Allison's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:47:21 -0700 60 Allison's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 382 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.29 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Allison
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> The Husbands 221754270
As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?]]> 352 Holly Gramazio 0593687515 Allison 0 to-read 3.47 2024 The Husbands
author: Holly Gramazio
name: Allison
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> These Violent Delights 49203397 The Secret History meets Call Me by Your Name in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonizingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father's recent death. Paul sees his wealthy, effortlessly charming Julian as his sole intellectual equal - an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. He idolizes his friend for his magnetic confidence. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian also is volatile and capriciously cruel. An admiration isn't the same as trust.

As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared with the brutality they are capable of inflicting on one another. Separation is out of the question. But as their orbit compresses and their grip on one another tightens, they are drawn to an act of irrevocable violence that will force the young men to confront a shattering truth at the core of their relationship.

Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire.]]> 460 Micah Nemerever 0062963635 Allison 3
4-5 stars for: Successful dark academia vibes. Nemerever's ability to hold and maintain tension is excellent, as is his writing of an obsessive mind (Paul's). The intertwining of violence, or the threat of violence, throughout most of the book works—mostly—effectively. It definitely kept me turning pages, at least until we get to the point in the book when the opening scene is realized.

1-2 stars for: Overwriting. This book should have been at least 100 or 150 pages shorter. The amount of internal explaining Nemerever attributes to Paul gets tedious, then tiring, then utterly ridiculous. Nemerever can clearly turn a phrase and apply a detail, so why must he always tell us everything, too? It's a shame his editor didn't intervene more forcefully. Relatedly, the middle of the book dragged to the point where I was skimming pages, looking for the next place to sink my teeth back in. Maybe it should have been 200 pages shorter.

As for more of my personal preferences/complaints: The queerness in the book was both overdone and underdone. I thought the cultural/temporal positioning of Paul and Julien's relationship, the resistance they faced especially from Paul's family, was extremely well done. However, their actual sexual attraction and chemistry was barely explored, which occasionally made me wonder whether it was really there or if this was just an intense friendship that had morphed into obsession on Paul's part. (And was it just on Paul's part? By the end it seems like we're supposed to believe the obsession/dependency is mutual, but I kind of wanted it to be a full unreliable narrator situation.... What in the world did Julien love about Paul so much?)

Paul's dead dad was also such an intense presence in the beginning of this book, I thought it would amount to something important. But it pretty much vanishes as Paul's obsession progresses and everyone else in his family heals. Are we supposed to believe that the obsession supplants the grief? I'm not convinced that's effectively conveyed, but it's my best guess. Either way I found it disappointing.

Finally, I really need someone to come explain the ending to me. It can't just be what's literally on the page. Please, someone?]]> 3.96 2020 These Violent Delights
author: Micah Nemerever
name: Allison
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
This gets three stars not because it's a ho-hum book but because various aspects are either so good or so bad. It's probably why the reviews are so polarizing.

4-5 stars for: Successful dark academia vibes. Nemerever's ability to hold and maintain tension is excellent, as is his writing of an obsessive mind (Paul's). The intertwining of violence, or the threat of violence, throughout most of the book works—mostly—effectively. It definitely kept me turning pages, at least until we get to the point in the book when the opening scene is realized.

1-2 stars for: Overwriting. This book should have been at least 100 or 150 pages shorter. The amount of internal explaining Nemerever attributes to Paul gets tedious, then tiring, then utterly ridiculous. Nemerever can clearly turn a phrase and apply a detail, so why must he always tell us everything, too? It's a shame his editor didn't intervene more forcefully. Relatedly, the middle of the book dragged to the point where I was skimming pages, looking for the next place to sink my teeth back in. Maybe it should have been 200 pages shorter.

As for more of my personal preferences/complaints: The queerness in the book was both overdone and underdone. I thought the cultural/temporal positioning of Paul and Julien's relationship, the resistance they faced especially from Paul's family, was extremely well done. However, their actual sexual attraction and chemistry was barely explored, which occasionally made me wonder whether it was really there or if this was just an intense friendship that had morphed into obsession on Paul's part. (And was it just on Paul's part? By the end it seems like we're supposed to believe the obsession/dependency is mutual, but I kind of wanted it to be a full unreliable narrator situation.... What in the world did Julien love about Paul so much?)

Paul's dead dad was also such an intense presence in the beginning of this book, I thought it would amount to something important. But it pretty much vanishes as Paul's obsession progresses and everyone else in his family heals. Are we supposed to believe that the obsession supplants the grief? I'm not convinced that's effectively conveyed, but it's my best guess. Either way I found it disappointing.

Finally, I really need someone to come explain the ending to me. It can't just be what's literally on the page. Please, someone?
]]> The Wedding People 222348800 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN 9781250899576 can be found here

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 367 Alison Espach 1250899575 Allison 0 to-read 4.14 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Allison
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The History of Sound 199373354
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.]]> 320 Ben Shattuck 059349038X Allison 0 to-read, short-stories, julie 4.36 2024 The History of Sound
author: Ben Shattuck
name: Allison
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read, short-stories, julie
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American Bulk: Essays on Excess]]> 205478800 Raised with hoarding and compulsive shopping, Emily Mester is caught in between. What happens when consumption begins to consume you back?

In a series of deeply personal essays, Mester explores how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a chain restaurant. With humor and sharp intellect, Mester reflects on the joys and anxieties of Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get “mall sad.� In a nuanced examination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the unexpected liberation she finds there. Finally, she ventures to Storm Lake, Iowa, to reckon with her grandmother’s abandoned hoard, excavating the dysfunction that lies at the heart of her family’s obsession with stuff. American Bulk introduces readers to a striking new literary talent from the American heartland, one who dares to ask us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.]]> 240 Emily Mester 1324035234 Allison 0 3.88 2024 American Bulk: Essays on Excess
author: Emily Mester
name: Allison
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: essaycollection, memoir, nonfiction, currently-reading, audio
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)]]> 215768409
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father's dive bar... in Washington.

Piper hasn't even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won't last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can't do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She's determined to show her stepfather--and the hot, grumpy local--that she's more than a pretty face.

Except it's a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there's an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn't want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan--and this town full of memories--may have already caught her heart.]]> 360 Tessa Bailey 006341385X Allison 0 to-read 4.39 2021 It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Allison
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Allison 3
Four-point-five stars for Bradley's command of language at the sentence level. There were some absolute gems here, particularly nestled in the dialogue.

Two stars for pacing. I wouldn't have DNFed this novel because the language itself was good enough to keep me going, but this story really slogged for a good two thirds. (And then it absolutely tripped over itself racing to the end.)

I am conflicted in how I feel over the main character (also the narrator). On one hand, I though the complexity of her background and motivation added needed depth to the book. However, it didn't go deep enough. The narrator is far too self-aware for my liking, which kept all of her issues—class, ethnicity, perceived and real control, and nationalism to name a few—at the "explained" level rather than embedding them so that we, the reader, can feel them moving the book itself. But maybe I'm asking too much of this book. It did come very hyped.

I personally don't mind that the novel didn't slot easily into a genre. It's not strictly romance, or science fiction, or literary. The disappointment, for me, is that it leaned into tropes when they were easiest and forewent them when they were hard. Any rational explanation or even hint at a rational explanation about the actual time travel, such as why they retrieved these particular people or how any of it actually worked? Nil. (Because that's hard.) Predictably happy romantic ending? Yep, because that's easy.

I guess I ultimately wanted this book to be more literary, not just because that's my preference, but because that seemed to be the promise at the outset. The language of the writing itself felt like it was promising me that, despite that this book was going to entail time travel and probably some sort of romantic entanglement, I was about to read a deep treatment of complex characters. For a while, I got a deep treatment of the complex character Graham, the male love interest and second-most-important character in the book after the narrator. But then the romance took over. And then the spy-thrillerness took over. And by the end, I felt disoriented and unfulfilled, as though I had planned to eat a full savory dinner, blinked, and discovered I'd eaten two bags of chips and a pint of ice cream instead. A real bummer!

But an entertaining read. If you're going to read this book, go in expecting a standard three-star book that intentionally does not fit into any genre you probably saw marketed, and I can almost guarantee you'll have an enjoyable experience.]]> 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Allison
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: goodreadschoiceaward, charlottes_angels
review:
Five stars for Bradley's portrayal of characters from the past trying to come to grips with the realities of our present. The details of what each character struggled with (and what they easily adapted to!) brought these characters to life in a way that was as delightful as it was revealing.

Four-point-five stars for Bradley's command of language at the sentence level. There were some absolute gems here, particularly nestled in the dialogue.

Two stars for pacing. I wouldn't have DNFed this novel because the language itself was good enough to keep me going, but this story really slogged for a good two thirds. (And then it absolutely tripped over itself racing to the end.)

I am conflicted in how I feel over the main character (also the narrator). On one hand, I though the complexity of her background and motivation added needed depth to the book. However, it didn't go deep enough. The narrator is far too self-aware for my liking, which kept all of her issues—class, ethnicity, perceived and real control, and nationalism to name a few—at the "explained" level rather than embedding them so that we, the reader, can feel them moving the book itself. But maybe I'm asking too much of this book. It did come very hyped.

I personally don't mind that the novel didn't slot easily into a genre. It's not strictly romance, or science fiction, or literary. The disappointment, for me, is that it leaned into tropes when they were easiest and forewent them when they were hard. Any rational explanation or even hint at a rational explanation about the actual time travel, such as why they retrieved these particular people or how any of it actually worked? Nil. (Because that's hard.) Predictably happy romantic ending? Yep, because that's easy.

I guess I ultimately wanted this book to be more literary, not just because that's my preference, but because that seemed to be the promise at the outset. The language of the writing itself felt like it was promising me that, despite that this book was going to entail time travel and probably some sort of romantic entanglement, I was about to read a deep treatment of complex characters. For a while, I got a deep treatment of the complex character Graham, the male love interest and second-most-important character in the book after the narrator. But then the romance took over. And then the spy-thrillerness took over. And by the end, I felt disoriented and unfulfilled, as though I had planned to eat a full savory dinner, blinked, and discovered I'd eaten two bags of chips and a pint of ice cream instead. A real bummer!

But an entertaining read. If you're going to read this book, go in expecting a standard three-star book that intentionally does not fit into any genre you probably saw marketed, and I can almost guarantee you'll have an enjoyable experience.
]]> <![CDATA[The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map]]> 215583308 New York TimesĚýbestselling author ofĚýEndure, Alex Hutchinson returns with a fresh, invigorating investigation into how exploration, uncertainty, and risk-taking shape our behavior and wellbeing. For fans ofĚýOn TrailsĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýRangeĚý˛ą±ôľ±°ě±đ,ĚýThe Explorer’s GeneĚýmakes the case not just that humans are wired to seek the unknown, but that thriving in the modern world depends on pushing our mental and physical boundaries to new places.

Off the beaten path, on unmarked trails, we are wired to explore. More than just a need to get outside, the search for the unknown is a specific, primal urge that has shaped the history of our species and continues to mold our behavior in ways we are just beginning to understand. In fact, the latest neuroscience suggests that exploration is an essential ingredient of human life. Exploration, it turns out, isn’t merely a hobby—it’s our story.

In this long-awaited follow-up to hisĚýNew York TimesĚý˛ú±đ˛őłŮ˛ő±đ±ô±ô±đ°ůĚýEndure, Alex Hutchinson dives headfirst into a fascinating and provocative new field of research, examining how exploration is a fundamental part of what makes us human and revealing how, even in our fully mapped modern world, the pursuit of the unknown remains an indispensable mindset in all walks of life.

And yet, it has never been easier to live an exploration-free life, without the struggle and uncertainty that true exploration—of places, experiences, and ideas—requires. With the digital world designed to exploit the neural circuitry behind our drive to explore, we receive theĚýillusionĚýof novelty without accompanying growth. This despite mounting evidence that our lives are better—more productive, more satisfying, and more fun—when we ditch the maps on our phones and find our own way.

From paddling the lost rivers of the northern Canadian wilderness to the ocean-spanning voyages of the Polynesians, The Explorer’s GeneĚýcombines riveting stories of exploration with cutting-edge insights from behavioral psychology and neuroscience. The end result offers a singular approach to finding meaning in our past struggles, embracing the possibility of failure in our future, and crucially, recognizing when our present is good enough.Ěý±Ő±Ő> 304 Alex Hutchinson 0063269767 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.11 The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map
author: Alex Hutchinson
name: Allison
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> Ambition Monster: A Memoir 220160914 A deeply personal memoir about workaholism, the addictive nature of ambition, and the humbling process of picking yourself up when the world lets you down—an anti-girlboss tale for our times for readers of A Love Story and Uncanny Valley

After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.� She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child, and a home in a desirable Los Angeles neighborhood. But beneath this shiny surface, Romolini was falling apart.

Written with self-deprecation and wit, Ambition Monster is a gutsy and powerful look at workaholism and the addictive nature of achievement, the lingering effect of childhood trauma, and the failures of our modern rat race. This is a Cinderella story of success and a brutal appraisal of the cost of capitalism—perfect for people pleasers, overachievers, and those whose traumas have driven them to strike for “goodness,� no matter the cost. With its timely and resonant deconstructing of the American Dream, Ambition Monster is a singular excavation of selfhood, an essential interrogation about the way we work, and an inspiring and affirming call to always bet on yourself.]]> 304 Jennifer Romolini 1668056593 Allison 0 to-read 4.33 2024 Ambition Monster: A Memoir
author: Jennifer Romolini
name: Allison
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Allison 0 to-read, memoir 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Allison
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read, memoir
review:

]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Allison 0 to-read, charlottes_angels 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Allison
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read, charlottes_angels
review:

]]> The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

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

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

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Allison 0 to-read 3.65 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Allison
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lie with Me 53072555
Despite the intensity of their attraction, from the beginning Thomas knows how it will end: “Because you will leave and we will stay,� he says. Philippe becomes a writer and travels the world, though as this novel shows, he never lets go of the relationship that shaped him, and every story he’s ever told.]]> 176 Philippe Besson 1501197886 Allison 0 to-read 4.28 2017 Lie with Me
author: Philippe Besson
name: Allison
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of Small Things 22589931 The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.]]> 333 Arundhati Roy 0812979656 Allison 0 to-read 4.02 1997 The God of Small Things
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Allison
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Funny Story 194803835 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441281 Allison 3 charlottes_angels Book Lovers was also cute and fine, and so far those have been the only two Henry books I've read.

Pros: Miles is adorable and lovable while also capable of acting hot when the scene calls for it. (The kissing scenes in this book were excellent.) The accessory children characters Daphne reads to at the library were adorable. "Children's librarian" is a cute job for Daphne, and the "climax" with her Read-a-Thon was equally cute. The food in the book seemed amazing. I really enjoyed Miles working at a winery.

Cons: Daphne's name (don't @ me, Charlotte). The sheer number of named characters. (Too. damn. many.) Characters who all had spotlight personalities and therefore seemed like they were playing overly similar roles (Asleigh, Julia, and to some degree Starfire � these names). Unnecessary events for all of the unnecessary characters to appear at (see: poker night). Did I mention there are too many characters?

Also there is way too much therapized analysis by its overly self-aware protagonist, and the specific daddy issue she has is very played out. I was much more interested in Miles's narcissistic mother, who never even appears. Relatedly, a lot more could have been done with the drama involving his sister Julia, but that ultimately fizzled away because we had to spend so much time ruminating with Daphne about her obliviously deadbeat dad. Sigh.

Lastly, because I really want to defend my disappointment in this book, there just never felt like there was anything on the line for any of these characters. If Daphne moved away (as was her original plan) or stayed � she'll be fine either way, right? And Miles, what did he really have at stake? Until he goes into his Ayn Rand-length speech at the end, it's completely unclear why he's so smitten with Daphne other than that she makes hot noises when she eats something yummy. It just felt like he had to fall in love with her because This Is A Romance, which wasn't nearly so compelling to read. I wish one or both of them had been tempted to get back with their exes. Now there would have been a compelling conflict!

If you're a big romance reader, I'm sure none of these things will bother you. There's great banter, great kissing, and a happy ending. Somehow, I just always want more.]]> 4.18 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Allison
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: charlottes_angels
review:
Emily Henry can write banter like no other. As a writer, I seethe with envy at those scenes. But I think the corny factor is just not for me? (Does that mean romance as a genre just isn't for me either? I really do wonder.) Book Lovers was also cute and fine, and so far those have been the only two Henry books I've read.

Pros: Miles is adorable and lovable while also capable of acting hot when the scene calls for it. (The kissing scenes in this book were excellent.) The accessory children characters Daphne reads to at the library were adorable. "Children's librarian" is a cute job for Daphne, and the "climax" with her Read-a-Thon was equally cute. The food in the book seemed amazing. I really enjoyed Miles working at a winery.

Cons: Daphne's name (don't @ me, Charlotte). The sheer number of named characters. (Too. damn. many.) Characters who all had spotlight personalities and therefore seemed like they were playing overly similar roles (Asleigh, Julia, and to some degree Starfire � these names). Unnecessary events for all of the unnecessary characters to appear at (see: poker night). Did I mention there are too many characters?

Also there is way too much therapized analysis by its overly self-aware protagonist, and the specific daddy issue she has is very played out. I was much more interested in Miles's narcissistic mother, who never even appears. Relatedly, a lot more could have been done with the drama involving his sister Julia, but that ultimately fizzled away because we had to spend so much time ruminating with Daphne about her obliviously deadbeat dad. Sigh.

Lastly, because I really want to defend my disappointment in this book, there just never felt like there was anything on the line for any of these characters. If Daphne moved away (as was her original plan) or stayed � she'll be fine either way, right? And Miles, what did he really have at stake? Until he goes into his Ayn Rand-length speech at the end, it's completely unclear why he's so smitten with Daphne other than that she makes hot noises when she eats something yummy. It just felt like he had to fall in love with her because This Is A Romance, which wasn't nearly so compelling to read. I wish one or both of them had been tempted to get back with their exes. Now there would have been a compelling conflict!

If you're a big romance reader, I'm sure none of these things will bother you. There's great banter, great kissing, and a happy ending. Somehow, I just always want more.
]]> Show Don't Tell 213870083 A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,� a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,� a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,� Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.]]> 320 Curtis Sittenfeld 0593446739 Allison 3 short-stories
In any event, my absolute favorite stories (5 stars!) were "A for Alone" (a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the "Mike Pence Rule," i.e., the idea that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other) and "Giraffe and Flamingo" (a successful musician tells her delightful children about surviving a bully in her co-ed college dorm). Must-reads!]]> 3.92 2025 Show Don't Tell
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Allison
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: short-stories
review:
Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not the right audience for short stories. These stories have all of what Sittenfeld does best: characters you almost immediately feel you know, who are so recognizable (yet distinct!) that they could just walk right off the page. She is such a good writer that I am convinced the problem is me—I just don't "get" most short stories. In every one of these stories, I could identify what they were about and where the "turn" happened, after which the energy of the story glided down the denouement to its conclusion. And yet, in so many of these, I still felt a lack of clear, complete arc. Something about them (and many many other short stories) felt unfinished. Maybe that's the point? Probably I need to read them again.

In any event, my absolute favorite stories (5 stars!) were "A for Alone" (a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the "Mike Pence Rule," i.e., the idea that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other) and "Giraffe and Flamingo" (a successful musician tells her delightful children about surviving a bully in her co-ed college dorm). Must-reads!
]]> <![CDATA[Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)]]> 59336841
London, England: Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.

River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,� is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers� connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.]]> 336 Mick Herron Allison 0 to-read 4.29 2010 Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)
author: Mick Herron
name: Allison
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dream Count 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Allison 0 to-read 3.93 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Allison
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Do Not Part 205436018 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang 0593595459 Allison 0 to-read, goodreadschoiceaward 3.87 2021 We Do Not Part
author: Han Kang
name: Allison
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read, goodreadschoiceaward
review:

]]> The Ministry of Time 220160351 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 368 Kaliane Bradley 166804515X Allison 0 to-read 3.57 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Allison
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X Allison 0 to-read, goodreadschoiceaward 4.17 2024 Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Allison
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read, goodreadschoiceaward
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop]]> 215149232
For the first few months all Yeongju does is cry, but the long hours in the shop also give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and store. As she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she eases into her new setting. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that connect them all, she finds her new story as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop transforms into an inviting space for lost souls to rest, heal, and remember it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again.]]> 320 Hwang Bo-Reum 1639736379 Allison 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Allison
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch]]> 11467066 The Toaster Project, Thwaites asks what lies behind the smooth buttons on a mobile phone or the cushioned soles of running sneakers. What is involved in extracting and processing materials? To answer these questions, Thwaites set out to construct, from scratch, one of the most commonplace appliances in our kitchens today: a toaster.

The Toaster Project takes the reader on Thwaites s journey from dismantling the cheapest toaster he can find in London to researching how to smelt metal in a fifteenth-century treatise. His incisive restrictions all parts of the toaster must be made from scratch and Thwaites had to make the toaster himself made his task difficult, but not impossible. It took nine months and cost 250 times more than the toaster he bought at the store. In the end, Thwaites reveals the true ingredients in the products we use every day. Most interesting is not the final creation but the lesson learned.

The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether.

Foreword by David Crowley, head of critical writing at the Royal College of Art and curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum.]]> 192 Thomas Thwaites 1568989970 Allison 0 3.89 2007 The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch
author: Thomas Thwaites
name: Allison
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read, chelseamailer, nonfiction
review:

]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Allison 0 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Allison
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: essaycollection, kate, nonfiction, audio, dnf
review:
Chapter 1 - in it! Chapter 2 - lost interest. Then it was due back to the library and that was that.
]]> <![CDATA[Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women]]> 57052385
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award "Enraging, enlightening, and invigorating, Backlash is, most of all, true." (Newsday)

First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a best-selling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decade-long antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the "costs" of women’s independence - from the supposed "man shortage" to the "infertility epidemic" to "career burnout" to "toxic day care" - and traced their circulation from Reagan-era politics through the echo chambers of mass media, advertising, and popular culture.

As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years: The Internet has given voice to a new generation of feminists. Corporations list "gender equality" among their core values. In 2019, a record number of women entered Congress. Yet the glass ceiling is still unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are hanging by a thread. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened - and urges us to choose a different future.]]> Susan Faludi Allison 0 4.44 1991 Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
author: Susan Faludi
name: Allison
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: nonfiction, currently-reading, audio
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Things We Do to Our Friends]]> 60880813
When Clare meets Tabitha, a charismatic, beautiful, and intimidatingly rich girl from her art history class, she knows she’s destined to become friends with her and her exclusive circle: raffish Samuel, shrewd Ava, and pragmatic Imogen. She is immediately drawn into their libertine world of sophisticated dinner parties and summers in France. The new life she always envisioned for herself has seemingly begun. But as Clare starts to realize just what her friends are capable of, it’s already too late—because they’ve taken the plunge. They’re so close to attaining everything they want, and there’s no going back.

Reimagining the classic themes of obsession and ambition with an original and sinister edge, The Things We Do to Our Friends is a seductive thriller about the toxic battle between those who have and those who covet, between the desire to truly belong and the danger of being truly known.]]> 336 Heather Darwent 0593497163 Allison 3 book-club
The main thing to know is that there's a lot of waiting in this book. It starts with an incredibly visceral scene, but the rest of the novel does not live up. You then spend a lot of time waiting to figure out Clare's (the protagonist's) secret, but I'm pretty sure it was spoiled before she ever actually shares what happened. You wait around for her to make friends at her new college, where she's starting over, and then you wait for the group of friends to do . . . something. That "something" ends up being a business plan of sorts, but even that falls flat because Clare is intentionally kept in the dark (which she tells us she resents). Tabitha, the ringleader, is made out to be this scary, slightly unhinged, overly charismatic person, but Clare is such an unreliable narrator that we can't even read too far into the few details we get about that character, and the more tangible ones never see any payout. (One example: Tabitha throws "fake acid" into a man's face and ensures Clare is there to see it. Why? We never find out.) The rest of the characters are supposed to be intriguing, but the intrigue never pans out.

All in all, I think this book had real promise. The premise (a woman who did something bad, has to start over, and falls into a new "bad" group of friends who set out to honey trap men whom their wives distrust) is interesting! Darwnet is adept at maintaining suspense! But the suspense has to pay off. We ultimately have to be surprised or delighted or horrified or . . . something. Unfortunately, the payoff was just not there in this one.

She can write some really visceral prose, though, in the right conditions. I hope she keeps working at her craft.]]> 3.17 2023 The Things We Do to Our Friends
author: Heather Darwent
name: Allison
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: book-club
review:
The cover of this book is so beautiful, I wish I could rave as much about the content inside.

The main thing to know is that there's a lot of waiting in this book. It starts with an incredibly visceral scene, but the rest of the novel does not live up. You then spend a lot of time waiting to figure out Clare's (the protagonist's) secret, but I'm pretty sure it was spoiled before she ever actually shares what happened. You wait around for her to make friends at her new college, where she's starting over, and then you wait for the group of friends to do . . . something. That "something" ends up being a business plan of sorts, but even that falls flat because Clare is intentionally kept in the dark (which she tells us she resents). Tabitha, the ringleader, is made out to be this scary, slightly unhinged, overly charismatic person, but Clare is such an unreliable narrator that we can't even read too far into the few details we get about that character, and the more tangible ones never see any payout. (One example: Tabitha throws "fake acid" into a man's face and ensures Clare is there to see it. Why? We never find out.) The rest of the characters are supposed to be intriguing, but the intrigue never pans out.

All in all, I think this book had real promise. The premise (a woman who did something bad, has to start over, and falls into a new "bad" group of friends who set out to honey trap men whom their wives distrust) is interesting! Darwnet is adept at maintaining suspense! But the suspense has to pay off. We ultimately have to be surprised or delighted or horrified or . . . something. Unfortunately, the payoff was just not there in this one.

She can write some really visceral prose, though, in the right conditions. I hope she keeps working at her craft.
]]> <![CDATA[More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI]]> 214175198
More Than Words argues that generative AI programs like ChatGPT not only can kill the student essay but should, since these assignments don’t challenge students to do the real work of writing. To Warner, writing is thinking—discovering your ideas while trying to capture them on a page—and feeling—grappling with what it fundamentally means to be human. The fact that we ask students to complete so many assignments that a machine could do is a sign that something has gone very wrong with writing instruction. More Than Words calls for us to use AI as an opportunity to reckon with how we work with words—and how all of us should rethink our relationship with writing.
Ěý±Ő±Ő> 320 John Warner 1541605500 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.06 2025 More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI
author: John Warner
name: Allison
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy]]> 195790788
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.�

Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.� So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.]]> 304 Tia Levings 1250288282 Allison 0 to-read 4.31 2024 A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
author: Tia Levings
name: Allison
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning]]> 214490421 A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time

In Peter Beinart’s view, one story has long dominated Jewish communal that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of sacred Jewish tradition and history, and also warps our understanding of modern history. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, he argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the What does it mean to be a Jew?

Beinart imagines an alternate story that would draw on other nations� efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish history. A story in which Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety is not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One in which we inhabit a world that recognizes the infinite value of all human life, beginning in the Gaza Strip.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative and fearless argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral nuance, and a clear vision for the future.]]> 192 Peter Beinart 0593803892 Allison 0 to-read, elleree 4.45 2025 Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning
author: Peter Beinart
name: Allison
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read, elleree
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power]]> 40046060 A riveting tour through the landscape and meaning of modern conspiracy theories, exploring the causes and tenacity of this American malady, from Birthers to Pizzagate and beyond.

American society has always been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but with the election of Donald Trump, previously outlandish ideas suddenly attained legitimacy. Trump himself is a conspiracy enthusiast: from his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax to the accusations of “fake news,� he has fanned the flames of suspicion.

But it was not by the power of one man alone that these ideas gained new power. Republic of Lies looks beyond the caricatures of conspiracy theorists to explain their tenacity. Without lending the theories validity, Anna Merlan gives a nuanced, sympathetic account of the people behind them, across the political spectrum, and the circumstances that helped them take hold. The lack of a social safety net, inadequate education, bitter culture wars, and years of economic insecurity have created large groups of people who feel forgotten by their government and even besieged by it. Our contemporary conditions are a perfect petri dish for conspiracy movements: a durable, permanent, elastic climate of alienation and resentment. All the while, an army of politicians and conspiracy-peddlers has fanned the flames of suspicion to serve their own ends.

Bringing together penetrating historical analysis and gripping on-the-ground reporting, Republic of Lies transforms our understanding of American paranoia.]]> 288 Anna Merlan 1250159059 Allison 3 nonfiction, audio 3.87 2019 Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
author: Anna Merlan
name: Allison
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: nonfiction, audio
review:
It feels unfair to criticize a nonfiction book from 2020 as being outdated, but things are moving so fast these days, that's what ultimately did the book in for me. I was fairly engaged through the "False Times," "None of It Is Crazy," "Nocturnal Ritual Pizza Party," "False Flags," and "Useful Murders" chapters. When I got to "Medical Oddities" and "A Natural Man," I started getting a little bored, but that's mostly because of how much content I've already consumed on medical scams, anti-vaxxers, etc. But then, when I got to "White Nationalist Cookout" I started checking out. None of what's in this chapter is news to me; there were no interesting revelations to be had. I barely made it to "The Politics of UFOs" before I returned the book to the library. (I knew 2024's mystery drones would be missing, so why keep reading?) In all, Merlan is a competent writer and the topic continues to be relevant, but it's hard to write anything book-length that could possibly land right now because shit is just so out of control. Ultimately, I can't in good faith recommend this unless you know absolutely nothing about conspiracies in America, in which case this would actually be a good primer!
]]> Come and Get It 127482608
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.]]> 400 Kiley Reid 0593328205 Allison 3 julie, kate Such a Fun Age. It is, of course, a completely different story; whereas Such a Fun Age was about a Black babysitter and the white mother who employs her, Come and Get It follows a white college professor (Agatha) who just broke up with her girlfriend, a Black RA (Millie) who is fairly cash-strapped and wants to buy a house, and a white student (Kennedy) who made a big mistake at her previous college and is trying to start over. The characters are all well nuanced, and there’s a huge supporting cast. Yet it just did not feel like any of them transformed by the end of the book in a satisfying way.

Most readers who gave this book 5 stars say that they weren't sure about it for the first 30-40% of the book, and then they got on board. I had almost the opposite experience: I was very much along for the ride until pretty much everything that follows the climax, at which point, for me, the book deflated.

All of that said, Reid has an incredible ear for dialogue. By far the best part of this book is Agatha’s “research� where she interviews—and then essentially spies on—girls in Millie’s dorm. It’s a masterclass in distinguishing characters� voices through dialogue. I would have happily read many more pages of these girls chatting with one another!]]> 3.32 2024 Come and Get It
author: Kiley Reid
name: Allison
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: julie, kate
review:
I don’t know if it’s the character of Millie herself, but something about this book is just too similar to Such a Fun Age. It is, of course, a completely different story; whereas Such a Fun Age was about a Black babysitter and the white mother who employs her, Come and Get It follows a white college professor (Agatha) who just broke up with her girlfriend, a Black RA (Millie) who is fairly cash-strapped and wants to buy a house, and a white student (Kennedy) who made a big mistake at her previous college and is trying to start over. The characters are all well nuanced, and there’s a huge supporting cast. Yet it just did not feel like any of them transformed by the end of the book in a satisfying way.

Most readers who gave this book 5 stars say that they weren't sure about it for the first 30-40% of the book, and then they got on board. I had almost the opposite experience: I was very much along for the ride until pretty much everything that follows the climax, at which point, for me, the book deflated.

All of that said, Reid has an incredible ear for dialogue. By far the best part of this book is Agatha’s “research� where she interviews—and then essentially spies on—girls in Millie’s dorm. It’s a masterclass in distinguishing characters� voices through dialogue. I would have happily read many more pages of these girls chatting with one another!
]]> Hello Beautiful 217005288
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano 0593243757 Allison 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Allison
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Maid (Molly the Maid #1) 57777139 A dead body is one mess she can't clean up on her own.

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter--she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanour has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black. But will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?

Both a Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different--and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.]]> 304 Nita Prose 0735241333 Allison 0 to-read 3.72 2022 The Maid (Molly the Maid #1)
author: Nita Prose
name: Allison
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)]]> 27833542
It’s every novelist’s greatest pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page one rewrite.

The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot). Story coach Lisa Cron has spent her career discovering why these methods don’t work and coming up with a powerful alternative, based on the science behind what our brains are wired to crave in every story we read (and it’s not what you think).

In Story Genius Cron takes you, step-by-step, through the creation of a novel from the first glimmer of an idea, to a complete multilayered blueprint—including fully realized scenes—that evolves into a first draft with the authority, richness, and command of a riveting sixth or seventh draft.]]> 288 Lisa Cron 1607748908 Allison 0 4.16 2016 Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
author: Lisa Cron
name: Allison
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: gwen, cindy, writing-editing, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works]]> 40591670 Ěý
Buy as many lattes as you want. Choose the right accounts and investments so your money grows for you—automatically. Best of all, spend guilt-free on the things you love.
Ěý
Personal finance expert Ramit Sethi has been called a “wealth wizard� by Forbes and the “new guru on the block� by Fortune . Now he’s updated and expanded his modern money classic for a new age, delivering a simple, powerful, no-BS 6-week program that just works.
Ěý
I Will Teach You to Be Rich will show
� How to crush your debt and student loans faster than you thought possible
� How to set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts that won’t gouge you for every penny
� How Ramit automates his finances so his money goes exactly where he wants it to—and how you can do it too
� How to talk your way out of late fees (with word-for-word scripts)
� How to save hundreds or even thousands per month (and still buy what you love)
� A set-it-and-forget-it investment strategy that’s dead simple and beats financial advisors at their own game
� How to handle buying a car or a house, paying for a wedding, having kids, and other big expenses—stress free
� The exact words to use to negotiate a big raise at work
Ěý
Plus, this 10th anniversary edition features over 80 new pages,
� New tools
� New insights on money and psychology
� Amazing stories of how previous readers used the book to create their rich lives
Ěý
Master your money—and then get on with your life.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 352 Ramit Sethi 1523505745 Allison 0 dnf 4.24 2009 I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works
author: Ramit Sethi
name: Allison
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199700434 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide.

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.

Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet, The God of the Woods is a story of inheritance and second chances, the tensions between a family and a community, and a history that will not let any of them go.]]> 478 Liz Moore 0593418913 Allison 3
Positives in this book: capable writing and good characterizations so that even though there are many (many) characters, they are fairly easy to keep distinct in our minds. Also: Moore presents a good amount of intrigue up front while demonstrating that this book is going to pace itself; we won't be careening into any overly outrageous territory, and we won't be getting there quickly. (The page count alone is a good indicator of that.) I also appreciated the general, if not particularly novel commentary about class.

As for my main complaints, I found a review that sums them up pretty well, so I'm going to crib from it. This is from the reviewer Yun:

When it comes to verbosity in a book, readers generally fall into two camps. For some, if they love a story, then stretching it out an extra hundred pages by filling it with lots of beautiful writing but no additional content makes it even better. But for me, my motto is always shorter is better, and fluffing it out to pad the page count doesn't do it for me. So you see where I'm going with this.

What starts out as compelling quickly turns meandering for me. The longer the story went on, the more unfocused it seemed. There are a lot of perspectives in here—I count seven—and every time something was about to happen, we immediately switched to a different perspective, effectively losing the momentum. And when we come back to the original one, the exciting scene had already happened off-page and it's mostly glossed over.

...Then after all of that (almost 500 pages), this mystery had to be one of the most unsatisfying I've ever come across. Clues were laid out seemingly to point to one direction or another, but then the story disregards almost everything it had said before and ends on something completely different. And some of the clues were never addressed at all, as if they've served their purpose to mislead us and now we can just forget about them.

Still, for all my complaints, I did find this to be a fairly engrossing read. There were many moments I got really into it, and the pages just melted away. But there were also many moments where I could not believe yet another character has disappeared or Alice and Louise are yet again being dumb and weak, and I could just feel my eyeballs rolling around in exasperation.


It's the starting and stopping of momentum that Yun describes that ultimately exasperated me to where I knew this book wouldn't rank above three stars. And then to have laid out so much misdirection, only to have it lead literally nowhere, with no purpose . . . that's just lazy mystery writing. Which is fine! But it's not what I was led to expect this book would be all about.

So, if you're going to read this book, I recommend going in with the expectation that it's going to be a rote, albeit multi-perspective mystery. Don't expect a literary masterpiece. Don't expect something that's going to make you cry. That way, hopefully, you can come out the other side feeling satisfied that you got what you came for.]]> 4.09 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Allison
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: charlottes_angels_allisonpicks, elleree
review:
I guess I'm letting the hype train pass me by on this one. 3.5 stars, rounded down to three because the ending simply didn't hit the way I feel like we were promised, and the denouement dragged.

Positives in this book: capable writing and good characterizations so that even though there are many (many) characters, they are fairly easy to keep distinct in our minds. Also: Moore presents a good amount of intrigue up front while demonstrating that this book is going to pace itself; we won't be careening into any overly outrageous territory, and we won't be getting there quickly. (The page count alone is a good indicator of that.) I also appreciated the general, if not particularly novel commentary about class.

As for my main complaints, I found a review that sums them up pretty well, so I'm going to crib from it. This is from the reviewer Yun:

When it comes to verbosity in a book, readers generally fall into two camps. For some, if they love a story, then stretching it out an extra hundred pages by filling it with lots of beautiful writing but no additional content makes it even better. But for me, my motto is always shorter is better, and fluffing it out to pad the page count doesn't do it for me. So you see where I'm going with this.

What starts out as compelling quickly turns meandering for me. The longer the story went on, the more unfocused it seemed. There are a lot of perspectives in here—I count seven—and every time something was about to happen, we immediately switched to a different perspective, effectively losing the momentum. And when we come back to the original one, the exciting scene had already happened off-page and it's mostly glossed over.

...Then after all of that (almost 500 pages), this mystery had to be one of the most unsatisfying I've ever come across. Clues were laid out seemingly to point to one direction or another, but then the story disregards almost everything it had said before and ends on something completely different. And some of the clues were never addressed at all, as if they've served their purpose to mislead us and now we can just forget about them.

Still, for all my complaints, I did find this to be a fairly engrossing read. There were many moments I got really into it, and the pages just melted away. But there were also many moments where I could not believe yet another character has disappeared or Alice and Louise are yet again being dumb and weak, and I could just feel my eyeballs rolling around in exasperation.


It's the starting and stopping of momentum that Yun describes that ultimately exasperated me to where I knew this book wouldn't rank above three stars. And then to have laid out so much misdirection, only to have it lead literally nowhere, with no purpose . . . that's just lazy mystery writing. Which is fine! But it's not what I was led to expect this book would be all about.

So, if you're going to read this book, I recommend going in with the expectation that it's going to be a rote, albeit multi-perspective mystery. Don't expect a literary masterpiece. Don't expect something that's going to make you cry. That way, hopefully, you can come out the other side feeling satisfied that you got what you came for.
]]> <![CDATA[I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness]]> 57155092 A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse--one woman's furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.

Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can't go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world.

Bold, tender, and often hilarious, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.]]> 304 Claire Vaye Watkins 0593330218 Allison 0 to-read 3.13 2021 I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
author: Claire Vaye Watkins
name: Allison
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Consider Yourself Kissed 218460289 A literary love story told through ten years in the life of one woman as she tries to build a longed-for family without also losing herself -- an entertaining portrayal of the true, grown-up meaning of "happily ever after."

“Ringingly original and just absurdly good.� –Catherine Newman

“A love story like no other.� –Liane Moriarty

“A love song to women everywhere.� –Annabel Monaghan

“Deeply appealing.� –Meg Wolitzer

When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter inch taller than the average male. His charming four-year-old daughter only adds to his appeal.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýBut ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something else she once herself.Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýSet against an eventful British decade that included the soap opera of five prime ministers plus the chaos of the pandemic, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, showing how the intimate dramas in our homes inescapably compete for energy and attention with the shared public dramas of our times.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýTold over ten years of one woman’s life, Consider Yourself Kissed is an unforgettable literary love story that effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humor with heart.]]> 336 Jessica Stanley Allison 0 to-read 3.80 2025 Consider Yourself Kissed
author: Jessica Stanley
name: Allison
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chain-Gang All-Stars 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

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

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Allison 5 book-club
Giri Nathan's does a far better job summing up this book than anything I could write, so I'll just leave a short, perfect excerpt here:

To enjoy the action is to share in the guilt of the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside at the live-broadcast death matches between prison inmates. Adjei-Brenyah is so good at writing fight scenes that our moral disgust never definitively stamps out the primitive thrill of reading them.

This is also why his book works. It is an act of protest, but it does not straightforwardly preach. Instead, it lures you in, as if to demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick. Even readers who acknowledge the brazen evil of the dystopian premise � these televised duels offer prisoners a path to freedom � might find themselves titillated by its depiction, which functions as both satire and straight-up sportswriting.

And I, too, was unsurprised to see George Saunders mentioned in the acknowledgements. His influence is no doubt part of why I enjoyed this book so much.

4.5 stars, because there were a few spots that dragged just a tad, but I'm rounding up because the ending landed perfectly—a feat few authors ever accomplish.

If you love books like The Hunger Games but with a more adult bent and deeper themes (along the lines of 1984 I suppose), Chain-Gang All-Stars will be right up your alley. Just consider yourself forewarned: If you can't stomach violence, maybe skip this one.]]> 4.13 2023 Chain-Gang All-Stars
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Allison
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: book-club
review:
If Zora Neale Hurston wrote a semi-futuristic book about America's prison system-turned-gladiator-style-entertainment, this is what she would have written. There's satire, brutal violence, devastating love and loss, and an underlying commentary on what it means to be human, to forgive, to mete out justice, to be loyal, to survive. The book delivers all of this through the eyes of numerous characters forging their way through this world—which in a lesser author's hands would have been distracting. But Adjei-Brenyah is originally a short story writer, and it shows. Many of these chapters are incredibly compact, delivering exactly the punch (or nudge) they should.

Giri Nathan's does a far better job summing up this book than anything I could write, so I'll just leave a short, perfect excerpt here:

To enjoy the action is to share in the guilt of the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside at the live-broadcast death matches between prison inmates. Adjei-Brenyah is so good at writing fight scenes that our moral disgust never definitively stamps out the primitive thrill of reading them.

This is also why his book works. It is an act of protest, but it does not straightforwardly preach. Instead, it lures you in, as if to demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick. Even readers who acknowledge the brazen evil of the dystopian premise � these televised duels offer prisoners a path to freedom � might find themselves titillated by its depiction, which functions as both satire and straight-up sportswriting.

And I, too, was unsurprised to see George Saunders mentioned in the acknowledgements. His influence is no doubt part of why I enjoyed this book so much.

4.5 stars, because there were a few spots that dragged just a tad, but I'm rounding up because the ending landed perfectly—a feat few authors ever accomplish.

If you love books like The Hunger Games but with a more adult bent and deeper themes (along the lines of 1984 I suppose), Chain-Gang All-Stars will be right up your alley. Just consider yourself forewarned: If you can't stomach violence, maybe skip this one.
]]> <![CDATA[I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life]]> 27213168
Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. Those in cows and termites digest the plants they eat. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squids with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people.

I Contain Multitudes is the story of these extraordinary partnerships, between the creatures we are familiar with and those we are not. It reveals how we humans are disrupting these partnerships and how we might manipulate them for our own good. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.]]> 368 Ed Yong 0062368591 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.16 2016 I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
author: Ed Yong
name: Allison
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> The Box: Uncanny Stories 6376283
"Button, Button," Richard Matheson's chilling tale of greed and temptation, is now the basis of The Box, the new film from the director of Donnie Darko. In addition, this outstanding collection also contains many other unforgettable stories by Matheson, the award-winning author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come.

"The inventive plots and spare but convincing portraits of ordinary men and women caught up in forces beyond their control demonstrate why Stephen King has called Matheson his most significant influence."
--Publishers Weekly]]> 272 Richard Matheson 0765361434 Allison 0 toreview 3.40 1970 The Box: Uncanny Stories
author: Richard Matheson
name: Allison
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: toreview
review:

]]> I Am the Cage 217245667
“A brilliant book about what we survive—and how. Visceral, wrenching, and beautiful.� –John Green, #1 bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars

“A tender, heartfelt story about the wounds childhood trauma can leave on its survivors. The sense of powerlessness—and redemption—will stay with you.� –Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of Me Before You

“Heartfelt, human and true—a novel that feels real from the first word to the last. I loved it.� –Markus Zusak, #1 bestselling author of The Book Thief

“Allison Sweet Grant is a natural storyteller with the keen eye and ear of a poet. Deftly toggling between past and present, childhood trauma and its painful aftershocks, I Am the Cage is a story of love, resilience, and healing. What a beautiful, moving, and insightful debut.”� –Maggie Smith, bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“Grant’s YA debut emerges with a captivating sparkle... introspective and rhythmic prose.... outstanding character study.... powerful.�
–Booklist starred review

“Artfully showcases the complicated back-and-forth between keeping oneself safe and staunching one’s own growth�. Crackles with tension and sincerity� cathartic.� –Publishers Weekly

Fish Creek, Wisconsin—Beautiful. Quiet. Isolated. Anonymous. It’s all that nineteen-year-old Elisabeth needs, and everything she wants. Cloistered in her tiny cabin, Elisabeth is determined to be alone, hiding from her memories and making sure that no one can ever hurt her again.

But when a massive snowstorm strikes, plunging the town into darkness, Elisabeth finally allows herself to accept help from her neighbor, Noah, the town’s young sheriff. Forced to show him more vulnerability than she ever intended, Elisabeth realizes she can no longer outrun the scars of her childhood, and facing the darkness might be exactly what she needs to let the light in.

In a searing own-voices story accented by poignant childhood flashbacks and stunning poetry, Allison Sweet Grant’s young adult debut is a quietly powerful portrait of a young woman’s journey to confront the medical trauma inflicted to “fix� her—and heal her heart in the process. An emotional coming-of-age story about a young woman running away from herself, yet grasping to find a way back. Deeply moving, authentically raw, and humming with the possibility of a new love.]]> 304 Allison Sweet Grant 059361691X Allison 0 to-read 4.05 2025 I Am the Cage
author: Allison Sweet Grant
name: Allison
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The First Time She Drowned 24724627
But freedom is a poor match against a lifetime of psychological damage. As Cassie plumbs the depths of her new surroundings, the startling truths she uncovers about her own family narrative make it impossible to cut the tethers of a tumultuous past. And when the unhealthy mother-daughter relationship that defined Cassie’s childhood and adolescence threatens to pull her under once again, Cassie must decide: whose version of history is real? And more important, whose life must she save?]]> 352 Kerry Kletter 0399171037 Allison 0 to-read, thriller 3.98 2016 The First Time She Drowned
author: Kerry Kletter
name: Allison
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read, thriller
review:

]]> Night Watch 212012146 Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 9781101972793, ISBN-10/ASIN: 1101972793

From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.

Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds, and a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.]]> 304 Jayne Anne Phillips Allison 0 to-read 3.68 2023 Night Watch
author: Jayne Anne Phillips
name: Allison
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism]]> 112975131
For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry thatĚýtrivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.

Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?]]> 506 Tim Alberta 006322688X Allison 0 to-read, gwen 4.42 2023 The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
author: Tim Alberta
name: Allison
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read, gwen
review:

]]> Clear 214152146
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 224 Carys Davies 1668030675 Allison 0 to-read 3.98 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Allison
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paradise Problem 214152483
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West� Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.]]> 368 Christina Lauren 1668017733 Allison 0 to-read 4.12 2024 The Paradise Problem
author: Christina Lauren
name: Allison
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fountainhead 2122
This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...

“A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”—The New York Times]]> 704 Ayn Rand Allison 4 reread 3.87 1943 The Fountainhead
author: Ayn Rand
name: Allison
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1943
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: reread
review:
Sadly there is no review from 2005 me. The review from 2025 me is coming soon.
]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Allison 4
If you're looking for a gentle, well-written family drama that places the mother at its center and has things to say—but won't say them too loudly�Tom Lake is a good choice.]]> 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Allison
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
The description of this book did not entice me to read it, but a friend who is also a writer asked me to read it with her, and I'm glad I did. The pace is just as slow as the subject matter suggests, but it proceeds in a pleasant, leisurely way that didn't have me flipping pages but didn't cause me to dread picking up the book, either. I enjoyed the way the story glides back and forth between Lara's history and how her daughters react to her sharing pieces of that history. Within the backstory portions, Laura's acting career was perhaps the most interesting content in the book, even if her relationship with Peter Duke was the book's driving force. Within the "frontstory," the husband is milktoast (necessarily) and two of the three daughters are pretty window dressing, but the eldest daughter, Emily, is an effective driving force of the "present-day" narration. We want to see how Lara and Emily will reconcile over Lara's shared history, and we want to see what ultimately happened with Lara and Peter, since we already know they don't end up together. (Lara's present-day husband is named Joe.) Besides all that, I enjoyed learning about "summer stock theater" and greatly enjoyed the cherry orchard setting—it was integrated into the frontstory narration to the perfect degree, where it gave every scene a unique flavor (who else has set a story on a cherry farm?) without going overboard and distracting from the story at hand.

If you're looking for a gentle, well-written family drama that places the mother at its center and has things to say—but won't say them too loudly�Tom Lake is a good choice.
]]> The River Is Waiting 219319489 480 Wally Lamb 1668006391 Allison 0 to-read 4.38 2025 The River Is Waiting
author: Wally Lamb
name: Allison
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists—The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All]]> 136281676 464 Laura Bates 1728290902 Allison 0 to-read 4.45 2020 Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists—The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All
author: Laura Bates
name: Allison
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Side of the River: A Memoir]]> 211004087 Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this galvanizing yet tender memoir.

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips as she entered her freshman year of high school as the number one student. But suddenly, Elizabeth's own country took away the most important right a child has: a right to have a family.

As her parents� visas expired, they were forced to return to Mexico, leaving Elizabeth responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being “a statistic,� she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide.

Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied, homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws. For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of his own dreams easier than it was for her.]]> 272 Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez 1250817420 Allison 0 to-read 3.82 2024 My Side of the River: A Memoir
author: Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez
name: Allison
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Allison 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Allison
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Allison 0 to-read, mollymirhashem 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Allison
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read, mollymirhashem
review:

]]> Free Food for Millionaires 40727626
Free Food For Millionaires offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining one's identity within changing communities in what is her remarkably assured debut.]]> 577 Min Jin Lee Allison 0 to-read, mollymirhashem 3.91 2007 Free Food for Millionaires
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Allison
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read, mollymirhashem
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead]]> 51648276
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

Duration: 11 hours 39 minutes.]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk Allison 3 elleree
I wonder if being familiar with the setting would have made me love this novel more. Weather and landscape play a large role in the writing, and it's clear that nature is of utmost importance to the narrator (and perhaps also Tokarczuk). If this book had been fully about nature, then maybe I would have been more into it.

Or maybe if Janina (who hates her name) hadn't taken so many side forays into astrology, which completely distracted me from whatever was happening and which, ultimately, I tended to skip.

Despite what the covers and most reviewers insist, this isn't really a murder mystery. There are murders in it, which affect what other characters do and say, but there is no tension around the whodunnit, no stakes.

That is my ultimate issue with the book: there are no real stakes set up for our narrator and protagonist. We aren't clear what she wants from a plot perspective, only that she loves animals and astrology and hates hunters. We know she's generally ignored and treated as a foolish nobody, as so many aging women are. We know she has a ragtag group of eclectic friends in the rural part of Poland she occupies. But what are we rooting for? What are we hoping to find out or see happen? The only thing I really cared about (and even then, barely because we never met them) was what happened to her "daughters."

I ultimately finished this book because (a) it came so highly recommended by a friend and (b) the narrator herself is a reasonably interesting person with an interesting perspective. However, when my genre-obsessed friends insist that "nothing happens" in literary fiction, I think this is what they're talking about.]]> 3.93 2009 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Allison
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: elleree
review:
This is a strange, atmospheric book entirely driven by its narrator, the middle-aged Janina Duszejko.

I wonder if being familiar with the setting would have made me love this novel more. Weather and landscape play a large role in the writing, and it's clear that nature is of utmost importance to the narrator (and perhaps also Tokarczuk). If this book had been fully about nature, then maybe I would have been more into it.

Or maybe if Janina (who hates her name) hadn't taken so many side forays into astrology, which completely distracted me from whatever was happening and which, ultimately, I tended to skip.

Despite what the covers and most reviewers insist, this isn't really a murder mystery. There are murders in it, which affect what other characters do and say, but there is no tension around the whodunnit, no stakes.

That is my ultimate issue with the book: there are no real stakes set up for our narrator and protagonist. We aren't clear what she wants from a plot perspective, only that she loves animals and astrology and hates hunters. We know she's generally ignored and treated as a foolish nobody, as so many aging women are. We know she has a ragtag group of eclectic friends in the rural part of Poland she occupies. But what are we rooting for? What are we hoping to find out or see happen? The only thing I really cared about (and even then, barely because we never met them) was what happened to her "daughters."

I ultimately finished this book because (a) it came so highly recommended by a friend and (b) the narrator herself is a reasonably interesting person with an interesting perspective. However, when my genre-obsessed friends insist that "nothing happens" in literary fiction, I think this is what they're talking about.
]]> Foster 61022861 Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household--where everything is so well tended to--and this summer must soon come to an end.

A story of astonishing emotional depth now expanded and newly revised in a standalone edition, Foster showcases Claire Keegan's great talent and cements her reputation as one of our most important and prodigious storytellers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 080216014X Allison 3 charlottes_angels 4.37 2010 Foster
author: Claire Keegan
name: Allison
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: charlottes_angels
review:
Simple, understated, concise. 3.75 stars, but I just can't bring myself to round up because I wouldn't want to read more than one such story in quick succession, and I wouldn't want to read anything longer. The brevity paired with simple language that belies the complexity "between the lines" is a large part of what makes this story work so well.
]]> Clear 177058810
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 203 Carys Davies Allison 0 to-read 4.00 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Allison
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Favorites 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER � An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“P˛ą°ůłŮ Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Allison 0 to-read, christineyu 4.17 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Allison
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read, christineyu
review:

]]> Life for Sale 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 Allison 0 to-read 3.74 1968 Life for Sale
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Allison
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States]]> 40121985 A pathbreaking history of the United States' overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire," exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories--the islands, atolls, and archipelagos--this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of space. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.]]> 513 Daniel Immerwahr 0374172145 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.47 2019 How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
author: Daniel Immerwahr
name: Allison
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> One in a Millennial 211004135
One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned generation.

Kate is a pop culture commentator and host of the popular millennial-focused podcast Be There in Five . Part-funny, part-serious, Kate navigates the complicated nature of celebrating and criticizing the culture that shaped her as a woman, while arguing that great depths can come from surface-level interests.

With her trademark style and vulnerability, One In a Millennial is sharp, hilarious, and heartwarming all at once. She tackles AOL Instant Messenger, purity culture, American Girl Dolls, going out tops, Spice Girl feminism, her feelings about millennial motherhood, and more. Kate’s laugh-out-loud asides and keen observations will have you nodding your head and maybe even tearing up.]]> 336 Kate Kennedy 1250874165 Allison 0 to-read 3.45 2024 One in a Millennial
author: Kate Kennedy
name: Allison
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Allison 0 to-read, gwen 4.23 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Allison
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read, gwen
review:

]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Allison 0 to-read, charlottes_angels 4.08 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Allison
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read, charlottes_angels
review:

]]> Family Family 211003886 “Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?�

India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.

Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.

Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help–and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother�

The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.]]> 400 Laurie Frankel 1250236827 Allison 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Family Family
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Allison
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fire Exit 197789783
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.

Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic, quick-tempered, and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping ever deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, in a hunting accident—a death he and Louise are at odds over as to where to lay blame—Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known?

From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another]]> 243 Morgan Talty 1959030558 Allison 3 scott-douglas
The premise intrigued me, particularly given that I've read embarrassingly little about Native Americans. However, because the protagonist and narrator, Charles, is relegated to the fringes outside of the reservation where he grew up, this wasn't much of a "learning book" for me. I learned the term "blood quantum" (the same sad old "are you X enough to belong to our group" used by the likes of orthodox Jews, etc.). I read about sexism in a drum circle. Otherwise, the book is, as it promises on the cover, predominately about (a) Charles's determination to reveal his identity to his daughter (as her father) and (b) how he cares for (and neglects) his mother as she mentally declines. (A) feels like it should be a fraught and therefore interesting dilemma, but it actually winds up making the book drag every time it comes up, while (B) takes up most of the "action" of the book and feels like it's what the book actually wants to be about. Yet Charles is such a passive character, it's hard to invested or excited about almost anything that's happening throughout the book.

Frankly, I wish this book had actually been about Charles's mother, Louise. She was the most intriguing character in the book, and Charles could have remained a passive narrator even while the novel was actually "about" Louise. (Sort of like Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend where the book is told by the character Elena but is actually about her friend Lila.)

I also enjoyed Charles's drunk friend Bobby. He was the only likable character in the book (which says something), and he often brought some hilarity or absurdity to what were otherwise mostly sober situations. (The stuffed elephant was also a genius addition and unquestionably my favorite recurring aspect of the book. I will not spoil it here!)

The climax was overly melodramatic, particularly because the book didn't enable us to care strongly for or even remotely understand Elizabeth (Charles's daughter) or her mother, Mary. Still, the ending was appropriate—perhaps because it came back to Louise! (I'm really arguing my case here, huh.)

Talty writes exceedingly well about the challenges of caretaking for a parent with dementia, especially when the relationship between mother and son was already strained and so much was left unsaid over a lifetime. I highly enjoyed this part of Fire Exit and would recommend reading the book purely for it alone. (Also, kudos to Talty for not making this book overlong!) However, lower your expectations for the rest of the book, particularly the "headliner" plot thread. If you go in expecting three stars, you might just experience five.]]> 3.71 2024 Fire Exit
author: Morgan Talty
name: Allison
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: scott-douglas
review:
I went into this novel with expectations that probably set me up for disappointment before I turned the first page. I was hoping for something life-changing. I got a decent 3-3.5-star book.

The premise intrigued me, particularly given that I've read embarrassingly little about Native Americans. However, because the protagonist and narrator, Charles, is relegated to the fringes outside of the reservation where he grew up, this wasn't much of a "learning book" for me. I learned the term "blood quantum" (the same sad old "are you X enough to belong to our group" used by the likes of orthodox Jews, etc.). I read about sexism in a drum circle. Otherwise, the book is, as it promises on the cover, predominately about (a) Charles's determination to reveal his identity to his daughter (as her father) and (b) how he cares for (and neglects) his mother as she mentally declines. (A) feels like it should be a fraught and therefore interesting dilemma, but it actually winds up making the book drag every time it comes up, while (B) takes up most of the "action" of the book and feels like it's what the book actually wants to be about. Yet Charles is such a passive character, it's hard to invested or excited about almost anything that's happening throughout the book.

Frankly, I wish this book had actually been about Charles's mother, Louise. She was the most intriguing character in the book, and Charles could have remained a passive narrator even while the novel was actually "about" Louise. (Sort of like Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend where the book is told by the character Elena but is actually about her friend Lila.)

I also enjoyed Charles's drunk friend Bobby. He was the only likable character in the book (which says something), and he often brought some hilarity or absurdity to what were otherwise mostly sober situations. (The stuffed elephant was also a genius addition and unquestionably my favorite recurring aspect of the book. I will not spoil it here!)

The climax was overly melodramatic, particularly because the book didn't enable us to care strongly for or even remotely understand Elizabeth (Charles's daughter) or her mother, Mary. Still, the ending was appropriate—perhaps because it came back to Louise! (I'm really arguing my case here, huh.)

Talty writes exceedingly well about the challenges of caretaking for a parent with dementia, especially when the relationship between mother and son was already strained and so much was left unsaid over a lifetime. I highly enjoyed this part of Fire Exit and would recommend reading the book purely for it alone. (Also, kudos to Talty for not making this book overlong!) However, lower your expectations for the rest of the book, particularly the "headliner" plot thread. If you go in expecting three stars, you might just experience five.
]]> <![CDATA[Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood]]> 126918628 A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real

Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace an individual, private solution to a large-scale, social problem.

With the recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization revoking abortion protections and the upcoming decision in Brackeen v. Haaland likely to revoke the Indian Child Welfare Act, we are in a political moment in which adoption is, increasingly, being revealed as an institution devoted to separating families and policing parenthood under the guise of feel-good family-building. Rooted in a long-term study, Relinquished is an analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption. The voices of these women are powerful and heartrending; they deserve to be heard as a response to this moment.]]> 311 Gretchen Sisson 1250286786 Allison 0 to-read, kate, nonfiction 4.36 2024 Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
author: Gretchen Sisson
name: Allison
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read, kate, nonfiction
review:

]]> Good Material 221754310
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

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

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

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 336 Dolly Alderton 0593686950 Allison 0 to-read 3.67 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Allison
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Goose 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

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

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

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]> 348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Allison 0 to-read, scott-douglas 3.67 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Allison
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, scott-douglas
review:

]]> Clear 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Allison 0 to-read, scott-douglas 3.85 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Allison
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, scott-douglas
review:

]]> Rejection 199635125
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In “The Feminist,� a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics� spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,� a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337878 Allison 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Rejection
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Allison
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Allison 4 Intermezzo reminded me of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow : We the reader can see what is really happening as characters continually misunderstand and misinterpret one another's beliefs and motivations. Like I wrote in my review of that book, "humans are both knowable and unknowable and . . . there are many sides to every story."

Also, no one can pivot a scene, strictly through dialogue, quite like Rooney. It starts out with the promise of reconciliation and then boom. Catastrophe.

Not to sound too fawning, but I was also extremely pleased that she elected to write about two unique and distinctive brothers. My main complaint about several of her earlier books was that their characters were too similar; I worried whether she only had one set to draw from. Peter and Ivan prove otherwise.

I will warn potential readers that it take some time to adjust to the narrative style of Peter's sections of the book. His stream-of-consciousness perspective starts the whole thing, and I worried that the whole book was going to prove to be exhausting to read. However, Ivan's sections are more traditionally narrated, and ultimately I settled in with the stream-of-consciousness style as I read on. Just be patient. It works in the end.

Minus one star for the book feeling slightly bloated (it dragged a bit at points) and also for the overly angelic portrayals of the female characters (except Christine. Way to go, Christine!). Margaret, Sylvia, and Naomi can do no wrong. And heck, in their eyes, Peter and Ivan can do no wrong! I was waiting the whole book for Margaret to break Ivan's heart and was ultimately disappointed that this not only didn't happen but that it never even came close to happening. For as flawed as the two brothers were, the women didn't quite live up.

But don't let that deter you. If you're a Rooney fan, this is still well worth reading.]]> 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Allison
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
There are many reasons I liked this book, but the primary one is probably that I like books about fucked-up relationships where the fact that neither party has "the full story" is what keeps them at odds. Rooney is truly an expert at taking complicated relationship dynamics and exploring them (in the words of another reviewer) "up, down, and inside out." In this way, Intermezzo reminded me of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow : We the reader can see what is really happening as characters continually misunderstand and misinterpret one another's beliefs and motivations. Like I wrote in my review of that book, "humans are both knowable and unknowable and . . . there are many sides to every story."

Also, no one can pivot a scene, strictly through dialogue, quite like Rooney. It starts out with the promise of reconciliation and then boom. Catastrophe.

Not to sound too fawning, but I was also extremely pleased that she elected to write about two unique and distinctive brothers. My main complaint about several of her earlier books was that their characters were too similar; I worried whether she only had one set to draw from. Peter and Ivan prove otherwise.

I will warn potential readers that it take some time to adjust to the narrative style of Peter's sections of the book. His stream-of-consciousness perspective starts the whole thing, and I worried that the whole book was going to prove to be exhausting to read. However, Ivan's sections are more traditionally narrated, and ultimately I settled in with the stream-of-consciousness style as I read on. Just be patient. It works in the end.

Minus one star for the book feeling slightly bloated (it dragged a bit at points) and also for the overly angelic portrayals of the female characters (except Christine. Way to go, Christine!). Margaret, Sylvia, and Naomi can do no wrong. And heck, in their eyes, Peter and Ivan can do no wrong! I was waiting the whole book for Margaret to break Ivan's heart and was ultimately disappointed that this not only didn't happen but that it never even came close to happening. For as flawed as the two brothers were, the women didn't quite live up.

But don't let that deter you. If you're a Rooney fan, this is still well worth reading.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

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

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Allison 4 Wish You Were Here not too long ago, and it was far too soon—for me—to read pandemic-centric fiction.) Not every essay was a slam dunk, but that's the beauty of an essay collection: The duds go by quickly. In all, I feel like I learned as much about Green as I did about the subjects he covered, and for me, that elevates a 3-star "interesting" essay collection to four stars.]]> 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Allison
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/24
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: danielle, julie, essaycollection, audio
review:
I greatly enjoyed this essay collection, likely in large part because I listened to it. I'm not sure if I'd appreciate the way the essays tend to meander around the subject on paper as much as I enjoyed it via audio, but it's hard to know. I will say that I greatly enjoyed the diversity of topics (Scratch 'N Sniff Stickers, Diet Dr. Pepper, Piggly Wiggly, and The Notes App, to name a few), and I also appreciated the fact that this book is current enough to address the COVID pandemic without being exclusively focused on the pandemic. (I read the Jodi Picoult book Wish You Were Here not too long ago, and it was far too soon—for me—to read pandemic-centric fiction.) Not every essay was a slam dunk, but that's the beauty of an essay collection: The duds go by quickly. In all, I feel like I learned as much about Green as I did about the subjects he covered, and for me, that elevates a 3-star "interesting" essay collection to four stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Allison 4 audio, nonfiction Nexus
I followed his framing of "information networks" closely and easily, which takes up the first half of the book. I'm admittedly not a big history-reader, nor have I read any of Harari's previous work, so that could account for my enjoyment of this part of the book; he writes smartly while also writing accessibly and compellingly. While coming across as expert and credible, he never talks down to his reader. It's a tough line to walk, and I admire his ability to do it.

When he gets into the AI discussion in the latter half of the book, however, Harari started losing my attention. I already think/feel/believe all of the scary predictions about AI, so it was a lot of "nothing new here" as Harari tries to convince the reader of the dangers of AI. And then . . . the upshot of it all is that humanity needs to unite to put safeguards on AI. Does this dude live in the real world? Humanity unite? People can't even agree that the earth is round or the sky is blue. So his conclusion was disappointing, to put it mildly.

Nevertheless, I think this book is well worth reading. It is entirely comprehensible for the educated layperson, and I want more people to educate themselves on this topic, which means educating themselves on the history behind it. I'm working on it, too!]]> 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Allison
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: audio, nonfiction
review:
I'm really torn on how to rate this book. On one hand, I fervently wish people would think more deeply about the current effects of AI, how we got here, and where—if capitalism remains the broker of and engine behind AI capabilities—we're likely headed. Nexus
I followed his framing of "information networks" closely and easily, which takes up the first half of the book. I'm admittedly not a big history-reader, nor have I read any of Harari's previous work, so that could account for my enjoyment of this part of the book; he writes smartly while also writing accessibly and compellingly. While coming across as expert and credible, he never talks down to his reader. It's a tough line to walk, and I admire his ability to do it.

When he gets into the AI discussion in the latter half of the book, however, Harari started losing my attention. I already think/feel/believe all of the scary predictions about AI, so it was a lot of "nothing new here" as Harari tries to convince the reader of the dangers of AI. And then . . . the upshot of it all is that humanity needs to unite to put safeguards on AI. Does this dude live in the real world? Humanity unite? People can't even agree that the earth is round or the sky is blue. So his conclusion was disappointing, to put it mildly.

Nevertheless, I think this book is well worth reading. It is entirely comprehensible for the educated layperson, and I want more people to educate themselves on this topic, which means educating themselves on the history behind it. I'm working on it, too!
]]> <![CDATA[Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now]]> 37830765
In Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now Jaron Lanier draws on his insider's expertise to explain precisely how social media works and why its cruel and dangerous effects are at the heart of its current business model and design. As well as offering ten simple arguments for liberating yourself from its addictive hold, his witty and urgent manifesto outlines a vision for an alternative that provides all the benefits of social media without the harm. nicer person in the process.]]> 146 Jaron Lanier 1847925391 Allison 3 audio 3.58 2018 Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
author: Jaron Lanier
name: Allison
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: audio
review:
Scintillating? No. Repetitive? Yes. Could (should?) this have been an essay or Medium post? Also yes. So this might deserve 2.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because I'm trying to change my own mind/behavior regarding social media; it was worth reading for that purpose. I recommend listening to this book because the repetitive parts feel like they go quicker that way.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Write an Autobiographical Novel]]> 36520053 New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he's sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing �-- ​Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley �-- ​the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.]]> 0 Alexander Chee 1328764419 Allison 0 4.31 2018 How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
author: Alexander Chee
name: Allison
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read, essaycollection, audio
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)]]> 338691
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets...]]> 293 Louise Penny 0312948557 Allison 0 to-read, colleenberry 3.86 2005 Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)
author: Louise Penny
name: Allison
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read, colleenberry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)]]> 52263433
With the clues leading back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends, to their rival clique, and to the tangle of relationships that bound them all to the murdered boy, the private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined.

An alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 541 Tana French 0143127519 Allison 4 charlottes_angels The Secret History and turned it into a detective mystery taking place at an all-girls' school, you've got The Secret Place. (Coincidental naming? I think not.) Lots of moody moods in this book, some teen girl drama, and some witchy vibes, so it's not your standard detective mystery, which I appreciated. My favorite part was seeing teen girl culture both through the girls' perspective AND through the eyes of a male detective. Spot. On. Minus one star for a lackluster ending. (The way they caught the killer was honestly pretty lame after such a fraught buildup.) I might have docked it another star for the "magic" stuff, but the mean girl posse was just too good. (Girls, even mean girls, are not dumb!)

If you like moody boarding school books and murder mysteries, pick this up.]]> 3.85 2014 The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)
author: Tana French
name: Allison
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: charlottes_angels
review:
If you took The Secret History and turned it into a detective mystery taking place at an all-girls' school, you've got The Secret Place. (Coincidental naming? I think not.) Lots of moody moods in this book, some teen girl drama, and some witchy vibes, so it's not your standard detective mystery, which I appreciated. My favorite part was seeing teen girl culture both through the girls' perspective AND through the eyes of a male detective. Spot. On. Minus one star for a lackluster ending. (The way they caught the killer was honestly pretty lame after such a fraught buildup.) I might have docked it another star for the "magic" stuff, but the mean girl posse was just too good. (Girls, even mean girls, are not dumb!)

If you like moody boarding school books and murder mysteries, pick this up.
]]> Just Mercy 20342617
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly condemned.

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation’s highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.

One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn’t commit. The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching � a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.]]> 336 Bryan Stevenson Allison 4 cindy
I thought I knew the extent of how bad our judicial system is. After all, I've read a handful of other fiction and nonfiction books and articles, and I consider myself reasonably well informed. I didn't. I probably still don't, even after reading this book. Women are giving birth while handcuffed and shackled. That's just one of the many facts I read in this book (and then checked online—because I was hoping it was out of date) that was unfathomable to me. Stevenson does an excellent job of blending stories of real inmates with broader facts about the courtroom and incarceration landscapes. I hope he writes another book in the years to come. We all need the education.]]> 4.62 2014 Just Mercy
author: Bryan Stevenson
name: Allison
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: cindy
review:
This should be taught in schools—ideally high school and college, but at least one or the other. While white-dominated private/parochial school students also need to read this, I think it would really have struck a chord in my highly mixed public high school. I wish we had read it then. But I'm glad I read it now. (Better late than never?)

I thought I knew the extent of how bad our judicial system is. After all, I've read a handful of other fiction and nonfiction books and articles, and I consider myself reasonably well informed. I didn't. I probably still don't, even after reading this book. Women are giving birth while handcuffed and shackled. That's just one of the many facts I read in this book (and then checked online—because I was hoping it was out of date) that was unfathomable to me. Stevenson does an excellent job of blending stories of real inmates with broader facts about the courtroom and incarceration landscapes. I hope he writes another book in the years to come. We all need the education.
]]> <![CDATA[Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning]]> 197636554 270 C. Edward Watson 1421449226 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 3.90 Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning
author: C. Edward Watson
name: Allison
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Multidisciplinary Exploration into Flow in Writing (Routledge Research in Writing Studies)]]> 203831032
Bringing together practice-based and scholarly perceptions, this book outlines the key features, definitions and approaches of flow and identifies pedagogical opportunities for classroom instruction. Incorporating perspectives from disciplines including classical rhetoric, composition studies, cognitive science, and linguistics, this book provides a diverse overview of the literature on flow in writing pedagogy. It includes two instructional voice-based and rhetorical-grammar-based activities that outline how to recognize and improve flow in writing. In doing so, the book also provides clear examples of how to create an inclusive writing pedagogy that incorporates sensory and analytical perspectives to help readers and writers experience flow and meet their writing goals.

As an exploration of flow instruction as it currently stands and might stand in the future, this book will be of interest to students and instructors in the field of academic, professional and creative writing studies.]]> 136 Deborah F. Rossen-Knill 1032604956 Allison 0 to-read, nonfiction 0.0 A Multidisciplinary Exploration into Flow in Writing (Routledge Research in Writing Studies)
author: Deborah F. Rossen-Knill
name: Allison
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> This Motherless Land 199531828 READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a “vibrant� (Charmaine Wilkerson) decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park: Jane Austen meets The Vanishing Half

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.]]> 352 Nikki May 0063084295 Allison 0 to-read 4.21 2024 This Motherless Land
author: Nikki May
name: Allison
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Safekeep 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Allison 0 to-read, ahp 4.05 2024 The Safekeep
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Allison
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read, ahp
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing]]> 62241157 She signed up for the sisterhood, free cars, and the promise of a successful business of her own. Instead, she ended up with an addiction, broken friendships, and the rubble of a toppled pyramid . . . scheme.

Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing is the eye-opening, funny, and dangerous personal story of author Emily Lynn Paulson rising to the top of the pyramid in the multilevel marketing (MLM) world only to realize that its culture and business practices went beyond a trendy marketing scheme and into the heart of white supremacy in America. A significant polemic on how MLMs operate, Hey, Hun expertly lays out their role in the cultural epidemic of isolation and the cult-like ideologies that course through their trainings, marketing, and one-on-one interactions. Equally entertaining and smart, Paulson’s first-person accounts, acerbic wit, and biting commentary will leave you with a new perspective on those “Hey Hun� messages flooding your inbox.]]> 384 Emily Lynn Paulson 1955905258 Allison 2 danielle, nonfiction, audio
All of that said, if you've never heard of MLMs or how they operate, this would be a pretty good introduction into their insidious nature. I've just already consumed a lot of content on the topic, so it was disappointing to find that this lent very little new material to the discussion.]]> 3.59 2023 Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing
author: Emily Lynn Paulson
name: Allison
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: danielle, nonfiction, audio
review:
I listened to this one on audio, which is probably the only reason I didn't DNF. If you have any knowledge of MLMs already, this book isn't going to reveal anything you didn't already know. There's a lot of repetition (like, so much that you have to wonder if the author/publisher actually expects people to skip entire chapters), and the storytelling is pretty generalized, I assume since Paulson doesn't want to get sued.

All of that said, if you've never heard of MLMs or how they operate, this would be a pretty good introduction into their insidious nature. I've just already consumed a lot of content on the topic, so it was disappointing to find that this lent very little new material to the discussion.
]]> The Future 123163147 The bestselling, award-winning author ofĚýThe Power deliversĚýa dazzling tour de forceĚýwhereĚýa handful of friendsĚýplotĚýa daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.

When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now she’s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father’s fox and rabbit sermon—once a parable to her—are starting to come true, how much future is actually left?

Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She’s cornered, desperate and—worst of all—might die without ever knowing what's going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future?

Martha and Zhen’s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha’s relentless drive and Zhen’s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.]]> 432 Naomi Alderman 166802568X Allison 3 julie The Power was better (but maybe that's because it was my first Alderman book!).

I won't try to summarize this because there are too many ways to spoil it for the reader. Suffice to say, if you read and liked the imaginative commentary of society/futurism in either of the following books, this one is worth a read (and if you read and hated them, maybe skip this one):
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

And of course if you're a Margaret Atwood fan, you're going to like anything Alderman writes because she's so heavily influenced by the literary heavyweight.

Suffice to say, I was entertained! If only the realism of these dystopias didn't strike so close to home....]]> 3.82 2023 The Future
author: Naomi Alderman
name: Allison
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: julie
review:
3.5 stars, and honestly if this were my first Alderman book, I'd probably have given it 4. I just think The Power was better (but maybe that's because it was my first Alderman book!).

I won't try to summarize this because there are too many ways to spoil it for the reader. Suffice to say, if you read and liked the imaginative commentary of society/futurism in either of the following books, this one is worth a read (and if you read and hated them, maybe skip this one):
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

And of course if you're a Margaret Atwood fan, you're going to like anything Alderman writes because she's so heavily influenced by the literary heavyweight.

Suffice to say, I was entertained! If only the realism of these dystopias didn't strike so close to home....
]]> <![CDATA[Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI]]> 198678736 **A New York Times Bestseller**

'Co-Intelligence is the very best book I know about the ins, outs, and ethics of generative AI. Drop everything and read it cover to cover NOW' Angela Duckworth

Consumer AI has arrived. And with it, inescapable upheaval as we grapple with what it means for our jobs, lives and the future of humanity.

Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, he urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking and optimistic, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.]]> 243 Ethan Mollick 075356078X Allison 0
I'll get back on the library waitlist to read the second half whenever it comes back around, simply because I am told this is an important book and I feel it's an important topic. So far, though, I'm not impressed.]]> 3.98 2024 Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI
author: Ethan Mollick
name: Allison
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: nonfiction, writing-editing, dnf
review:
I only got halfway through this before it was due to the library. So far, nothing has been mind-blowing, and it reads so simplistic and stilted that I bet ChatGPT did in fact write a lot of the text.

I'll get back on the library waitlist to read the second half whenever it comes back around, simply because I am told this is an important book and I feel it's an important topic. So far, though, I'm not impressed.
]]> <![CDATA[Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)]]> 32075854
When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.]]> 477 Anthony Horowitz 0062645226 Allison 0 to-read, colleenberry 3.93 2016 Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Allison
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read, colleenberry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir]]> 12844430
Narrated by the author.]]> 9 Jenny Lawson 1611760852 Allison 0 to-read 3.95 2012 Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Allison
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Butter 200776812 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0063236400 Allison 0 to-read, ellen 3.50 2017 Butter
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Allison
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read, ellen
review:

]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Allison 0 to-read, julie 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Allison
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read, julie
review:

]]> The Vulnerables 216662314
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.]]> 272 Sigrid Nunez 0593715527 Allison 0 to-read 3.74 2023 The Vulnerables
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Allison
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Friend 40164365
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.]]> 212 Sigrid Nunez 0735219451 Allison 4 scott-douglas
I liked What Are You Going Through better than this novel, purely because I find authors writing about characters who are authors a bit tiresome. (This was one of the better ones, and yet.) This novel was also a bit choppier, but in no way unreadable. My favorite part of the book was the section where the whole novel is perceived as meta—what's "really" happening is that the friend to whom the narrator has been addressing this novel is actually alive, and she tells him what she has been writing about. I don't even care whether that scene is "reality" whether it's imagined; it works in both cases, which is its genius.

I also relate to what it might be like to go from someone who has never owned a dog to someone who agrees to take on an aging Great Dane out of a sense of obligation to the dog and the dead owner. This is something I am certain I would do.

And, like the protagonist, I find writing both unbearable and essential to understanding things.

We read to see ourselves in fiction, don't we? Maybe that is what I like so much about Nunez's writing: her books are mirrors to who I might be, things I might do, or feelings I might feel. I am never her protagonist, but I could be. I might be, someday.]]> 3.72 2018 The Friend
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Allison
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: scott-douglas
review:
I just really like Nunez's writing. I like that her novels are short and (at least so far) always deal with some aspect of grief. I like her way with words, and the way she can write seemingly disparate paragraphs that do ultimately relate.

I liked What Are You Going Through better than this novel, purely because I find authors writing about characters who are authors a bit tiresome. (This was one of the better ones, and yet.) This novel was also a bit choppier, but in no way unreadable. My favorite part of the book was the section where the whole novel is perceived as meta—what's "really" happening is that the friend to whom the narrator has been addressing this novel is actually alive, and she tells him what she has been writing about. I don't even care whether that scene is "reality" whether it's imagined; it works in both cases, which is its genius.

I also relate to what it might be like to go from someone who has never owned a dog to someone who agrees to take on an aging Great Dane out of a sense of obligation to the dog and the dead owner. This is something I am certain I would do.

And, like the protagonist, I find writing both unbearable and essential to understanding things.

We read to see ourselves in fiction, don't we? Maybe that is what I like so much about Nunez's writing: her books are mirrors to who I might be, things I might do, or feelings I might feel. I am never her protagonist, but I could be. I might be, someday.
]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say]]> 35018200 New York Times bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences, showcasing a warm, easy storytelling style.ĚýNow, in Tell Me More, she’s back with a deeply personal, unfailingly honest, and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life.

In “I Don’t Know,� Corrigan wrestles to make peace with uncertainty, whether it’s over invitations that never came or a friend’s agonizing infertility. In “No,� she admires her mother’s ability to set boundaries and her liberating willingness to be unpopular. In “Tell Me More,� a facialist named Tish teaches her something important about listening. And in “I Was Wrong,� she comes clean about her disastrous role in a family fight—and explains why saying sorry may not be enough. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,� Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.

With the streetwise, ever-relatable voice that defines Corrigan’s work, Tell Me More is a moving and meaningful take on the power of the right words at the right moment to change everything.]]> 240 Kelly Corrigan Allison 3 nonfiction, audio 4.16 2018 Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
author: Kelly Corrigan
name: Allison
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: nonfiction, audio
review:
I enjoyed listening to these essays. They're little snapshots into white suburban mom midlife, and I appreciated Corrigan's thoughtfulness and ability to illustrate her points with personal anecdotes as she writes about lessons she's learning without being pedantic about them. I should note, I'm not sure if I'd have had the same patience if I were reading this on the page, but first-person essays are often great on audiobook if you're a podcast lover!
]]> Exhibit 177192267
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?]]> 224 R.O. Kwon 0593190025 Allison 0 dnf 3.13 2024 Exhibit
author: R.O. Kwon
name: Allison
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: dnf
review:
This novel is trying much too hard to be cutting-edge and literary without falling over into experimental fiction. As a result, it comes off almost pretentious. The reading experience is fragmented, and I simply could not find a core problem to care about or ground myself in the story. I got maybe 15% of the way in, and what I knew was that there was strife between the protagonist and her husband over wanting a kid (and probably other things), we are supposed to be enamored (?) with the broken ballerina character, there's going to be some BDSM (maybe, probably), and everyone at these rich-people parties really likes to do drugs. We hadn't even left the party yet, and I could not detect a whiff of where this book was going or what (or who) I was supposed to root for. I don't have the patience to parse apart this sort of book right now, so I returned it to the library. DNF.
]]> <![CDATA[Ammie, Come Home (Georgetown, #1)]]> 140403 352 Barbara Michaels 0060745053 Allison 2 charlottes_angels 3.94 1968 Ammie, Come Home (Georgetown, #1)
author: Barbara Michaels
name: Allison
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1968
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: charlottes_angels
review:
I have to wonder if this book was written for housewives with fairly low education levels who nevertheless wanted to be titillated. It was first published in 1968, so before Title IX, Roe v. Wade, etc., which probably ought to be taken into account. That said, it was very simple, with simple, outdated characters and the most straightforward plot for a "horror" novel imaginable. I guess this is also billed as a "romance," but nothing about any of the characters' relationships with one another is particular romantic. There was no zip, no thrill, and no pizzaz one would expect from a horror novel or a romance novel. Disappointing.
]]> <![CDATA[Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West]]> 51801180 A revealing look at the intersection of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation

Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today’s richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth and a troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative, socially as well as financially.]]> 392 Justin Farrell 0691176671 Allison 0 nonfiction, audio, dnf Billionaire Wilderness (at least the half of the book I got through), in order to come to the conclusions that the author keeps positing are so groundbreaking. Farrell feels the need to justify why he is conducting this research so often, it makes me wonder if he actually just wanted to hobnob with millionaires and used this book as his "in." ("I'm writing a book" will get people who would otherwise ignore you to spend time with you! I hear that "I have a podcast" works well, too.) Anyway, it wasn't unbearable to read; I just didn't feel like I was learning much or being entertained enough to continue. DNF.]]> 3.69 2020 Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West
author: Justin Farrell
name: Allison
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: nonfiction, audio, dnf
review:
I really wanted to find value in this book, but I just could not sink my teeth in. Admittedly I'm not an anthropologist, but I do think critically and empathetically about other people who are not me, and that includes very rich people. Therefore, I feel like I didn't need to read Billionaire Wilderness (at least the half of the book I got through), in order to come to the conclusions that the author keeps positing are so groundbreaking. Farrell feels the need to justify why he is conducting this research so often, it makes me wonder if he actually just wanted to hobnob with millionaires and used this book as his "in." ("I'm writing a book" will get people who would otherwise ignore you to spend time with you! I hear that "I have a podcast" works well, too.) Anyway, it wasn't unbearable to read; I just didn't feel like I was learning much or being entertained enough to continue. DNF.
]]> <![CDATA[A Talent for Murder (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #3)]]> 199116301
Martha Ratliff conceded long ago that she’d likely spend her life alone. She was fine with it, happy with her solo existence, stimulated by her job as an archival librarian, constantly surrounded by thought-provoking ideas and the books she loved. But then she met Alan, a charming and sweet-natured divorcee with a job that took him on the road for half the year. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes, even though he still felt a little bit like a stranger.

A year in and the marriage was good, except for that strange blood streak on the back of one of his shirts he’d worn to a conference in Denver. Her curiosity turning to suspicion, Martha investigates the cities Alan visited over the past year and uncovers a disturbing pattern—five unsolved cases of murdered women.

Is she married to a serial killer? Or could it merely be a coincidence? Unsure what to think, Martha contacts an old friend from graduate school for advice. Lily Kintner once helped Martha out of a jam with an abusive boyfriend and may have some insight. Intrigued, Lily offers to meet Alan to find out what kind of man he really is . . . but what Lily uncovers is more perplexing and wicked than they ever could have expected.]]> 255 Peter Swanson 0063205033 Allison 3 danielle 3.58 2024 A Talent for Murder (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #3)
author: Peter Swanson
name: Allison
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: danielle
review:
You have to know what you're getting with this: a fun mystery that seems straightforward until it throws you for a minor loop midway. This makes it almost like two books: a kind of plodding mystery and then a quicker thriller. Lily's character gives off some "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" vibes, but slightly older and more suburban (in a good way), and I ultimately enjoyed the book because of her and because of the structure. I will admit that I'm curious about Swanson's choice to mix first-person chapters with third (based on narrating character), but it didn't put me off; it just felt like a very intentional choice. All in all, if you like marriage-related murder mysteries and are also ok with deviating from the standard paperback mystery setup, this is good choice.
]]> The Measure 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]> 353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Allison 0 dnf 3.96 2022 The Measure
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Allison
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: dnf
review:
The premise intrigued me (which is why I picked up this book), but I got bored fast. Every character was boring because they were so predictable and linear. I only got about 25% of the way through the novel, so I don't know this to be true, but it felt inevitable that moralizing would soon start—and being fed morals about "living a full life with the time you have" by characters I do not care about would be intolerable, so I cut my losses and returned the book.
]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 49731704 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307279286.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

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.]]> 542 Patrick Radden Keefe Allison 0 to-read 4.52 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Allison
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>