4 3.92 2022
author: Louise Kennedy
name: Erica
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/04/16
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]]> 44137031
Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of color, non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men and particularly white men are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality. In Whose Story Is This? Rebecca Solnit appraises what's emerging and why it matters and what the obstacles are.]]> 182 Rebecca Solnit 1642590185 Erica 0 to-read 4.22 2019
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Erica
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/04
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]]> 75715117 Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.

Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.]]> 288 Chloe Michelle Howarth 0857308416 Erica 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Chloe Michelle Howarth
name: Erica
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/03
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]]> 23492533
Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.

That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby�� must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending.

The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,�� but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?]]> 303 Renee Carlino 1501105795 Erica 4 want-to-read-romance 4.09 2016
author: Renee Carlino
name: Erica
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: want-to-read-romance
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]]> 38714272 9780735212763

Reese Witherspoon's February Book Club pick

He was the first person to inspire her, to move her, to truly understand her. Was he meant to be the last?

Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story--their story--at the very beginning.

Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated--perhaps they'll find life's meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East and Lucy pursues a career in New York. What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other's hearts.

This devastatingly romantic debut novel about the enduring power of first love, with a shocking, unforgettable ending, is Love Story for a new generation.]]> 338 Jill Santopolo Erica 4 want-to-read-romance 3.77 2017
author: Jill Santopolo
name: Erica
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/03/30
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]]> 456988 (back cover)

Interior ISBN=038572179X]]> 351 Ian McEwan 0307387151 Erica 5 3.78 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: Erica
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
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stunning prose. heartbreaking in the best way, and very clever in the exposition of the story. i did watch the movie first, which didn’t ruin it but ended up giving me a special perspective while reading and knowing how it ends already. currently writing a research paper on the book and movie, so every other page is literally tabbed and annotated lol
]]> 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 Erica 0 to-read 3.92 1992
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Erica
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/15
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]]> 863771
The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful and poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea and follows their lives as they grow up and experience friendship, love and grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf's response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six.

The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.]]> 200 Virginia Woolf 0099478277 Erica 5 4.07 1931
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Erica
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1931
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/12
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]]> 126057
By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science’s greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries.

With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick’s desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work.]]> 256 James D. Watson 074321630X Erica 3 3.63 1968
author: James D. Watson
name: Erica
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/11
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]]> 11623
A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.]]> 732 Sylvia Plath 0385720254 Erica 0 to-read 4.27 2000
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Erica
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 58393129 Memoir meets craft masterclass in this “daring, honest, psychologically insightful�� exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiences—“a must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr).

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller’s life and the questions which run through it.

How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author’s way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as “navel-gazing”—or else hailed as “so brave, so raw��? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong?

Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor—via addiction and recovery, sex work and Harvard night school—Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas—and occasional notes of caution—to anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story.]]> 171 Melissa Febos 1646220854 Erica 4 4.23 2022
author: Melissa Febos
name: Erica
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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]]> 270903
I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.]]> 168 Claudia Rankine 1555974074 Erica 4 4.28 2004
author: Claudia Rankine
name: Erica
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/29
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]]> 42201997 ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

*Most Anticipated Reads of 2019 by Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, The Week, and Elle.com*

Fifteen brilliant writers explore what we ��Dz�’t talk to our mothers about, and how it affects us, for better or for worse.

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize what she was actually trying to write: how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers.

While some of the writers in this book are estranged from their mothers, others are extremely close. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything.

As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.�� There’s relief in breaking the silence. Acknowledging what we couldn’t say for so long is one way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves.

Contributors include Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.]]> 288 Michele Filgate 1982107340 Erica 0 to-read 3.76 2019
author: Michele Filgate
name: Erica
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 29633797 Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit offers commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more.]]> 176 Rebecca Solnit 1608467406 Erica 4 want-to-read-nonfiction 4.21 2017
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Erica
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: want-to-read-nonfiction
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]]> 32842454 The Year of Magical Thinking two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks--writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles--and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through.

And from a different notebook: the "California Notes" that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From.]]> 160 Joan Didion 1524732796 Erica 4 3.69 2017
author: Joan Didion
name: Erica
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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]]> 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story��

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 Erica 5 3.85 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Erica
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
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]]> 140987
Dave Hickey (born 1939) is one of today's most revered and widely read art writers. He has written for Rolling Stone , Art News , Art in America , Artforum and Vanity Fair among many others.]]> 208 Dave Hickey 0963726455 Erica 3 4.09 1997
author: Dave Hickey
name: Erica
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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]]> 63834978 An intimate, sharply funny novel about a couple heading toward their wedding, and the three friends who may draw them apart

Meet Celine and Luke--for all intents and purposes the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more inter­ested in piano than in domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. And Vivian (a wedding guest), as the only one with any emotional distance, observes her friends like ants in a colony. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after--but does it lie at the end of an aisle?]]> 240 Naoise Dolan Erica 0 to-read 3.34 2023
author: Naoise Dolan
name: Erica
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/30
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]]> 29610266
A poignant tale of love and loneliness from Russia's foremost writer.

One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.]]> 128 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0241252083 Erica 5 4.02 1848
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Erica
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1848
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/01/28
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my first read of dostoevsky’s fiction…a melancholy, special tale written beautifully, i loved it. true loneliness and the grief that comes with love.
]]> 63898153 An engrossing, page-turning story about an introverted student and the mysterious older woman whose unexpected interest in her sparks an insidious, all-consuming love affair.
Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived for her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for an unfamiliar city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. Chatty, confident Clara from down the hall, who wants to be her friend; intense, determined Rachel from her poetry class, who is going to be a writer. Natalie doesn't know what she wants. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone.

Just as she is trying to find her footing, she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her. Natalie is drawn magnetically into Nora's orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time off campus at Nora's home, enveloped by the intensity of her feelings and the version of adulthood she imagines Nora leads. Worried about how her floormates will react to news of her relationship with a woman, Natalie explains her absence by inventing a secret boyfriend called Paul; she carefully protects the intimate, sacred adulthood she is building for herself. But when it becomes clear that Nora is lying, too, her secrets begin to take an alarming shape in Natalie's life, even as Natalie tries to look away. What, or who, is Nora hiding?

The Adult is a startlingly gorgeous and perceptive debut novel examining identity, love, insecurity, desire, and deceit.]]> 312 Bronwyn Fischer 1039003001 Erica 4 3.64 2023
author: Bronwyn Fischer
name: Erica
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/26
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]]> 173666 For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully.
--from Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance

“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,�� says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s twenty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.

Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 333 Tara Brach Erica 0 to-read 4.15 2000
author: Tara Brach
name: Erica
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 53285047 We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library]]> 305 Mona Awad 0525559752 Erica 3 3.43 2019
author: Mona Awad
name: Erica
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 54620517 * 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, Finalist.

* A Best Book of 2020 �� Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy, Maudlin House

"In this stunning essay-collection-cum-prose-poem-cycle, Belcourt meditates on the difficulty and necessity of finding joy as a queer NDN in a country that denies that joy all too often. Out of the 'ruins of the museum of political depression' springs a 'tomorrow free of the rhetorical trickery of colonizers everywhere.' Happiness, this beautiful book says, is the ultimate act of resistance."
—Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine

Synopsis
The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray’s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place.

Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.]]> 142 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1937512932 Erica 0 to-read 4.27 2020
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Erica
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]> 348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Erica 4 3.67 2022
author: Yiyun Li
name: Erica
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/14
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]]>