en-US Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:07:50 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 58314 The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.]]> 272 Michel Houellebecq 0375727019 Zoe 5 3.91 1998
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
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becoming a real houellebecq girl
]]> 17895842
After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerable homophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multiple processes of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out to investigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His story weaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of the educational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and on the recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes -- reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to the National Front.

"Returning to Reims" is a remarkable book of sociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction of leftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexual identity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initial publication in 2009, "Returning to Reims" received enthusiastic reviews in "Le Monde, Liberation, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles," and elsewhere.]]> 256 Didier Eribon 1584351233 Zoe 0 to-read 4.31 2009
author: Didier Eribon
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43685241 'Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.'

When Hanio Yamada realizes the future holds nothing of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits.

A world of revenge, murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisonous carrots, espionage and code-breaking, a junkie heiress, home-made explosives and decoys reveals itself to the unwitting Hanio. Is there anything he can do to stop it?]]> 192 Yukio Mishima 0241333148 Zoe 5 really good 3.74 1968
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/07
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review:
really good
]]> 7714
In Shaw's clever adaptation, Professor Henry Higgins, a linguistic expert, takes on a bet that he can transform an awkward cockney flower seller into a refined young lady simply by polishing her manners and changing the way she speaks. In the process of convincing society that his creation is a mysterious royal figure, the Professor also falls in love with his elegant handiwork.

The irresistible theme of the emerging butterfly, together with Shaw's brilliant dialogue and splendid skills as a playwright, have made Pygmalion one of the most popular comedies in the English language. A staple of college drama courses, it is still widely performed.]]> 82 George Bernard Shaw 0486282228 Zoe 4 3.89 1913
author: George Bernard Shaw
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> 200208412 A reporter embarks on an investigation of a string of unconnected suicides—which then leads into an exploration of the phenomenon of suicide itself—in this elegant existential novel, the third and final volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation.

A reporter’s boss assigns him to cover three unconnected suicides. The news agency wants to syndicate the story to color magazines, “For the blood, so the red is visible.� All he’s given to go on are photos of the faces of the dead.

As he starts to investigate, other suicides happen. An archivist colleague, a woman, supplies factoids from history, anthropology, biology, and philosophy: suicide by men, women, families, animals; thoughts on suicide from Diogenes, the Tosafists, Hume, Schopenhauer, Durkheim, Mead.

A photographer assigned to work with him—also a woman—snaps pictures of the bodies and the family members of the dead, who speak of subterfuge, hypochondria, madness, a secret society, a body exhumed to be mutilated. During one of the interviews, in a widow’s tiny apartment, a huge dog hurls himself against a plate glass window again and again, lunging at the birds beyond.

The Suicides is the third volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation, called “one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century narrative fiction in Spanish� by Juan José Saer. Following Zama (set during the final decade of the 18th century) and The Silentiary (set during the 1950s), the trilogy’s final work takes place in a provincial city at the end of the 1960s, which is also when it was written and published, as Argentina plummeted towards the Dirty War. Its protagonist, once again, is a man in his early thirties, stymied and in search of an elsewhere.]]> 176 Antonio di Benedetto 1681378868 Zoe 4 3.64 1969
author: Antonio di Benedetto
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Zoe 4 4.47 2018
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
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]]> 186872309
Walking the wire between imagination and confession, My First Book captures both our cultural moment and the feeling of growing up in the internet generation. Debut author Honor Levy’s uniquely riveting voice emerges from the chaos of coming of age in the 21st century, only having lived in a post-internet world. Never far from a digital interface, Levy’s characters grapple with formative political, existential, and romantic experiences in a web-drenched world simultaneously hyper-real, hyper-performative, and on the brink of collapse. Amid the sense of imminent catastrophe, a fragile self struggles to form.

Wildly inventive, always ambitious, and frequently surreal, the stories of My First Book are a mirrorball onto the world as it is. Levy’s prose illuminates what it is to be at once adorable, special, heavily medicated, consistently panicked, and completely sincere. “I’d rather do Xanax than cut myself. No, I’d rather do Xanax then cut myself,� one protagonist muses, while another discovers the infinite nature of love, another reminisces about sunsets that were “pinker, like way pinker,� and another encounters God in a downtown video game arcade. To find and keep faith is the order of the day—but how?

For readers of Patricia Lockwood, Bret Easton Ellis, and the depths of the internet, and for anyone who would like to see Generation Z from the inside out, My First Book holds the key. And in capturing the experience of an entire generation, it marks the arrival of an electric new talent.]]> 224 Honor Levy 0593656539 Zoe 4 adult catholic convert 3.12 2024
author: Honor Levy
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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adult catholic convert
]]> 9912 From the bestselling author of American Psycho comes this satirical black comedy about the death of romance.

Set at an affluent liberal arts college during the height of the Reagan eighties, The Rules of Attraction follows a handful of rowdy, spoiled, sexually promiscuous students with no plans for the future—or even the present. Three of them—Sean, Paul, and Lauren—become involved in a love triangle of sorts within a sequence of drug runs, "Dressed to Get Screwed" parties, and "End of the World" parties.

As Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at the self-consciously bohemian Camden College, treating their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion, he exposes the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.]]> 283 Bret Easton Ellis 067978148X Zoe 4 3.74 1987
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/07/28
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]]> 25322084
Meanwhile, it’s election season. And although Francois feels “about as political as a bath towel,� things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the Socialists, France’s new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and Francois is offered an irresistible academic advancement—on condition that he convert to Islam.

Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of Submission that Michael Houellebecq is “not merely a satirist but—more unusually—a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind.� Houellebecq’s new book may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious, a comic masterpiece by one of France’s great novelists.]]> 246 Michel Houellebecq 0374271577 Zoe 5 3.68 2015
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> 237827
The close-ups of these people living in a contemporary world are vividly real; their stories are gripping and almost unbearably suspenseful. Polyphonic themes of decadence, sexual perversion, insanity and political and social amorality are skillfully woven throughout the entire collection of stories.]]> 144 Jean-Paul Sartre 0811201902 Zoe 4 4.00 1939
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1939
rating: 4
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]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Zoe 4 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/17
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]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Zoe 5 4.36 2024
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Zoe 0 to-read 4.21 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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]]> 18839 Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.]]> 336 Virginia Woolf 0141184272 Zoe 0 to-read 3.88 1928
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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]]> 6656 This Everyman’s Library edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli’s marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

Translated in this edition by Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.]]> 798 Dante Alighieri 0679433139 Zoe 0 to-read 4.08 1320
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1320
rating: 0
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]]> 15997 Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.

Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.]]> 453 John Milton 0140424393 Zoe 0 to-read 3.83 1667
author: John Milton
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1667
rating: 0
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]]> 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Zoe 0 to-read 3.81 1927
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/15
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]]> 15645
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.

Esolen's edition also provides a critical ntroduction and endnotes, with appendices containing Dante's most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and beyond —that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.

Verse Translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré]]> 490 Dante Alighieri 0812970063 Zoe 0 to-read 4.02 1320
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1320
rating: 0
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]]> 80081 An enchanting story that has inspired generations of writers, including Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats 

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and initiates Lucius into her cult. It has long been disputed whether Apuleius meant this last-minute conversion seriously or as a final comic surprise and the challenge of interpretation continues to keep readers fascinated. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writers such as Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness and sheer exuberance, and The Golden Ass remains the most continuously and accessibly amusing book to have survived from Classical antiquity.
]]> 256 Apuleius 0253200369 Zoe 0 to-read 3.90 159
author: Apuleius
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.90
book published: 159
rating: 0
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]]> 11012 I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'.

Joyce's aim was to tell the truth � to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.

Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners � a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled � and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.]]> 352 James Joyce Zoe 5 very good 3.86 1914
author: James Joyce
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1914
rating: 5
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very good
]]> 44492285
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known--and feared--as the man christened Muad'Dib. As Emperor of the Known Universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremens, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne--and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.

And even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family's dynasty...

Includes an introduction by Brian Herbert]]> 336 Frank Herbert 0593098234 Zoe 0 to-read 3.89 1969
author: Frank Herbert
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 295018 265 René Descartes 0521558182 Zoe 0 3.81 1641
author: René Descartes
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1641
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: philosophy-of-human-nature, currently-reading
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]]> 63034213 64 Ralph Waldo Emerson 1981656669 Zoe 0 4.07
author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.07
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]]> 1683 290 Augustine of Hippo 1591094003 Zoe 0 philosophy-of-human-nature 3.95 400
author: Augustine of Hippo
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.95
book published: 400
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: philosophy-of-human-nature
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]]> 30289 416 Plato 0140449140 Zoe 0 philosophy-of-human-nature 3.97 -400
author: Plato
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.97
book published: -400
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]]> 30300 The Last Days of Socrates is translated from the Greek by Hugh Tredennick, revised with an introduction and notes by Harold Tarrant in Penguin Classics.

The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of Classical Athens. In tracing these events through four dialogues, Plato also developed his own philosophy, based on Socrates' manifesto for a life guided by self-responsibility. Euthyphro finds Socrates outside the court-house, debating the nature of piety, while the Apology is his robust rebuttal of the charges of impiety and a defence of the philosopher's life. In the Crito, while awaiting execution in prison, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. Finally, in the Phaedo, he is shown calmly confident in the face of death, skilfully arguing the case for the immortality of the soul.

Hugh Tredennick's landmark 1954 translation has been revised by Harold Tarrant, reflecting changes in Platonic studies, with an introduction and expanded introductions to each of the four dialogues.

Plato (c.427-347 BC) stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. He founded the Academy in Athens, the first permanent institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all Western universities.

If you enjoyed The Last Days of Socrates, you might like Plato's The Symposium, also available in Penguin Classics.]]> 256 Plato 0140449280 Zoe 0 philosophy-of-human-nature 4.02 -400
author: Plato
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.02
book published: -400
rating: 0
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shelves: philosophy-of-human-nature
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]]> 6759
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.]]> 1088 David Foster Wallace Zoe 0 to-read 4.26 1996
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 9934441 302 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 8845244164 Zoe 0 to-read 3.82 1985
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 3836
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."]]> 1023 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Zoe 0 to-read 3.86 1615
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Zoe 0 to-read 4.36 1880
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Zoe 0 to-read 4.26 1866
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 327775 70 Aristophanes 1406936723 Zoe 0 to-read 3.84 -405
author: Aristophanes
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.84
book published: -405
rating: 0
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]]> 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Zoe 0 to-read 3.82 1991
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Zoe 0 to-read 3.70 1856
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 770754 - J'attends le résultat des analyses.
- Moi, je le sais. Et je n'ai pas besoin d'analyses. J'ai fait une partie de ma carrière en Chine, et j'ai vu quelques cas à Paris, il y a une vingtaine d'années. Seulement, on n'a pas osé leur donner un nom, sur le moment... Et puis, comme disait un confrère : "C'est impossible, tout le monde sait qu'elle a disparu de l'Occident." Oui, tout le monde le savait, sauf les morts. Allons, Rieux, vous savez aussi bien que moi ce que c'est...
- Oui, Castel, dit-il, c'est Ă  peine croyable. Mais il semble bien que ce soit la peste. "]]> 279 Albert Camus Zoe 0 to-read 3.96 1947
author: Albert Camus
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 33290408
Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly thru a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.]]> 290 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Zoe 0 to-read 4.02 1965
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 12274 163 George Bernard Shaw 0140437916 Zoe 3 3.78 1923
author: George Bernard Shaw
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1923
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/05
date added: 2024/04/08
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it was okay. A little stupid at times, especially the scene where he invents Protestantism. Forward was very enjoyable.
]]> 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X Zoe 5 Paul you DUNE too much 4.33 1965
author: Frank Herbert
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/27
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Paul you DUNE too much
]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Zoe 5 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
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brilliant, disgusting, hilarious
]]> 18414 Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.]]> 113 Thomas More 0140449108 Zoe 4 3.53 1516
author: Thomas More
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1516
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/27
date added: 2024/02/29
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]]> 41150283 272 Armand D’Angour 1408883910 Zoe 2
I refuse to take you seriously ]]> 3.63
author: Armand D’Angour
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/22
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“in a dialogue not written by socrates he refers to a woman as honored by zeus. this must be the lifelong mistress of pericles and socrates must have had an affair with this women as a young man because wouldn’t that be interesting?�

I refuse to take you seriously
]]> 54776211 An entertaining and informative look at the unique culture of crime, punishment, and killing in Ancient Rome

In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered.

But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.
Ěý±Ő±Ő> 352 Emma Southon 1419753053 Zoe 2 4.09 2020
author: Emma Southon
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
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]]> 333301
Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French film on Martin Guerre, has searched archives and lawbooks to add new dimensions to a tale already abundant in mysteries: we are led to ponder how a common man could become an impostor in the sixteenth century, why Bertrande de Rols, an honorable peasant woman, would accept such a man as her husband, and why lawyers, poets, and men of letters like Montaigne became so fascinated with the episode.]]> 162 Natalie Zemon Davis 0674766911 Zoe 3 audio book 3.75 1983
author: Natalie Zemon Davis
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/30
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audio book
]]> 124101486 0 Niccolò Machiavelli Zoe 0 3.50
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/23
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]]> 59410869 Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan author Miguel �ngel Asturias's masterpiece--the original Latin American dictator novel and pioneering work of magical realism--in its first new English translation in more than half a century, featuring a foreword by Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa

A Penguin Classic

In an unnamed country, an egomaniacal dictator schemes to dispose of a political adversary and maintain his grip on power. As tyranny takes hold, everyone is forced to choose between compromise and death. Inspired by life under the regime of President Manuel Estrada Cabrera of Guatemala, where it was banned for many years, and infused with exuberant lyricism, Mayan symbolism, and Guatemalan vernacular, Nobel Prize winner Miguel �ngel Asturias's magnum opus is at once a surrealist masterpiece, a blade-sharp satire of totalitarianism, and a gripping portrait of psychological terror.]]> 282 Miguel �ngel Asturias 0143136380 Zoe 3 3.84 1946
author: Miguel �ngel Asturias
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1946
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/20
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]]> 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 Zoe 5 3.67 2017
author: Elif Batuman
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/13
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]]> 61505 Eine kurze Weltgeschichte fĂĽr junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.]]> 284 E.H. Gombrich 0300108834 Zoe 0 4.11 1936
author: E.H. Gombrich
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Zoe 0 4.38 1956
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2023/11/21
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]]> 2054045 248 Elizabeth A. Johnson 0826417701 Zoe 4 4.18 2007
author: Elizabeth A. Johnson
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/29
date added: 2023/11/17
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]]> 48203 288 Willa Cather 1844083764 Zoe 4 3.75 1925
author: Willa Cather
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/10
date added: 2023/11/07
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Zoe 4 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/08
date added: 2023/08/17
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]]> 533465 184 Dai Sijie 0385722206 Zoe 4 I liked it! 3.64 2000
author: Dai Sijie
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/03
date added: 2023/03/03
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I liked it!
]]> 91950 The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.]]> 192 Albert Camus 0141182008 Zoe 3 4.25 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/02
date added: 2023/03/02
shelves:
review:
tiktok made me read it. dont kill urself ur so absurd haha
]]> 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Zoe 4 4.08 2019
author: Ann Patchett
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/27
date added: 2023/02/27
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]]> 9516
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.]]> 153 Marjane Satrapi 037571457X Zoe 4 4.27 2003
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/08
date added: 2023/02/08
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]]> 17568801 No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth.

Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.� The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal.

Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God.

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.

Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews� whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.

Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion.]]> 296 Reza Aslan 140006922X Zoe 5 3.83 2013
author: Reza Aslan
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/05
date added: 2023/01/05
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]]> 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Zoe 5 4.02 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/01
date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> 29936927 The Best We Could Do, the debut graphic novel memoir by Thi Bui, is an intimate look at one family's journey from their war-torn home in Vietnam to their new lives in America. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui's story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent � the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through.

With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. The Best We Could Do brings to life her journey of understanding and provides inspiration to all who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.]]> 329 Thi Bui 1419718770 Zoe 0 4.35 2017
author: Thi Bui
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/17
date added: 2022/10/23
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]]> 133518
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.]]> 246 Tim O'Brien 0767902890 Zoe 0 4.14 1990
author: Tim O'Brien
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Zoe 3 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/16
date added: 2022/10/23
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]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Zoe 5 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/15
date added: 2022/08/15
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]]> 373617 In 1906, Ed Johnson was the innocnet black man found guilty of the brutal rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, and sentenced to die in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two black lawyers, not even part of the original defense, appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, and the stay, incredibly, was granted. Frenzied with rage at the deision, locals responded by lynching Johnson, and what ensued was a breathtaking whirlwind of groundbreaking legal action whose import, Thurgood Marshall would claim, "has never been fully explained." Provocative, thorough, and gripping, Contempt of Court is a long-overdue look at events that clearly depict the peculiar and tenuous relationship between justice and the law.

]]> 432 Mark Curriden 0385720823 Zoe 4 4.25 1999
author: Mark Curriden
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/07
date added: 2022/08/05
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]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Zoe 5 4.07 1980
author: Howard Zinn
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/01
date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Zoe 5 3.70 1954
author: William Golding
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/20
date added: 2022/06/20
shelves:
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loved it but a few british-isms are hard to understand
]]> 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 Zoe 3 mid, but i like crazy women 3.62 2018
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/27
date added: 2022/05/27
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mid, but i like crazy women
]]> 6969 The newest edition is here. Another alternate cover can be found here.

Emma Woodhouse is one of Austen's most captivating and vivid characters. Beautiful, spoilt, vain and irrepressibly witty, Emma organizes the lives of the inhabitants of her sleepy little village and plays matchmaker with devastating effect.]]> 474 Jane Austen 0141439580 Zoe 5 4.05 1815
author: Jane Austen
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1815
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/15
date added: 2022/05/15
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]]> 386411 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.]]> 287 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 038533348X Zoe 5 wonderful 4.11 1963
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/12
date added: 2022/04/12
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wonderful
]]> 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 Zoe 4 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/18
date added: 2022/01/18
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]]> 11250317
Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.]]> 352 Madeline Miller 1408816032 Zoe 5 4.38 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/01/11
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]]> 44284906 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

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

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

I hope you enjoy these little weirds.

Love,
Jenny Slate]]> 224 Jenny Slate Zoe 5 3.87 2019
author: Jenny Slate
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
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]]> 38357895
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata Zoe 5 3.70 2016
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
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]]> 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Zoe 5 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Zoe 5 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> 170448 Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.]]> 141 George Orwell 0451526341 Zoe 3 4.07 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1945
rating: 3
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]]> 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 Zoe 4 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Zoe
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 4
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]]> 2657
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Zoe 3 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Zoe
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 3
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