adele's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:09:56 -0800 60 adele's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Grief Is the Thing with Feathers]]> 25334576
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.]]> 114 Max Porter 0571323766 adele 0 extension-2 3.85 2015 Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
author: Max Porter
name: adele
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves: extension-2
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]]> Frankenstein 18490 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439471

'Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ...'

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.]]> 288 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley adele 4 3.77 1818 Frankenstein
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: adele
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1818
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life]]> 62802741 This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world

At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue.

"I’ve always loved Orwell," Funder writes, "his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on." So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation.

Eileen O’Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936. O’Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell’s work, but her practical common sense saved his life. But why and how, Funder wondered, was she written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells� marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she peeks behind the curtain of Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer—and what it is to be a wife.

A breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the twentieth century, Wifedom speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Genre-bending and utterly original, it is an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.

]]> 464 Anna Funder 0593320689 adele 0 to-read 4.08 2023 Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life
author: Anna Funder
name: adele
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall]]> 226369 328 Anna Funder 1862076553 adele 0 to-read 4.20 2003 Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
author: Anna Funder
name: adele
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/15
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]]> Hot Milk 26883528 Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness and her doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.]]> 218 Deborah Levy 1620406691 adele 0 to-read 3.49 2015 Hot Milk
author: Deborah Levy
name: adele
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> The Crucible 17250
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
(back cover)]]> 143 Arthur Miller 0142437336 adele 0 3.60 1953 The Crucible
author: Arthur Miller
name: adele
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/07
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]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 adele 3 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: adele
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 adele 0 to-read 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: adele
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Convenience Store Woman 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 adele 0 to-read 3.65 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: adele
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 adele 0 to-read 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: adele
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> On Sun Swallowing 59921489
On Sun Swallowing explores shadowy emotion, at times in a whisper, at times in a scream. Think: cheap cigarettes, even cheaper wine, and an oath to reach hell by midnight and be home in time for work in the morning.�

Compiling five years of poetry, prose and journal extracts, On Sun Swallowing is the debut release of Australian poet Dakota Warren. Winding through unflinchingly raw snapshots of her youth, Warren’s words are accompanied by original illustrations from Lydia Stone and curated photography from Francesca McConnell, Caroline Dare, Leche de Arte and Clara Slewa.]]> Dakota Warren adele 0 to-read 4.08 2022 On Sun Swallowing
author: Dakota Warren
name: adele
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Love Is Enough 56954468
Drawing its inspiration from the past, Love is Enough references the decorative arts of a bygone era, and is a combination of romantic imagery, antique fabrics and allegorical illustrations, mixed with poems and mottos. Often mistaken for real embroidery pieces, the artworks are in fact very detailed and intricate digital collages , made to look and feel like handcrafted works.

Zanatelli is strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and the Pre-Raphaelites as well as eighteenth-century collage artist and creator of the Flora Delanica, Mary Delany, among others. Recurring themes in his work are romantic love, magical symbols , Victorian era craftsmanship, historical nun's work and relics. Details of paintings, ancient fabrics, antique jewellery and miniatures are also returning elements as they often become an integral part of the inspiration for the collages themselves.

This stunning book is full of intricate detail and brimming with romance , so you can return to its pages again and again.]]> 127 Andrea Zanatelli 1912785420 adele 0 to-read 3.84 Love Is Enough
author: Andrea Zanatelli
name: adele
average rating: 3.84
book published:
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]]> Hera Lindsay Bird 31125204
with themes as varied as snow and tears, the poems in this collection shine with the fantastic cream of who she is………juxtaposing many classical and modern breezes

Bird turns her prescient eye on love and loss, and what emerges is like a helicopter in fog………or a bejewelled Christmas sleigh, gliding triumphantly through the contemporary aesthetic desert……�

this is at once an intelligent and compelling fantasy of tenderness……�

heartbreaking and charged with trees………without once sacrificing the forest……�

Whether you are masturbating luxuriously in your parent’s sleepout……�

………or pushing a pork roast home in a vintage pram……�

this is the book for you……………………�

heroically and compulsively stupid……………………………………�

………………………………………whipping you once again into medieval sunlight.]]> 112 Hera Lindsay Bird 177656071X adele 0 to-read 4.25 2016 Hera Lindsay Bird
author: Hera Lindsay Bird
name: adele
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun (Penguin Little Black Classics, #114)]]> 29354537 52 Emily Dickinson adele 0 to-read 3.88 1880 My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun (Penguin Little Black Classics, #114)
author: Emily Dickinson
name: adele
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> The Blue Castle 95693
Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle--a place where all her dreams come true and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.]]> 218 L.M. Montgomery 0553280511 adele 0 to-read 4.29 1926 The Blue Castle
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: adele
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> The Course of Love 27845690
The long-awaited and beguiling second novel from Alain de Botton that tracks the beautifully complicated arc of a romantic partnership, from the internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life. De Botton's essay "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person" (The New York Times, May 28, 2016), which draws from The Course of Love, was the #1 most emailed article for days.

We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading.

This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.]]> 240 Alain de Botton 0241145473 adele 0 to-read 4.01 2016 The Course of Love
author: Alain de Botton
name: adele
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> Dear Dolly 61343296 'What I learnt from sharing my most private pain with a semi-professional problem-solver was that the mere act of asking for help was, in itself, healing. It was as if I had crept down to the docks under cover of darkness and floated a message out in a bottle, imagining how it might be received. By writing it, I was acknowledging that someone might care about me; that they'd be able to say the right thing without knowing me. Because I was feeling something that other people had felt and therefore I wasn't, as I suspected, the loneliest and strangest woman in the world.'

Since early 2020, Dolly Alderton has been sharing her wisdom, warmth and wit with the countless people who have written in to her Dear Dolly agony aunt column in The Sunday Times Style. Their questions range from the painfully - and sometimes hilariously - relatable to the occasionally bizarre. They include breakups and body issues, families, friendships, dating, divorce, the pleasures and pitfalls of social media, sex, loneliness, longing, love and everything in between.

Without judgement, and with deep empathy informed by her own, much-chronicled adventures in love, friendship and dating, Dolly leads us by the hand through the various labyrinths of life, proving that a problem shared is truly a problem halved.]]> 224 Dolly Alderton 0241623642 adele 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Dear Dolly
author: Dolly Alderton
name: adele
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 adele 0 currently-reading 3.70 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: adele
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Goldfinch 25396068
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.]]> 962 Donna Tartt 0316286397 adele 0 to-read 4.03 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: adele
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow]]> 97553 Crow was Ted Hughes's fourth book of poems for adults and a pivotal moment in his writing career. In it, he found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new power and coherence. A. Alvarez wrote in the Observer, 'Each fresh encounter with despair becomes the occasion for a separate, almost funny, story in which natural forces and creatures, mythic figures, even parts of the body, act out their special roles, each endowed with its own irrepressible life. With Crow, Hughes joins the select band of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructive reality we inhabit.']]> 96 Ted Hughes 0571176550 adele 0 to-read 4.10 1970 Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow
author: Ted Hughes
name: adele
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]]> 57224204
Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire� (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]> 386 Shehan Karunatilaka 1908745908 adele 0 to-read 3.89 2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: adele
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 adele 0 to-read 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: adele
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/29
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 adele 4 Overall it was a good read.

]]> 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: adele
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/14
date added: 2023/10/29
shelves:
review:
Great easy read. I honestly really enjoyed this, the writing style was nice and the use of metaphor throughout was interesting. The romance/relationship was engaging and the constant "miss" situations with that were absolutely agonizing. Both characters were likeable while being complex and having flaws. I liked the discussion of the world and issues, it didn't feel try-hard at all and it was still quite sensitive.
Overall it was a good read.


]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 9228805 Apaixonado pela sua própria imagem na tela, Dorian deseja que esses traços imutáveis de beleza fiquem para sempre no seu rosto e que seja o retrato a envelhecer. É este o parti-pris narcisista, ou fáustico, do romance de Oscar Wilde.]]> 244 Oscar Wilde 1403739072 adele 0 to-read 3.76 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: adele
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 adele 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: adele
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/29
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]]> The Beautiful and Damned 4708 The Beautiful and the Damned followed Fitzgerald's impeccable debut, This Side of Paradise, thus securing his place in the tradition of great American novelists. Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveau riche, and the New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects of wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day. Pocket Book's Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. Special features include critical perspectives, suggestions for further read, and a unique visual essay composed of period photographs that help bring every word to life.]]> 422 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743451503 adele 0 to-read 3.74 1922 The Beautiful and Damned
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: adele
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/29
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]]> Seeing Other People 61084014
Charlie’s skin was stinging. Not with heat or sweat, but with that intense, body-defining self-consciousness—that sense of being watched. She lowered her eyes from Eleanor’s loving gaze. Her throat taut with tears, she swallowed. ‘You’re a good sister, Eleanor.�

‘Don’t say that.�

After two years of lockdowns, there’s change in the air. Eleanor has just broken up with her boyfriend, Charlie’s career as an actress is starting up again. They’re finally ready to pursue their dreams—relationships, career, family—if only they can work out what it is they really want.

When principles and desires clash, Eleanor and Charlie are forced to ask: where is the line between self-love and selfishness? In all their confusion, mistakes will be made and lies will be told as they reckon with the limits of their own self-awareness.

Seeing Other People is the darkly funny story of two very different sisters, and the summer that stretches their relationship almost to breaking point.]]> 295 Diana Reid 176115012X adele 0 3.38 2022 Seeing Other People
author: Diana Reid
name: adele
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/10/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tuesday Club Murders (Miss Marple, #0.5)]]> 121625
The case of the disappearing bloodstains; the thief who committed his crime twice over; the message on the death-bed of a poisoned man which read ‘heap of fish�; the strange case of the invisible will; a spiritualist who warned that ‘Blue Geranium� meant death�

Now pit your wits against the powers of deduction of the ‘Tuesday Night Club�.]]> 256 Agatha Christie 1579126901 adele 0 3.86 1932 The Tuesday Club Murders (Miss Marple, #0.5)
author: Agatha Christie
name: adele
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/26
date added: 2023/10/26
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]]> The Little Friend 775346
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents� yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.]]> 624 Donna Tartt 1400031699 adele 0 to-read 3.47 2002 The Little Friend
author: Donna Tartt
name: adele
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/26
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]]> Things They Lost 58438441
“Alternately whimsical, sweet, and dark,� this astonishing debut novel about a lonely girl waiting for her mother “brim[s] with uncompromisingly African magical realism� ( The New York Times ).

Ayosa is a wandering spirit—joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother’s crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner of a café no one ever visits. Unexpectedly, miraculously, one day Ayosa finds a friend. Yet she is always fixed on her beautiful mama, Nabumbo a mysterious and aloof photographer, she comes and goes as she pleases, with no apology or warning.

Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one, Things They Lost sets out a rich and magical vision of “girlhood as a time of complexity, laced with unparalleled creativity and expansion� ( Vogue ). Heartbreaking, elegant, and written in “giddily exuberant prose� ( Financial Times ), it’s a story about connection, coming-of-age, and the dizzying dualities of love at its most intoxicating and all-encompassing.]]> 368 Okwiri Oduor 1982102578 adele 0 to-read 3.69 2022 Things They Lost
author: Okwiri Oduor
name: adele
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/26
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]]> Honey & Spice 59088365 Introducing internationally bestselling author Bolu Babalola's dazzling debut novel, full of passion, humor, and heart, that centers on a young Black British woman who has no interest in love and unexpectedly finds herself caught up in a fake relationship with the man she warned her girls about

Sweet like plantain, hot like pepper. They taste the best when together...

Sharp-tongued (and secretly soft-hearted) Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake. As an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show Brown Sugar, she's made it her mission to make sure the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of "situationships", players, and heartbreak. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as "The Wastemen of Whitewell," in front of every Blackwellian on campus, she finds her show on the brink.

They're soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures. Kiki has never surrendered her heart before, and a player like Malakai won't be the one to change that, no matter how charming he is or how electric their connection feels. But surprisingly entertaining study sessions and intimate, late-night talks at old-fashioned diners force Kiki to look beyond her own presumptions. Is she ready to open herself up to something deeper?

A gloriously funny and sparkling debut novel, Honey and Spice is full of delicious tension and romantic intrigue that will make you weak at the knees.]]> 368 Bolu Babalola 0063141485 adele 0 to-read 3.90 2022 Honey & Spice
author: Bolu Babalola
name: adele
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/26
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]]> Conversations with Friends 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 adele 4 3.74 2017 Conversations with Friends
author: Sally Rooney
name: adele
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/13
date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> Cloudstreet 343881 Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire.

Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans -- running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth -- bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.

]]> 426 Tim Winton 0743234413 adele 2 Proud of myself for finishing it. I liked most of the characters by the end, but for majority of the book it wasn't relatable. I didn't enjoy the prose form and lack of speech marks, the idea behind it being like an organic real-life moment of blurred thought and word is lovely but it's unenjoyable to read. So many moments in this novel felt pointless, with comments about one of the kids balls being made, like really? I also agree with the critiques on how he's appropriated Indigenous Australian spirituality, I think it's weakly incorporated into the novel. I did love the concept of the house but overall I didn't enjoy the novel and will not be re-reading.
]]> 4.02 1991 Cloudstreet
author: Tim Winton
name: adele
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1991
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/26
date added: 2023/07/26
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It was a book I had to read for school. It reads like a drunk text, details I didn't want to know with some odd grammar.
Proud of myself for finishing it. I liked most of the characters by the end, but for majority of the book it wasn't relatable. I didn't enjoy the prose form and lack of speech marks, the idea behind it being like an organic real-life moment of blurred thought and word is lovely but it's unenjoyable to read. So many moments in this novel felt pointless, with comments about one of the kids balls being made, like really? I also agree with the critiques on how he's appropriated Indigenous Australian spirituality, I think it's weakly incorporated into the novel. I did love the concept of the house but overall I didn't enjoy the novel and will not be re-reading.

]]> The Woman Destroyed 141421 254 Simone de Beauvoir adele 0 to-read 4.01 1967 The Woman Destroyed
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: adele
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> The Penelopiad 17645 Now that all the others have run out of air, it's my turn to do a little story-making.

In Homer's account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids.

In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.]]> 198 Margaret Atwood 1841957178 adele 0 3.71 2005 The Penelopiad
author: Margaret Atwood
name: adele
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/13
date added: 2023/07/13
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]]> Ariel 395090 Sylvia Plath's celebrated collection.

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. Her husband, Ted Hughes, brought the collection to life in 1966, and its publication garnered worldwide acclaim. This collection showcases the beloved poet’s brilliant, provoking, and always moving poems, including "Ariel" and once again shows why readers have fallen in love with her work throughout the generations.]]> 128 Sylvia Plath 0060931728 adele 4 favs 4.22 1965 Ariel
author: Sylvia Plath
name: adele
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/29
date added: 2023/06/03
shelves: favs
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]]> My Dark Vanessa 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X adele 0 to-read 4.09 2020 My Dark Vanessa
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: adele
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/24
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]]> Being Lolita 50285706 AS FEATURED IN THE HULU DOCUMENTARY KEEP THIS BETWEEN USA dark relationship evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher in this breathtakingly powerful memoir about a young woman who must learn to rewrite her own story.“Have you ever read Lolita?â€So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson’s metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing—and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North. Mr. North gives Alisson a copy of Lolita to read, telling her it is a beautiful story about love. The book soon becomes the backdrop to a connection that blooms from a simple crush into a devastating and dangerous bond. But as Mr. North’s hold on her tightens, Alisson is forced to evaluate how much of their narrative is actually a disturbing fiction.In the wake of what becomes a deeply abusive relationship, Alisson is faced again and again with the story of her past, from rereading Lolita in college to working with teenage girls to becoming a professor of creative writing. It is only with that distance and perspective that she understands the ultimate power language has had on her—and how to harness that power to tell her own true story.Being Lolita is a stunning coming-of-age memoir that shines a bright light on our shifting perceptions of consent, grooming, vulnerability, and power. This is the story of what happens when a young woman realizes her entire narrative must be rewritten—and then takes back the pen to rewrite it.]]> 304 Alisson Wood 1250217229 adele 0 to-read 4.19 2020 Being Lolita
author: Alisson Wood
name: adele
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/24
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]]> All About Love: New Visions 17607 All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.]]> 240 bell hooks 0688168442 adele 0 to-read 4.06 1999 All About Love: New Visions
author: bell hooks
name: adele
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman adele 0 to-read 3.86 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: adele
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Film for Her 50898145
Film for Her is a story book of people, places, and memories captured on film. Through photographs, poetry, prose, and a short story, Orion Carloto invites readers to remember the forgotten and reach into the past, find comfort in the present, and make sense of the intangible future. Film photography isn’t just eye candy; it’s timeless and romantic—the ideal complement to Carloto’s writing. In Film for Her , much like a visual diary, word and image are intertwined in a book perfect for both gift and self-purchase.]]> 192 Orion Carloto 1524853771 adele 0 to-read 3.77 2020 Film for Her
author: Orion Carloto
name: adele
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/07
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]]> The End Of The Summer 80340977 Rosamunde Pilcher 0340521171 adele 0 to-read 3.25 1971 The End Of The Summer
author: Rosamunde Pilcher
name: adele
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> Love and Other Words 36206591 The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501190539 adele 0 to-read 4.23 2018 Love and Other Words
author: Christina Lauren
name: adele
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Things We Leave Unfinished]]> 53137938
Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy� of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century—the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.

But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book—it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes—even if it means destroying Noah’s career.]]> 400 Rebecca Yarros 1682815668 adele 0 to-read 4.26 2021 The Things We Leave Unfinished
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: adele
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/14
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]]> Fangirl 16068905 A coming-of-age tale of fanfiction, family, and first love.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan.... But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she's really good at it. She and her twin, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.

Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend; a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world; a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... and she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?]]> 483 Rainbow Rowell adele 0 3.93 2013 Fangirl
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: adele
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/14
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]]> Everything I Know About Love 46041465
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.]]> 368 Dolly Alderton 0062968785 adele 0 to-read 3.97 2018 Everything I Know About Love
author: Dolly Alderton
name: adele
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/14
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]]> The Poetry of Pablo Neruda 5936
"In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." So wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, lionized during his lifetime as "the people's poet." This selection of Neruda's poetry, the most comprehensive single volume available in English, presents nearly six hundred poems. Scores of them are in new and sometimes multiple translations, and many accompanied by the Spanish original. In his introduction, Ilan Stavans situates Neruda in his native milieu as well as in a contemporary English-language one, and a group of new translations by leading poets testifies to Neruda's enduring, vibrant legacy among English-speaking writers and readers today.]]> 1040 Pablo Neruda 0374529604 adele 0 to-read 4.44 1951 The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
author: Pablo Neruda
name: adele
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems]]> 118389
This Shmoop Poetry Guide offers fresh analysis, a line-by-line close reading of the poem, examination of the poet's technique, form, meter, rhyme, symbolism, jaw-dropping trivia, a glossary of poetry terms, and more. Best of all, Shmoop's analysis aims to look at a topic from multiple points of view to give you the fullest understanding.



Experts and educators from top universities, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Harvard, have written Shmoop guides designed to engage you and to get your brain bubbling. Shmoop is here to make you a better lover (of poetry) and to help you make connections to other poems, works of literature, current events, and pop culture. For more information, check out



"Smart and consistently humorous." - The Academy of American Poets]]> 44 T.S. Eliot 0848809971 adele 0 to-read 4.32 1915 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
author: T.S. Eliot
name: adele
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/07
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]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 adele 5 favs 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: adele
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/02
date added: 2023/03/02
shelves: favs
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]]> Bliss Montage 60243188 A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built mirages

What happens when fantasy tears through the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?

In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.]]> 228 Ling Ma 0374293511 adele 0 to-read 3.91 2022 Bliss Montage
author: Ling Ma
name: adele
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> A Streetcar Named Desire 6336454 A Streetcar Named Desire. is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller.

'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'

Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.

Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century.]]> 128 Tennessee Williams 0141190272 adele 0 to-read 3.98 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire
author: Tennessee Williams
name: adele
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> Letters to a Young Poet 46199
A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself.]]> 80 Rainer Maria Rilke 0486422453 adele 0 to-read 4.32 1929 Letters to a Young Poet
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: adele
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> Just Kids 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith adele 0 to-read 4.19 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: adele
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> Black Swans 475853
Babitz’s inimitable voice propels these stories forward, corralling everything that gets in their sex, rage, the Château Marmont, youth, beauty, Jim Morrison, men, women, and black swans. This exciting reissue further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation.]]> 256 Eve Babitz 051714445X adele 0 to-read 3.86 1993 Black Swans
author: Eve Babitz
name: adele
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 adele 0 to-read 3.90 1915 The Metamorphosis
author: Franz Kafka
name: adele
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/04
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]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 adele 0 to-read 4.41 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: adele
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/04
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]]> Robert Frost's Poems 12207 Robert Frost's Poems contains all of Robert Frost's best-known poems-and dozens more-in a portable anthology. Here are "Birches," "Mending Wall," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Two Tramps at Mudtime," "Choose Something Like a Star," and "The Gift Outright," which Frost read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy." An essential addition to every home library, Robert Frost's Poems is a celebration of the New England countryside, Frost's appreciation of common folk, and his wonderful understanding of the human condition. These classic verses touch our hearts and leave behind a lasting impression.

* Over 100 poems
* All Frost's best known verses from throughout his life]]> 288 Robert Frost 0312983328 adele 0 currently-reading 4.30 1949 Robert Frost's Poems
author: Robert Frost
name: adele
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Useless Magic: Lyrics and Poetry]]> 36690608
"Songs can be incredibly prophetic, like subconscious warnings or messages to myself, but I often don't know what I'm trying to say till years later. Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic."]]> 288 Florence Welch 0241347939 adele 5 favs Florence creates absolute art through her songs and poems and the added photos, and drawings throughout the book are beautiful]]> 4.28 2018 Useless Magic: Lyrics and Poetry
author: Florence Welch
name: adele
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/20
date added: 2023/02/03
shelves: favs
review:
magical book.
Florence creates absolute art through her songs and poems and the added photos, and drawings throughout the book are beautiful
]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak adele 4 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: adele
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2023/02/02
shelves:
review:
school required read. sad but great
]]> Daisy Jones & The Six 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 adele 4 4.20 2019 Daisy Jones & The Six
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: adele
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/13
date added: 2022/12/19
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review:
The writing style/layout really shocked me at first, it's written like an interview. But overall its a fun read and decently emotional.
]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 adele 0 to-read 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: adele
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/08
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]]> If We Were Villains 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X adele 3 4.11 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: adele
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/08
date added: 2022/11/08
shelves:
review:
Good book. Sort of a slow read/harder to get through. It was nicely written and the little quotations from Shakespeares' plays that furthered the plot were cool but they did drag a bit. I really enjoyed the story and characters, but it was trying to be The Secret History but wasn't quite there.
]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 adele 0 to-read 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: adele
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/23
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)]]> 22896 Alternate cover for ISBN 9780425190371 (currently here).

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...
]]> 286 Alice Hoffman adele 4 favs 3.70 1995 Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)
author: Alice Hoffman
name: adele
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/30
date added: 2022/10/05
shelves: favs
review:
Great book. Fabulous and unique plot with a focus on family and positive relationships between women.
]]> <![CDATA[Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass]]> 43554866 The highly anticipated spoken word poetry collection from Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass

�'Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass' is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each word to make the perfect poem. They are eclectic and honest and not trying to be anything other than what they are and for that reason I’m proud of them, especially because the spirit in which they were written was very authentic.� (Lana Del Rey)

Lana Del Rey brings her breathtaking poetry to life in an unprecedented audiobook. In this stunning spoken word performance, Lana Del Rey reads 14 poems from her debut book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass accompanied by music from Grammy Award-winning musician Jack Antonoff. Lana’s debut book solidifies her further as “the essential writer of her times� (The Atlantic). This audiobook features Lana reading select poems from the book, including "LA Who Am I to Love You?", "The Land of 1,000 Fires", "Past the Bushes Cypress Thriving", "Never to Heaven", "Tessa DiPietro", "Happy", and several others. The result is an extraordinary poetic landscape that reflects the unguarded spirit of its creator.]]> 1 Lana Del Rey adele 4 favs 4.03 2020 Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass
author: Lana Del Rey
name: adele
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/09
date added: 2022/08/29
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver]]> 34272476
“No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive, and Dream Work, one of her exceptional collections. Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.� —The Washington Post

“It’s as if the poet herself has sidled beside the reader and pointed us to the poems she considers most worthy of deep consideration.� —Chicago Tribune

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years.

Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.]]> 456 Mary Oliver 0399563245 adele 0 to-read 4.58 2017 Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
author: Mary Oliver
name: adele
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X adele 0 to-read 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: adele
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> A Room of One’s Own 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf adele 0 to-read 4.22 1929 A Room of One’s Own
author: Virginia Woolf
name: adele
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> The Bell Jar 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 adele 0 to-read 4.05 1963 The Bell Jar
author: Sylvia Plath
name: adele
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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]]> The House of the Spirits 9328
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]> 448 Isabel Allende 0553383809 adele 0 to-read 4.26 1982 The House of the Spirits
author: Isabel Allende
name: adele
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/26
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]]> The Alchemist 18144590 The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.]]> 182 Paulo Coelho 0062315005 adele 0 favs 4.01 1988 The Alchemist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: adele
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> The Cousins 49757149
Their parents are all clear on one point—not going is not an option. This could be the opportunity to get back into Grandmother's good graces. But when the cousins arrive on the island, it's immediately clear that she has different plans for them. And the longer they stay, the more they realize how mysterious—and dark—their family's past is.

The entire Story family has secrets. Whatever pulled them apart years ago isn't over—and this summer, the cousins will learn everything.]]> 337 Karen M. McManus 0525708014 adele 0 3.76 2020 The Cousins
author: Karen M. McManus
name: adele
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)]]> 8127 Anne of Green Gables is also a wonderful portrait of a time, a place, a family� and, most of all, love.

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JENNIFER LEE CARELL]]> 320 L.M. Montgomery 0451528824 adele 0 favs 4.31 1908 Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: adele
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1908
rating: 0
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]]> Playing Beatie Bow 395868 188 Ruth Park 1903015111 adele 0 favs 3.96 1980 Playing Beatie Bow
author: Ruth Park
name: adele
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë adele 0 favs 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: adele
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries, #1)]]> 38980
Is she ever in for a surprise.

First mom announces that she's dating Mia's Algebra teacher. Then Dad has to go and reveal that he is the crown prince of Genovia. And guess who still doesn't have a date for the Cultural Diversity Dance?]]> 283 Meg Cabot 0613371658 adele 4 favs 3.81 2000 The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries, #1)
author: Meg Cabot
name: adele
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: favs
review:
I loved this series. The relationships were complex and realistic, Mia was a human and diverse character which brought me more into the story. It has engaging funny moments, chaotic dramas and mundane school days that made it feel like real life. Overall it's a great series.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson]]> 112204 THE ONLY ONE-VOLUME EDITION CONTAINING ALL 1,775 OF EMILY DICKINSON’S POEMS

Only eleven of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally “edited� versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.

This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.]]> 716 Emily Dickinson adele 0 to-read 4.28 1890 The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
author: Emily Dickinson
name: adele
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/28
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]]> Oscar Wilde Stories 21911334
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray
2. Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
3. The Sphinx Without a Secret
4. The Canterville Ghost
5. The Model Millionaire
6. A House of Pomegranates:
The Young King
The Birthday of the Infanta
The Fisherman and his Soul
The Star-child
7. The Happy Prince and Other Tales:
The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Selfish Giant
The Devoted Friend
The Remarkable Rocket]]> 382 Oscar Wilde adele 0 to-read 4.00 Oscar Wilde Stories
author: Oscar Wilde
name: adele
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/17
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]]> Bunny (Bunny, #1) 42815544
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.]]> 307 Mona Awad 0525559736 adele 0 to-read 3.53 2019 Bunny (Bunny, #1)
author: Mona Awad
name: adele
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Were Liars 16143347 A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.]]> 242 E. Lockhart 0385741278 adele 0 to-read 3.65 2014 We Were Liars
author: E. Lockhart
name: adele
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 adele 2 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: adele
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2022/07/09
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]]> The Song of Achilles 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller adele 5 favs 4.30 2011 The Song of Achilles
author: Madeline Miller
name: adele
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/10
date added: 2022/07/09
shelves: favs
review:
Amazing novel. I enjoyed the writing style. The story was revamped but realistic and felt true to mythological tales. Makes the Iliad readable. The romance was beautiful and deep, they were true soul mates and had an amazing connection, it was so freaking romantic. The drama, death, and gore were also written well it felt realistic and horrifying. The novel was an absolute journey and super engaging.
]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 adele 5 favs 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: adele
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/10
date added: 2022/07/09
shelves: favs
review:
Feral. Enjoyable. Fucked me up.
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Four (Hercule Poirot, #5)]]> 16316
Librarian's note #1: the concept of The Big Four first appeared as weekly short stories very loosely connected in 'The Sketch' in 1924. The 12 original stories were: 1) The Unexpected Guest, 2) The Adventure of the Dartmoor Bungalow, 3) The Lady on the Stairs, 4) The Radium Thieves, 5) In the House of the Enemy, 6) The Yellow Jasmine Mystery, 7) The Chess Problem, 8) The Baited Trap, 9) The Adventure of the Peroxide Blond, 10) The Terrible Catastrophe, 11) The Dying Chinaman, and 12) The Crag in the Dolomites. For her 1927 novel, Christie enhanced the linkages between the stories and shuffled them somewhat.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.]]> 272 Agatha Christie 0007120818 adele 3 3.54 1927 The Big Four (Hercule Poirot, #5)
author: Agatha Christie
name: adele
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/07/09
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review:
An enjoyable mystery novel! Due to all the Poirot books being older they can drag quite a bit, they're not an easy read. I totally recommend it to all classics and mystery fans. The twists and turns are cool, and the characters are well developed.
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 adele 4
I enjoyed the realism, romantic descriptions and chaotic plot. It had a beautiful setting and some dark moments but overall it's a beautiful tale.
The plot twist about her sexuality and then the one involving her dad wasn't as epic as I anticipated, I managed to figure it out before it happened. People had told me the twists were unbelievable and shocking but IMO they weren't. ]]> 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: adele
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/13
date added: 2022/06/05
shelves:
review:
Great novel.

I enjoyed the realism, romantic descriptions and chaotic plot. It had a beautiful setting and some dark moments but overall it's a beautiful tale.
The plot twist about her sexuality and then the one involving her dad wasn't as epic as I anticipated, I managed to figure it out before it happened. People had told me the twists were unbelievable and shocking but IMO they weren't.
]]> The Simple Gift 722292 I'm sixteen, and soon
to be homeless.
Weary of his life with his alcoholic, abusive father, sixteen-year-old Billy packs a few belongings and hits the road, hoping for something better than what he left behind. He finds a home in an abandoned freight train outside a small town, where he falls in love with rich, restless Caitlin and befriends a fellow train resident, "Old Bill," who slowly reveals a tragic past. When Billy is given a gift that changes everything, he learns not only to how forge his own path in life, but the real meaning of family.]]> 188 Steven Herrick 0689868677 adele 3 3.71 2000 The Simple Gift
author: Steven Herrick
name: adele
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/05
date added: 2022/04/01
shelves:
review:

]]> I Capture the Castle 31122 408 Dodie Smith 0312181108 adele 5 3.99 1948 I Capture the Castle
author: Dodie Smith
name: adele
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/24
date added: 2022/01/23
shelves:
review:
This book was beautiful. It seemed to go through every human emotion and thought just to pull it apart. The people who were at odds with each other were almost opposites. It was a clear comment on human nature, love and loss. The metaphors throughout the novel were just plain gorgeous and the imagery was like you were being dragged into the books beautiful scenery.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dressmaker (Dressmaker, #1)]]> 575758
After twenty years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar. Through her fashion business, her friendship with Sergeant Farrat—the town’s only policeman, who harbors an unusual passion for fabrics—and a budding romance with Teddy, the local football star whose family is almost as reviled as hers, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. But as her dresses begin to arouse competition and envy in town, causing old resentments to surface, it becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is set on a darker design: exacting revenge on those who wronged her, in the most spectacular fashion.]]> 296 Rosalie Ham 1875989706 adele 3 3.39 2000 The Dressmaker (Dressmaker, #1)
author: Rosalie Ham
name: adele
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/10
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flawless (Pretty Little Liars, #2)]]> 162089
Spencer stole her sister's boyfriend. Aria is brokenhearted over her English teacher. Emily likes her new friend Maya . . . as much more than a friend. And Hanna's obsession with looking flawless is literally making her sick. But the most horrible secret of all is something so scandalous it could destroy their perfect little lives.

And someone named "A" is threatening to do just that.

At first they thought A was Alison, their friend who vanished three years ago . . . but then Alison turned up dead. So could A be Melissa, Spencer's ultracompetitive sister? Or Maya, who wants Emily all to herself? What about Toby, the mysterious guy who left town right after Alison went missing?

One thing's for certain: A's got the dirt to bury them all alive, and with every crumpled note, wicked IM, and vindictive text message A sends, the girls get a little closer to losing it all.]]> 330 Sara Shepard 0060887338 adele 4
I don't usually prefer tv and movies to books but the pretty little liars tv series is better than the books IMO. ]]> 3.90 2007 Flawless (Pretty Little Liars, #2)
author: Sara Shepard
name: adele
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed this book but haven't yet read the entire series so it was a little hard to follow. The story also jumped between perspectives which can be hard to follow.

I don't usually prefer tv and movies to books but the pretty little liars tv series is better than the books IMO.
]]> <![CDATA[Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)]]> 853510
One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.]]> 274 Agatha Christie 0007119313 adele 5 4.22 1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: adele
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/21
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ghost by the Billabong (Matilda Saga, #5)]]> 27428758 The fifth title in the sweeping Matilda Saga



Hippies wear beads, demonstrators march against the Vietnam War, and the world waits to see the first human steps on the moon's surface.

But at Gibbers Creek, Jed Kelly sees ghosts, from the past and future, at the Drinkwater billabong where long ago the swaggie leaped to his defiant death.

But is seventeen-year-old Jed a con artist or a survivor? When she turns up at Drinkwater Station claiming to be the great-granddaughter of Matilda Thompson's dying husband, Jed clearly has secrets. As does a veteran called Nicholas, who was badly wounded in the Vietnam War and now must try to create a life he truly wants to live, despite the ghosts that haunt him too.

Set during the turbulence of the late 1960s, this was a time when brilliant and little-known endeavours saw Australia play a vital role in Neil Armstrong's 'one giant leap for mankind' on that first unforgettable moon walk.

The fifth title in the highly acclaimed Matilda Saga, The Ghost by the Billabong is a story of deep conflicts and enduring passions - for other people, for the land, and for the future of humanity.





PRAISE FOR THE MATILDA SAGA

'An engrossing mystery story, an ode to strong women, and a moving exploration of the private wounds we carry ... The Last Dingo Summer is a must for your summer reading list' - Better Reading

'The perfect read for anyone who loves immersing themselves in Australian fiction. Gripping, emotional and moving, Facing the Flame is a great book to curl up with on a warm spring night' - New Idea

'Highly recommended ... this was a complete binge, read in one night because it was just too good and too gripping to put down ... a cracking story filled with rich characters both old and new and imbued with all that we hold dear about Australian love of country and mateship' - ReadPlus]]> 544 Jackie French 0732295297 adele 5 4.36 2015 The Ghost by the Billabong (Matilda Saga, #5)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Love a Sunburnt Country (Matilda Saga, #4)]]> 23449436
When Malaya is invaded, Nancy, Moira and Gavin are fortunate to get out before Singapore falls. When their ship is bombed they end up stranded on an island where they, and some other colonial women, are captured. There begins the nightmare and horror of internment in a Japanese camp. Back home at Gibber's Creek families are doing their bit for the war. They worry constantly about their men who are fighting - and now those who are missing after Singapore falls. Powerful, compelling and confronting, this is a book that pulls no punches.

Filled with emotional truth and heartfelt agony, this unforgettable fourth book in The Matilda Saga continues the journey that started with A Waltz for Matilda.]]> 464 Jackie French 1743099843 adele 5 4.48 2014 To Love a Sunburnt Country (Matilda Saga, #4)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Clancy of the Overflow (The Matilda Saga, #9)]]> 46194883 From Australia's best-loved storyteller comes the final book in the bestselling Matilda Saga This is a love song to our nation, told in a single sweeping story

Jed Kelly has finally persuaded her great aunt Nancy to tell the story of her grandparents. The tale that unfolds is one of Australia's greatest romances - that of Clancy of the Overflow, who gave up everything for Rose, the woman he adored, and yet still gained all he'd lost and more.

But Nancy's story is not the history that Jed expects. More tales lurk behind the folklore that surrounds Clancy - the stories of the women hidden in Australia's long history, who forged a nation and whose voices need to be heard.

It is also a story of many kinds of love. Clancy's growing passion for the bush, immortalised in Paterson's poem, which speaks to him in the ripple of the river and the song of the stars, and Nancy's need to pass on her deep understanding of her country.

But perhaps the most moving love story of all is the one that never happened, between Matilda O'Halloran and Clancy of the Overflow. And as Jed brings all of these stories to life in her book, Matilda and Clancy will once again waltz beside the river and the forgotten will be given a new voice.



PRAISE FOR THE MATILDA SAGA

'An engrossing mystery story, an ode to strong women, and a moving exploration of the private wounds we carry ... The Last Dingo Summer is a must for your summer reading list' - Better Reading

'The perfect read for anyone who loves immersing themselves in Australian fiction. Gripping, emotional and moving, Facing the Flame is a great book to curl up with' - New Idea

'Highly recommended ... this was a complete binge, read in one night because it was just too good and too gripping to put down ... a cracking story filled with rich characters both old and new and imbued with all that we hold dear about Australian love of country and mateship' - ReadPlus]]> 448 Jackie French 1460754778 adele 5 4.35 2019 Clancy of the Overflow (The Matilda Saga, #9)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Dingo Summer (Matilda Saga, #8)]]> 40383092
Newcomer Fish Johnstone refuses to believe Jed Kelly's husband, Sam McAlpine, killed Merv to save his wife and child, as the police suspect. But Fish must also face her own mystery - a father who recently appeared as a Vietnamese 'boat person' refugee, but has vanished once again. As the last dingo howls on the hills above the river, Fish finds that Gibber's Creek has many secrets. And some of them are deadly.

Set in the late 1970s, this haunting story shows how love and kindness can create the courage to face the past.]]> 464 Jackie French 1460707842 adele 5 4.29 2018 The Last Dingo Summer (Matilda Saga, #8)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[If Blood Should Stain the Wattle (Matilda Saga, #6)]]> 29926468
In 1972, and the catchcry is 'It's time'.

As political ideals drift from disaster to the dismissal, it's also time for Jed Kelly to choose between past love, Nicholas, the local Labor member, and Sam from the Halfway to Eternity commune. It's time too for Matilda Thompson to face her ghosts and the life that took a young girl from the slums of Grinder's Alley to being the formidable matriarch of Gibber's Creek.

During this period of extraordinary social change and idealism, modern Australia would be born. And although the nation would dream of a better world, it would continue to struggle with opposing ideas of exactly what that better world might be.

Jackie French, author of the bestselling To Love a Sunburnt Country, has woven her own experience of that time into an unforgettable story of a small rural community and a nation swept into the social and political tumult of the early 1970s. A time that would bear witness to some of the most controversial events in Australian history; and for Matilda, a time that would see her vision made real, without blood spilled upon the wattle.]]> 544 Jackie French 1460705939 adele 5 4.22 2016 If Blood Should Stain the Wattle (Matilda Saga, #6)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Road to Gundagai (Matilda Saga, #3)]]> 18692493
And somewhere a murderer is waiting � to strike again.

This third book in the Waltz for Matilda saga is set in 1932, at the height of the Depression. Miss Matilda is still running Drinkwater Station, but has put aside her own tragedy to help those suffering in tough economic times and Joey, from The Girl from Snowy River, uses his new medical skills to solve a mystery.]]> 448 Jackie French 0732297222 adele 5 4.37 2013 The Road to Gundagai (Matilda Saga, #3)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Waltz for Matilda (Matilda Saga, #1)]]> 9622286
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl's journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.

Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this is the untold story behind Australia′s early years as an emerging nation.]]> 479 Jackie French 073229021X adele 0 4.39 2010 A Waltz for Matilda (Matilda Saga, #1)
author: Jackie French
name: adele
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/12/21
shelves:
review:
An excellent opening to a series. I think it is one of the best young adult historical fiction series that centres on Australia.
]]>