Jamie's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 02 Mar 2025 17:17:35 -0800 60 Jamie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story]]> 597
For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock ‘n� roll all the way. Within the span of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end—one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing...and what this means for the rest of us.]]> 245 Chuck Klosterman 0743264460 Jamie 0 to-read 3.86 2005 Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gone Boy: A Walkabout 591275 213 Gregory Gibson 1568362927 Jamie 0 to-read 4.00 2011 Gone Boy: A Walkabout
author: Gregory Gibson
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> Middletide 199897203
One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Out of money and motivation, thirty-three-year-old Elijah returns to his empty childhood home to lick the wounds of his futile writing career. Hungry for purpose, he throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, the extraordinary girl from the nearby reservation whom he betrayed but was never able to forget.

As the town of Point Orchards turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder in this scintillating literary thriller that seeks to uncover a case of love, loss, and revenge.]]> 287 Sarah Crouch Jamie 5 3.52 2024 Middletide
author: Sarah Crouch
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> Year Book 59836981
Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy "book" way of saying "the first one.")

I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day.

I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don’t enjoy it, I’m sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I’ll do my best to make it up to you.]]> Seth Rogan Jamie 4 4.17 2021 Year Book
author: Seth Rogan
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
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I highly recommend the audio book, which is read by Seth Rogan, along with a host of other actors, friends, and voice talent. Worth it alone for the part about Nicolas Cage.
]]> <![CDATA[The Gang of Four: Four Leaders, Four Communities, One Friendship]]> 23129929
Bob Santos and Gary Iwamoto recall how a Native American, Asian American, African American, and Mexican American came together to fight for their neighborhoods and their people.

Bob Santos has spent most of his life in the International District of Seattle. He grew up in the N.P. Hotel with his widowed father, Sammy Santos, a professional prizefighter. He was hired in 1972 to lead the International District Improvement Association (Inter*Im). During his tenure at Inter*Im, Santos organized property owners, businesses, residents, and activists from the Asian American community to preserve the neighborhood and build new housing.

Gary Iwamoto is a regular contributing writer for the International Examiner, an Asian Pacific Islander community newspaper. He has written several plays, notably Miss Minidoka 1943, which was produced by the Northwest Asian American Theater. He and Bob Santos also wrote Humbows, Not Hot Dogs in 2002.


]]> 240 Bob Santos 1634059522 Jamie 5 4.38 2015 The Gang of Four: Four Leaders, Four Communities, One Friendship
author: Bob Santos
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/02/13
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This is what we need right now.
]]> <![CDATA[Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto]]> 20819723 A New York Times Best Seller

“Powerful...an important read." �Publishers Weekly

New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond takes on America’s biggest sacred cow: football

In Against Football, Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions:

� Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?
� What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a billion-dollar industry?
� How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning?

There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America’s favorite game with such searing candor.]]> 178 Steve Almond 161219415X Jamie 5 4.04 2014 Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto
author: Steve Almond
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> <![CDATA[They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us]]> 33947154
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.]]> 291 Hanif Abdurraqib Jamie 0 currently-reading 4.57 2017 They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Jamie 5 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir]]> 214175247 An unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary life—one forged through a poverty-stricken childhood in “slummy, one-horse towns�; obsessive desire; bursts of comedy; and indispensable friendships, reflecting on the way art, music, and a deep connection to nature helped her on a singular journeyto become a beloved, Grammy-nominated artist.

Neko Case has long been revered as one of music’s most influential artists, whose authenticity, lyrical storytelling, and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians, and lifelong fans.InThe Harder I Fight, the More I Love You,Casebrings her trademarkcandor andprecisionto a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisiblegirl “raised by two dogs and a space heater� in rural Washington state toher improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent. In luminous, sharp-edged prose, Caseshows readers what it’s like to be left alone for hours and hours as a child, to take refuge in the woods around her home, and to channel themonotony and loneliness and joy that comes from music, camaraderie, and shared experience into art.

The Harder I Fight, the More I Love Youis a rebellious meditation on identity and corruption, and a manifesto on how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face.


ձ> 288 Neko Case 1538710501 Jamie 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
author: Neko Case
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land]]> 58999259 Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, “a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking.�

In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.]]> 352 Taylor Brorby 1324090863 Jamie 0 to-read 4.03 2022 Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
author: Taylor Brorby
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> <![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 Jamie 0 to-read 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics]]> 22470
With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an audacious exploration of Christianity’s shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.]]> 214 Elaine Pagels 0679731180 Jamie 0 3.91 1995 The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics
author: Elaine Pagels
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Life in the Fast Lane: The Eagles' Reckless Ride Down the Rock & Roll Highway]]> 129279889
So the Eagles warn us about the outrageous and ruthless lifestyle of the ambitious rock-n-roller. In fact, Don Henley could barely listen to the track “Life in the Fast Lane� when they were recording it. He was so high that it made him sick.



The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, and almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with bloodletting betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied in the road behind them. The Eagles� story is a truly gothic American one of ultimate power and rivers of money; of sex and drugs at a time when both were the lingua-franca of sophisticated So-Cal living; of a band who sang of peaceful easy feelings in public while threatening to kill each other in private.



Now, legendary rock journalist Mick Wall delivers definitive insight into America's best-selling band of all time, a band that has sold more records than Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones combined, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the 70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world.

<]]> 358 Mick Wall 1635769558 Jamie 4 3.85 Life in the Fast Lane: The Eagles' Reckless Ride Down the Rock & Roll Highway
author: Mick Wall
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music]]> 57648017
Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ("It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.

This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.]]> 384 Dave Grohl 0063076098 Jamie 4 4.45 2021 The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
author: Dave Grohl
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/15
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Greatest Stories Ever Played: Video Games and the Evolution of Storytelling]]> 56978095
We all know that video games are fun, but can a video game make you cry? Can it tell you a powerful love story? Can a video game make you think differently about war? About the environment? About the choices you make?

Whether it's playing through blockbuster-esque adventures (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us), diving deep into hidden bits of story and lore (Red Dead Redemption II, Bioshock, Journey) or building relationships that change the fate of the world itself (Persona 5, Undertale), video games are bringing stories to life in ways that are immediate, interactive and immersive.

Focusing on some of the best, most memorable, experiences in gaming, The Greatest Stories Ever Played, examines the relationship between gaming and storytelling in a new way.]]> 304 Dustin Hansen 1250183561 Jamie 5 to-read 3.74 2022 The Greatest Stories Ever Played: Video Games and the Evolution of Storytelling
author: Dustin Hansen
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea]]> 59891745 From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea

In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe’s rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby’s cry.

Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.

Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive�: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper.

Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves.

Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance—the Indigenous woman’s story that hasn’t been told.]]> 264 Debra Magpie Earling 1571311459 Jamie 5 to-read 3.59 2010 The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
author: Debra Magpie Earling
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Leftover Woman 78296909 An evocative family drama and a riveting mystery about the ferocious pull of motherhood for two very different women--from the New York Times bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation.

Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from her rural Chinese village without money or family support, fleeing a controlling husband, on a desperate search for the daughter who was taken from her at birth--another female casualty of China's controversial One Child Policy. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she's forced to make increasingly desperate decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her daughter.

Meanwhile, publishing executive Rebecca Whitney seems to have it all: a prestigious family name and the wealth that comes with it, a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband, and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. She's even hired a Chinese nanny to help her balance the demands of being a working wife and mother. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardize not only Rebecca's job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble and her role in her own family is called into question.

The Leftover Woman finds these two unforgettable women on a shocking collision course. Twisting and suspenseful and surprisingly poignant, it's a profound exploration of identity and belonging, motherhood and family. It is a story of two women in a divided city--separated by severe economic and cultural differences yet bound by a deep emotional connection to a child.]]> 288 Jean Kwok 0063031469 Jamie 5 to-read 3.72 2023 The Leftover Woman
author: Jean Kwok
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream]]> 6004724
Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.]]> 432 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521308 Jamie 3 4.13 2009 The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> Conditions of Precarity 213694909 This haunting collection reveals the inner longings of a wide swath of humanity—of differing ages, sexualities, ethnicities—who hover on the brink of life-altering realizations and face outcomes as dangerous as they are uncertain.

An immigrant grandmother who sells roses to gay customers at a West Hollywood bar; a deaf-mute masseur and sex worker plying his trade; a transient nesting in the lilac bushes of a New England college campus—these are a few of the characters in Conditions of Precarity who find their existences at grave risk in a world in which every choice impacts an uncertain future.

Exquisitely wrought stories. Boone's range of character, setting and development is remarkable, as is his ability to inhabit so convincingly his large cast of characters.

T.C. Boyle, author World’s End and Drop City
*
I was struck while reading these stately understated stories by the camouflaged velocity of the epiphanies, the turns in the turns. These are aggressively graceful fictions that sneak up on you. There, that sting of the bullet that comes moments before you register the muzzle flash or even hear the report of the shot fired. This work packs that kind of punch—kinetically energetic in a potential energy drag. Yes, I found myself on edge, on that kind of edgy edge.

Michael Martone, author of Plain Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana and The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne
*
Conditions of Precarity is abundant with beauty. Joseph Boone has written a collection that reminds us of our small moments of grace, moments that affirm our connections and moments that illuminate our humanity in these precarious times. Each story is a wondrous meditation of longing, desire, joy—or the will to reach for more. Read this brilliant collection. It will never let you go.

Dana Johnson, author of In the Not Quite Dark and Elsewhere, California
*
Conditions of Precarity is an atlas of longing and desire populated by characters whose sensitivity, wonder, and abiding optimism afford them the capacity to be surprised, to explore, to change. With these ten stories, ranging in style from the gothic to the farcical to the tragic, set in wildly different terrains—the rural South, the Yorkshire moors, college towns, the Hollywood Hills–Boone puts on full display his abundant talent for charting all of the libidinal currents of the world, all of its varieties of love.
Peter Gadol, author of Silverlake Life and The Stranger Game
*
All of these stories put us at the terrifying center of precarity—the searing vulnerabilities of childhood, of sexuality within hostile environments, even within the storied precarity of certain literary masterpieces—but always the reader's sturdy perch is Joseph Allen Boone's gorgeous prose.

Michelle Latiolais, author of Widow and She
*]]> 176 Joseph Allen Boone Jamie 3 4.00 Conditions of Precarity
author: Joseph Allen Boone
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Exposure (Rita Todacheene, #2)]]> 204642470 In the follow-up to the National Book Award–longlisted Shutter, Navajo forensic photographer Rita Todacheene grapples with a fanatical serial killer—and the ghosts he leaves behind.

A dual-voice cat-and-mouse thriller, told from the points of view of a killer who has created his own deadly religion and the only person who can stop him, an embattled young detective who sees the ghosts of his Native victims.

In Gallup, New Mexico, where violent crime is five times the national average, a serial killer is operating unchecked, his targets indigent Native people whose murders are easily disguised as death by exposure on the frigid winter streets. He slips unnoticed through town, hidden in plain sight by his unassuming nature, while the voices in his head guide him toward a terrifying vision of glory. As the Gallup detectives struggle to put the pieces together, they consider calling in a controversial specialist to help.

Rita Todacheene, Albuquerque PD forensic photographer, is at a crisis point in her career. Her colleagues are watching her with suspicion after the recent revelation that she can see the ghosts of murder victims. Her unmanageable caseload is further complicated by the fact that half the department has blacklisted her for ratting out a corrupt fellow cop. And back home in Tohatchi on the Navajo reservation, Rita's grandma is getting older. Maybe it's time for her to leave policework behind entirely—if only the ghosts will let her.]]> 288 Ramona Emerson 1641294760 Jamie 4 3.82 2024 Exposure (Rita Todacheene, #2)
author: Ramona Emerson
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> Great Expectations 139400711
I’d seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.

When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States� first Black president.

Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions—questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.

Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.]]> 272 Vinson Cunningham 0593448235 Jamie 4 3.24 2024 Great Expectations
author: Vinson Cunningham
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Poppy Fields 218431658
What if there were a cure for the broken-hearted?

Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal.

Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects.

On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields—where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder—each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.

A high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person, posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are we willing to go in order to be healed?]]> 324 Nikki Erlick 0063349337 Jamie 5 4.07 2025 The Poppy Fields
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Lincoln Highway 57109107 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Jamie 5 4.18 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Evening Hero 59365049 A sweeping, lyrical novel following a Korean immigrant pursuing the American dream who must confront the secrets of the past or risk watching the world he’s worked so hard to build come crumbling down.

Dr. Yungman Kwak is in the twilight of his life. Every day for the last fifty years, he has brushed his teeth, slipped on his shoes, and headed to Horse Breath’s General Hospital, where, as an obstetrician, he treats the women and babies of the small rural Minnesota town he chose to call home.

This was the life he longed for. The so-called American dream. He immigrated from Korea after the Korean War, forced to leave his family, ancestors, village, and all that he knew behind. But his life is built on a lie. And one day, a letter arrives that threatens to expose it.

Yungman’s life is thrown into chaos—the hospital abruptly closes, his wife refuses to spend time with him, and his son is busy investing in a struggling health start-up. Yungman faces a choice—he must choose to hide his secret from his family and friends or confess and potentially lose all he’s built. He begins to question the very assumptions on which his life is built—the so-called American dream, with the abject failure of its healthcare system, patient and neighbors who perpetuate racism, a town flawed with infrastructure, and a history that doesn’t see him in it.

Toggling between the past and the present, Korea and America, Evening Hero is a sweeping, moving, darkly comic novel about a man looking back at his life and asking big questions about what is lost and what is gained when immigrants leave home for new shores.]]> 430 Marie Myung-Ok Lee 1476735077 Jamie 5 3.77 2022 The Evening Hero
author: Marie Myung-Ok Lee
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Jamie 0 4.12 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Breath of the Dragon (Breathmarked, #1)]]> 211003924 The first novel in a sweeping YA fantasy duology based on characters and teachings created by Bruce Lee!

Sixteen-year-old Jun dreams of proving his worth as a warrior in the elite Guardian’s Tournament, held every six years to entrust the magical Scroll of Earth to a new protector. Eager to prove his skills, Jun hopes that a win will restore his father’s honor—righting a horrible mistake that caused their banishment from his home, mother, and twin brother.

But Jun’s father strictly forbids him from participating. There is no future in honing his skills as a warrior, especially considering Jun is not breathmarked, born with a patch of dragon scales and blessed with special abilities like his twin. Determined to be the next Guardian, Jun stows away in the wagon of Chang and his daughter, Ren, performers on their way to the capital where the tournament will take place.

As Jun competes, he quickly realizes he may be fighting for not just a better life, but the fate of the country itself.]]> 341 Shannon Lee 1250902673 Jamie 5 3.99 2025 Breath of the Dragon (Breathmarked, #1)
author: Shannon Lee
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
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]]> Punished 214152007 From the internationally bestselling author of the “extraordinary� (Fredrik Backman) novel Stolen comes a harrowing story—inspired by true events—of five Indigenous children forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden, revealing the emotional scars they carry thirty years later.

In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families. As children of Sámi reindeer herders, the Swedish state has mandated they attend a “nomad school� where they are forbidden to speak their native language. As the children visit home only sporadically, their parents know little about the abuse they face, much of it at the hands of the housemother, Rita. Those who dare to speak up are silenced.

Thirty years later, the five children have chosen different paths to cope with the past. Else-Maj holds strong in her Sámi identity but has turned to religion for comfort, while Anne-Risten now goes by Anne to hide her heritage from friends. Nilsa herds reindeer like his father but harbors a lot of anger, and Jon-Ante struggles with traumatic memories from the school. Then there’s Marge, who is about to adopt a daughter from Colombia, but can’t help questioning if it’s right to take a child from her homeland.

Then suddenly, housemother Rita reappears. Now an old, frail woman claiming to have God on her side, she acts like nothing ever happened. But the five former students have neither forgotten nor forgiven her. As the narrative shifts between each of their perspectives, the novel If you had the chance to punish the person who hurt you as a child, would you?

Based on the author’s family story, Punished is a searing novel about loss, memory, cultural erasure, and community that vibrates with righteous rage over one nation’s greatest betrayals of its native people.]]> 448 Ann-Helén Laestadius 1668045516 Jamie 5 4.10 2023 Punished
author: Ann-Helén Laestadius
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Storybook Ending: The feel-good book of the summer]]> 218255654 This is the story of a love triangle... of sorts.

'I so enjoyed Storybook Ending. It's the perfect balance of cosiness and originality � warm, comforting, with a hilarious mix-up at its heart that I couldn't wait to see unravel' Beth O'Leary, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare

April is lonely. Since her office issued a permanent work from home mandate, she's lost herself a little. So, in a bid to break out of the funk, she leaves an anonymous note inside a book for the hot guy at her neighbourhood bookstore.

Laura is a busy single mum. Thanks to the meddling hand of fate, she's the one who finds April's note, thinking it's from the guy who served her at the bookstore. A little flirtation with an attractive man who loves books might be just what she needs.

Meanwhile Westley, handsome but not so perceptive, is too distracted by a movie filming at the shop to notice either woman's furtive glances as they leave notes for each other amid the books in the stacks.

April and Laura's continued anonymous correspondence will shake all three of these characters out of their mundane routines, sparking a glimmer of hope that they might just get what they a storybook ending of their own.

An intricate web of miscommunication and serendipitous encounters, Storybook Ending is a playful tribute to romance, friendship and bookstores; and to the objects � from a forgotten slip of paper to someone's heart � left between the pages of books.]]> Moira Macdonald 1526683814 Jamie 5 3.83 2025 Storybook Ending: The feel-good book of the summer
author: Moira Macdonald
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 5
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]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Jamie 5 3.35 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> Honey 181110082 Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer’s Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past.

As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew Michael bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it’s hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants—to forgive or to avenge.

This electrifying literary breakout from PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato is a masterful and deeply moving portrait of love in all its forms, of moral ambiguity, and of inspiring change—a story of female rage that asks the question: What are the limits of compassion in a world of extraordinary violence?]]> 400 Victor Lodato 0063309610 Jamie 4 3.95 2024 Honey
author: Victor Lodato
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> I Cheerfully Refuse 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Jamie 4 3.96 2024 I Cheerfully Refuse
author: Leif Enger
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic]]> 128713508 400 Daniel de Visé 0802160980 Jamie 4 4.17 2024 The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic
author: Daniel de Visé
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> Behind You Is the Sea 134221617
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America.

Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh, whose aunt married into the wealthy Ammar family, confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring� the family. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.]]> 256 Susan Muaddi Darraj 0063324237 Jamie 4 4.07 2024 Behind You Is the Sea
author: Susan Muaddi Darraj
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> In Universes 195853541
In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to the question of what life would be like if events had played out just a little differently. The universes grow increasingly strange: women fracture into hordes of animals, alien-infested bears prowl apocalyptic landscapes. But across them all, Raffi—alongside their sometimes-friends, sometimes-lovers Britt, Kay, and Graham—reaches for a life that feels authentically their own.

Blending realism with science fiction, In Universes explores the thirst for genius, the fluidity of gender and identity, and the pull of the past against the desire to lead a meaningful life. Part Ted Chiang, part Carmen Maria Machado, part Everything Everywhere All At Once, In Universes insists on the transgressive power of hope even in the darkest of times.]]> 240 Emet North 0063314878 Jamie 4 3.82 2024 In Universes
author: Emet North
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> Cinema Love 196929949
For over thirty years, Old Second and his wife, Bao Mei, have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two aren’t in love. In rural China, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers� Cinema: a rundown theater where gay men cruised without fear for intimacy and conversation.

While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found privacy—and love—in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold tickets to closeted men; guarding their secrets, guiding them in their relationships, and even finding her own happiness with the theater’s projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his lover is discovered, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.

As we follow these characters from China to New York, from first love to old age, we bear witness to the tensions of immigration—and how memory forever weighs down the present. Cinema Love is a big-hearted and heart-shattering novel about desire, secrets, grief, how we care for one another, and how we survive.]]> 304 Jiaming Tang 0593474333 Jamie 4 3.76 2024 Cinema Love
author: Jiaming Tang
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> Confess: The Autobiography 48613493 The legendary frontman of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, celebrates five decades of heavy metal in this tell-all memoir.


Most priests hear confessions. This one is making his.

Rob Halford, front man of global iconic metal band Judas Priest, is a true "Metal God." Raised in Britain's hard-working, heavy industrial heartland, he and his music were forged in the Black Country. Confess, his full autobiography, is an unforgettable rock 'n' roll story-a journey from a Walsall council estate to musical fame via alcoholism, addiction, police cells, ill-fated sexual trysts, and bleak personal tragedy, through to rehab, coming out, redemption . . . and finding love.


Now, he is telling his gospel truth.

Told with Halford's trademark self-deprecating, deadpan Black Country humor, Confess is the story of an extraordinary five decades in the music industry. It is also the tale of unlikely encounters with everybody from Superman to Andy Warhol, Madonna, Jack Nicholson, and the Queen. More than anything else, it's a celebration of the fire and power of heavy metal.


Rob Halford has decided to Confess. Because it's good for the soul.]]> 355 Rob Halford 0306874946 Jamie 4 4.38 2020 Confess: The Autobiography
author: Rob Halford
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
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]]> Dixon, Descending 154488337 A powerful, heartrending debut novel about ambition, survival, and our responsibilities to one another

Dixon was once an Olympic-level runner, but he missed the team by two-tenths of a second. Ever since that disappointment decades ago, he hasn’t allowed a goal to consume him. But when his charming older brother, Nate, suggests they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, Dixon can’t refuse. The brothers are determined to prove something—to themselves and to each other. Dixon, Descending is a captivating, shattering portrait of the ways we’re reshaped by our decisions—and what it takes to angle ourselves, once again, toward hope.]]> 336 Karen Outen 0593473450 Jamie 4 3.93 2024 Dixon, Descending
author: Karen Outen
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Volcano Daughters 202468410 A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren’t yet done telling their stories.

El Salvador, 1923. Graciela grows up on a volcano in a community of indigenous women indentured to coffee plantations owned by the country’s wealthiest, until a messenger from the Capital comes to claim at nine years old she’s been chosen to be an oracle for a rising dictator—a sinister, violent man wedded to the occult. She’ll help foresee the future of the country.

In the Capital she meets Consuelo, the sister she’s never known, stolen away from their home before Graciela was born. The two are a small fortress within the dictator’s regime, but they’re no match for El Gran Pendejo’s cruelty. Years pass and terror rises as the economy flatlines, and Graciela comes to understand the horrific vision that she’s unwittingly helped shape just as genocide strikes the community that raised her. She and Consuelo barely escape, each believing the other to be dead. They run, crossing the globe, reinventing their lives, and ultimately reconnecting at the least likely moment.

Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters charts, through the stories of these sisters and the ghosts they carry with them, a new history and mythology of El Salvador, fiercely bringing forth voices that have been calling out for generations.]]> 368 Gina María Balibrera 0593317238 Jamie 4 3.51 2024 The Volcano Daughters
author: Gina María Balibrera
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer]]> 202220516 A stirring, unsparing debut novel about black life in Philadelphia and the struggle to build intimate connections through the eyes of a struggling ex-Army grad student, from the "extraordinary [and] insightful" author of Sink (New York Times Book Review). After a deployment in the Iraq War, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a MD/PhD student at The University of Pennsylvania, and an emergency department tech at a hospital in North Philly, he becomes interested in the Holmesburg Prison Experiments, in which the prison conducted scientific trials on their inmates. Through this curiosity he comes to know his estranged father, who is serving time for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, his best friend Murray, a fellow vet, judges the journey he sets out upon, while simultaneously pushing him towards a ruinous self-discovery. Balancing single fatherhood, his studies, and long shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his more storied friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.]]> 240 Joseph Earl Thomas 1538740982 Jamie 4 3.68 2024 God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
author: Joseph Earl Thomas
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> Billy Joel 20890500
In Billy Joel, acclaimed music journalist Fred Schruers draws upon more than one hundred hours of exclusive interviews with Joel to present an unprecedented look at the life, career, and legacy of the pint-sized kid from Long Island who became a rock icon.

Exhibiting unparalleled intimate knowledge, Schruers chronicles Joel’s rise to the top of the charts, from his working-class origins in Levittown and early days spent in boxing rings and sweaty clubs to his monumental success in the seventies and eighties. He also explores Joel’s creative transformation in the nineties, his dream performance with Paul McCartney at Shea Stadium in 2008, and beyond.

Along the way, Schruers reveals the stories behind all the key events and relationships—including Joel’s high-profile marriages and legal battles—that defined his path to stardom and inspired his signature songs, such as “Piano Man,� “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,� “New York State of Mind,� and “She’s Always a Woman.� Throughout, he captures the spirit of a restless artist determined to break through by sharing, in his deeply personal lyrics, the dreams and heartbreaks of suburban American life.

Comprehensive, vibrantly written, and filled with Joel’s memories and reflections—as well as those of the family, friends, and band members who have formed his inner circle, including Christie Brinkley, Alexa Ray Joel, Jon Small, and Steve Cohen—this is the definitive account of a beloved rock star’s epic American journey.]]> 387 Fred Schruers 0804140197 Jamie 4 3.87 2014 Billy Joel
author: Fred Schruers
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America]]> 123088235 From the Northern Rockies to the Southwest deserts, Betsy Gaines Quammen explores how myths shape our identities, heighten polarizations, and fracture our shared understanding of the world around us. As she investigates the origins and effects of myths of the American West, Gaines Quammen travels through small towns and big cities, engaging people and building relationships at every stop. Misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the well-being of people and communities across the country, and Gaines Quammen interrogates it all as she seeks to reconcile the anger and misunderstandings that continue to be fueled by the West’s enduring myths and complex history. Whether sitting down with a militia member seeking to protect his rural Utah town from Antifa or talking with grassroots organizers working across ideological divides, Gaines Quammen brings to life connections and contradictions that shape our politics and our lives far beyond the West.]]> 318 Betsy Gaines Quammen 1948814870 Jamie 4 4.15 True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America
author: Betsy Gaines Quammen
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> Two-Step Devil 197239494
It's 2014 in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, where the Prophet—a 70-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local dump, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael and the Prophet feels certain that she is his Big Fish, a messenger sent by God to take his apocalyptic warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past—and perhaps change her future.

Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.]]> 269 Jamie Quatro 0802163130 Jamie 5 3.77 2024 Two-Step Devil
author: Jamie Quatro
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
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]]> Catalina 202907408 A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.

Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?]]> 224 Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 0593449096 Jamie 5 3.58 2024 Catalina
author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> 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 Jamie 5 3.90 2024 Rejection
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> The Most 201626978
A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most is an epic story in one single day, masterly breaching the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.]]> 144 Jessica Anthony 0316576379 Jamie 5 3.31 2024 The Most
author: Jessica Anthony
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Jamie 5 3.82 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> My Friends 127488823
The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much lessreturn tothe country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautifulworkof literature by an authorat the peak of his powers.]]> 399 Hisham Matar 081299485X Jamie 5 4.31 2024 My Friends
author: Hisham Matar
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
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]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Jamie 5 3.54 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

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 Tehran 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.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Jamie 5 4.23 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
Martyr! is a literary Rosetta Stone. Dark and fragmentary, with the power of illumination. A hero's journey that becomes a philosophical key, unlocking the liminal space between love and sex, truth and myth, death and martyrdom. Both joyful and absurd, Kaveh Akbar's novel is a poetic repatriation to one's true self–a paean to those who feel unwelcome in their own identities. If there is an art to dying well, this book is a hypnogogic masterpiece.
]]> Ghostroots: Stories 200196202 A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.

’Pemi Aguda opens her collection of twelve stories with the chilling tale of a woman who uncannily resembles her sinister, deceased grandmother. When the woman shows a capacity for deadly violence, she wonders—can evil be genetic, passed from generation to generation?

Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Aguda’s stories unfold against a spectral cityscape where the everyday business of living—the birth of a baby, a market visit, a conversation between mothers and daughters—is charged with an air of supernatural menace. In “Breastmilk� a new mother’s inability to lactate takes on preternatural overtones. In �24, Alhaji Williams Street� a mysterious disease wreaks havoc with frightening precision. In “The Hollow,� an architect stumbles on a vengeful house.

Evocative, strange, and yet familiar, “the speculative conceits of these stories are elegantly balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human in the world� (Lauren Groff).]]> 224 Pemi Aguda 1324065850 Jamie 5 4.04 2024 Ghostroots: Stories
author: Pemi Aguda
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
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Ghostroots is a gorgeous inflection point in fabulism. Set in Lagos, at the confluence of tradition and wonder, the speculative currents of these stories pull you beneath the surface of contemporary Nigerian society, carrying you to a deeper place where the laws of literary physics no longer apply. 'Pemi Aguda's razor-sharp collection will haunt you and leave you feeling unmoored.
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Jamie 5
I was one of the judges.

While that was an amazing honor, it meant that I couldn't talk about this book (or any of the books) until now. To say this book is a reimagining of Huck Finn is too reductive. This book is more than that. This book stands on its own. It's a beautiful, immersive read that is like a system upgrade for the heart and mind of anyone who reads it. This book may also undo the historical whitewashing caused by Gone with the Wind. A profound, culture-changing novel.]]> 4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:
JAMES just won the National Book Award.

I was one of the judges.

While that was an amazing honor, it meant that I couldn't talk about this book (or any of the books) until now. To say this book is a reimagining of Huck Finn is too reductive. This book is more than that. This book stands on its own. It's a beautiful, immersive read that is like a system upgrade for the heart and mind of anyone who reads it. This book may also undo the historical whitewashing caused by Gone with the Wind. A profound, culture-changing novel.
]]> <![CDATA[The Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. �The Judgment,� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and �The Stoker,� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with �The Metamorphosis,� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are �In the Penal Colony,� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and �A Hunger Artist,� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Jamie 4
I'm in a guys' book club and we rate books on a scale of 1-6 beers. We gave this one a solid 4. ]]> 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
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Mixed feelings about this one. It's definitely not the kind of book you read for pleasure since the stories are so abstract (even surreal). But, it did make for a great Books & Brews book club pick because THERE WAS SO MUCH TO DISCUSS. :)

I'm in a guys' book club and we rate books on a scale of 1-6 beers. We gave this one a solid 4.
]]> The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]> 208 Aldous Huxley Jamie 3 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2024/08/07
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It's like reading a book about psychedelics, written by someone on cocaine.
]]> This Is Not a Ghost Story 199793438 Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Amerie’sdazzling,satirical adult debut tells the story ofa Black man who walks into the light…to find himself in Los Angeles, where he becomes an instant celebrity for being the first visible and verifiable ghost.

John’s House provides all he needs. Surrounded by a vast, beautiful ocean under a void of sky, the House is John’s haven. He is alone, but never lonely; he is here now, but neither remembers nor longs for a before. In his House, John is safe and untroubled.

But then a terrible shadow creature breaks in—and it wants him out. Pushed from the House, John falls into the light�

And finds himself in modern-day Los Angeles, the first person to ever come back from the other side. Though he has no memory of his past life, or even how he died, everyone wants to know more about the Black man who has returned from the dead—is he the second coming? A hoax? Or something beyond explanation? Soon he has brand deals, TV interviews, and politicians aiming to use him for their agendas, yet all John wants is to go home.

But going home will require, most unfortunately, help. In search of a way back, John grudgingly joins forces with a mystic holding dubious qualifications, a hard-edged publicist bent on making him famous, and an aspiring actress who is unsettlingly familiar. With this ragtag band of allies, John begins a journey to find his House on the ocean—but getting there will prove more complicated than he imagined, for it will require not only trusting in someone other than himself, but will mean uncovering painful truths about who John was in life and, perhaps most difficult, who he must become.

A gorgeous, tender story of hope, sacrifice, and what it means to be human,This Is Not a Ghost Story introduces an astonishing new voice in literary fiction.]]> 304 Amerie 0358653088 Jamie 5 4.08 This Is Not a Ghost Story
author: Amerie
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> <![CDATA[1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus]]> 39020 In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

]]> 563 Charles C. Mann 1400032059 Jamie 4 4.04 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee]]> 49247089
"Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless like water."

Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, renowned the world over for his martial arts and film legacy. But Lee was also a deeply philosophical thinker, learning at an early age that martial arts are more than just an exercise in physical discipline―they are an apt metaphor for living a fully realized life.

Now, in Be Water, My Friend , Lee’s daughter Shannon shares the concepts at the core of his philosophies, showing how they can serve as tools of personal growth and self-actualization. Each chapter brings a lesson from Bruce Lee’s teachings, expanding on the foundation of his iconic “be water� philosophy. Over the course of the book, we discover how being like water allows us to embody fluidity and naturalness in life, bringing us closer to our essential flowing nature and our ability to be powerful, self-expressed, and free.

Through previously untold stories from her father’s life and from her own journey in embodying these lessons, Shannon presents these philosophies in tangible, accessible ways. With Bruce Lee’s words as a guide, she encourages readers to pursue their essential selves and apply these ideas and practices to their everyday lives―whether in learning new things, overcoming obstacles, or ultimately finding their true path.

Be Water, My Friend is an inspirational invitation to us all, a gentle call to action to consider our lives with new eyes. It is also a testament to how one man's exploration and determination transcended time and place to ignite our imaginations―and to inspire many around the world to transform their lives.]]> 240 Shannon Lee 1250206685 Jamie 5 4.17 2020 Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee
author: Shannon Lee
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> When Women Were Dragons 58783802 A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.]]> 367 Kelly Barnhill 0385548222 Jamie 5 3.79 2022 When Women Were Dragons
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/05/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Case of the Disappearing Beaune]]> 61997438 47 J. Lawrence Matthews 1736678361 Jamie 5 4.35 The Case of the Disappearing Beaune
author: J. Lawrence Matthews
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
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]]> The Fallen Fruit 202397234
On a rainy day in May 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis begins to search for the sixty-five acres of land she inherited from her father’s family. The quest leads her to uncover a dark In every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes—and is mysteriously whisked back in time. Rules have been established that must be followed to prevent dire

Never interfere with past events.

Always carry your free Negro papers.

Search for the survival family packs in the orchard and surrounding forest. The ribbon on the pack designates the decade the pack was made to orient you in time.

Do not speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary.

With only a family Bible and a map marked with the locations of mysterious containers to aid her, Cecily heads to the library, hoping to discover the truth of how this curse began, and how it might be ended. As she moves through time, she encounters a circle of ancestors, including Sabrina Humbles, a free Black woman who must find the courage to seize an opportunity—or lose her heart; Luke Bridge, who traverses battlefields, slavery, and time itself to reunite with his family; Rebecca Bridge, a mother tested by an ominous threat; and Amelia Bridge, a young woman burdened with survivor's guilt who will face the challenge of a lifetime—and change Cecily's life forever. It is a race through time and against the clock to find the answers that will free her family forever.

Shawntelle Madison’s historical fiction debut is an enthralling, page-turning family saga about the inevitability of fate, the invincibility of love, and the indelible bonds of family.]]> 448 Shawntelle Madison 0063290618 Jamie 5 3.97 2024 The Fallen Fruit
author: Shawntelle Madison
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> Three Keys 199927676
Becoming invisible is painful . . . unless you know how to work it.

Ammalie Brinks has just lost the three keys of her life’s purpose—her husband, her job, and her role as a mom after her son went off to college. She’s also mystified to find herself in middle age—how exactly had that happened? The idea of becoming irrelevant, invisible, of letting her life vaguely slip away—well, the terror of that has her driving through Nebraska with a fork in her hair.

What she does have is this: three literal keys, saved in a drawer for years. Keys to homes she hopes will be empty, from her and her husband's past--homes she plans on breaking into. And so Ammalie embarks on an international and increasingly complicated journey—criminal behavior turns out to be challenging—as she seeks to find a life truly her own. And that middle age business? As someone breaking the law, she finds there's real benefit to being invisible while she works on becoming the striking, bold, and very much manifested self she wants to be.

Laura Pritchett, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction and the Colorado Book Award, offers a delightful exploration of the very serious business of living a full and honest life. Filled with love, heartbreak, and criminal behavior, Three Keys tackles the unavoidable sorrows and joys coming of age (again) with the zest and vigor that it deserves.]]> 336 Laura Pritchett 0593724208 Jamie 5 3.74 2024 Three Keys
author: Laura Pritchett
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/29
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]]> <![CDATA[You Are Not Too Much: Love Notes on Heartache, Redemption & Reclamation]]> 41808110
The very idea is preposterous. Because you were born to be you. All of you. Not a tiny acceptable sliver. Not a watered down version with colors dulled and edges softened.

No. You were meant to be every last pulsing-bleeding-loving-crying-feeling bit."

You Are Not Too Much is a beautifully designed book of inspirational passages, quotes, and wisdom meant to be a companion, a guide, and a map to help you remember who you are.

A reminder of your strength.
A reminder of your magic.
A reminder of your beauty.
A reminder of your wild heart and your holy howl.
And a reminder that no, you are not too much.
You never have been.
You never will be.

This book is for everyone who has been called too much.

You are exactly as we should be. We all are.

Every last too-much bit.]]> 186 Jeanette LeBlanc 0997416424 Jamie 5 4.71 You Are Not Too Much: Love Notes on Heartache, Redemption & Reclamation
author: Jeanette LeBlanc
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.71
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
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]]> Chinatown Inside Out 144383502 0 Leong Gor Yun Jamie 0 0.0 Chinatown Inside Out
author: Leong Gor Yun
name: Jamie
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[A History of the World in 12 Maps]]> 17674972 A fascinating look at twelve maps—from Ancient Greece to Google Earth—and how they changed our world

In this masterful study, historian and cartography expert Jerry Brotton explores a dozen of history’s most influential maps, from stone tablet to vibrant computer screen. Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we—literally—look at our present world.

As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also conjures the worlds that produced these notable works of cartography and tells the stories of those who created, used, and misused them for their own ends.]]> 521 Jerry Brotton 0670023396 Jamie 4 3.77 2012 A History of the World in 12 Maps
author: Jerry Brotton
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
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]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

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

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

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Jamie 0 to-read 4.29 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A History of California: The Spanish Period]]> 26660355 558 Charles Edward Chapman 129760590X Jamie 0 2.25 1921 A History of California: The Spanish Period
author: Charles Edward Chapman
name: Jamie
average rating: 2.25
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America]]> 2087820
In the summer of 2003, at home for his parents� fiftieth wedding anniversary, Paul Chiasson decided to climb a mountain he had never explored on the island where eight generations of his Acadian family had lived. Cape Breton is one of the oldest points of exploration and settlement in the Americas, with a history dating back to the first days of European discovery, and it is littered with the remnants of old settlements. But the road that Chiasson found that day was unique. Well-made and consistently wide, and at one time clearly bordered with stone walls, the road had been a major undertaking. In the two years of detective work that followed, Chiasson systematically surveyed the history of Europeans in North America, and came to a stunning conclusion: the ruins he stumbled upon did not belong to the Portuguese, the French or the English � in fact, they pre-dated John Cabot’s “discovery� of the island in 1497.

Using aerial and site photographs, maps and drawings, and his own expertise as an architect, Chiasson carries the reader along as he pieces together the clues to one of the world’s great mysteries. While tantalizing mentions can be found in early navigators� journals and maps, The Island of Seven Cities reveals for the first time the existence of a large Chinese colony that thrived on Canadian shores well before the European Age of Discovery.

Chiasson addresses how the colony was abandoned and forgotten, in the New World and in China, except in the storytelling and culture of the Mi’kmaq, whose written language, clothing, technical knowledge, religious beliefs and legends, he argues, expose deep cultural roots in China. The Island of Seven Cities unveils the first tangible proof that the Chinese were in the New World before Columbus.]]> 384 Paul Chiasson 0679314555 Jamie 0 3.69 2006 The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America
author: Paul Chiasson
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> The Last Opium Den 40693
Driven by romantic, spiritual, and medicinal imperatives, Nick Tosches goes in search of something everyone tells him no longer exists: an opium den. From Europe to Hong Kong to Thailand to Cambodia, he hunts the Big Smoke, bewildered by its elusiveness and, despite the meaning it continues to evoke as a cultural touchstone, its alleged extinction. Weaving his spiritual and hallucinogenic quests together with inimitable, razor-sharp prose, Tosches's trip becomes a deeper meditation on what true fulfillment is and why no one bothers to look for it any more.]]> 72 Nick Tosches 158234227X Jamie 4 4.05 2001 The Last Opium Den
author: Nick Tosches
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/08
date added: 2024/03/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Wrecked Japanese Junks Adrift in the North Pacific Ocean]]> 1295414 202 Bert Webber 0877703094 Jamie 3 3.00 1984 Wrecked Japanese Junks Adrift in the North Pacific Ocean
author: Bert Webber
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/07
date added: 2024/03/07
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]]> statements and addenda: poems 60681808 55 Yuri Matsko Jamie 4 4.50 statements and addenda: poems
author: Yuri Matsko
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture]]> 173404158
You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice ’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.

With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller,former Voice writerTricia Romanopays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romanotells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.]]> 608 Tricia Romano 1541736397 Jamie 0 to-read 4.25 The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
author: Tricia Romano
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Perks of Being a Wallflower]]> 22628 offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(back cover)]]> 213 Stephen Chbosky Jamie 5 4.24 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower
author: Stephen Chbosky
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/26
date added: 2024/02/26
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]]> Old King 194027859
In the spring of America’s bicentennial, a man named Duane Oshun runs out of gas in Lincoln, Montana, a former mining boomtown. In this outlaw community, Duane joins a logging crew, falls for a waitress, and attempts to befriend his neighbor, a loner named Ted Kaczynski. Though the two men share a fascination with the Old King, an ancient Douglas fir anchoring the valley’s endangered old-growth forest, Kaczynski's violent grievances against modern society will shake the nation and place Duane in grave danger.

Told in four parts sweeping across two decades, Old King establishes Maxim Loskutoff as one of the most inventive and exciting authors of the American west. As Kaczynski’s bombs crescendo to the book’s devastating conclusion, Old King wrestles with the birth of the modern environmental movement, the accelerating dominion of technology in American life, and a new kind of violence that lives next door.]]> 304 Maxim Loskutoff 0393868206 Jamie 5 4.33 2024 Old King
author: Maxim Loskutoff
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2024/02/22
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]]> The Chinese Groove 58978261
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the "Chinese groove," a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.

Upon arrival, Shelley is dismayed to find that his "rich uncle" is in fact his unemployed second cousin once removed and that the grand guest room he’d envisioned is but a crappy sofa. The indefinite stay he’d planned for? That has a firm two-week expiration date. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. They want nothing to do with this youthful bounder who’s barged into their lives. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family. And, who knows, maybe he’ll even manage to bring them back together in the process.]]> 304 Kathryn Ma 1640095667 Jamie 0 to-read 3.89 2023 The Chinese Groove
author: Kathryn Ma
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 2: Off-World]]> 52031370 Winner of the 2020 SCRIBE AWARD for best Graphic Novel, this critically acclaimed graphic novel, is the official sequel to the cult classic 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott. Co-written by Michael Green, the Academy Award nominated screenwriter of Logan, Blade Runner 2049, and Murder on the Orient Express.

From the rain soaked dystopic world of Los Angeles 2019 to the never-before-seen promised land of the Off-World colonies, Replicant-hating Blade Runner Ash' search for the runaway wife and child of a rich industrialist takes her where no other Blade Runner has ever gone before.

Ash must deal with the life-changing after-effects of Titan Comics' Blade Runner 2019 storyline - but a powerful new threat puts her life in danger once more.]]> 114 Michael Green 1787731928 Jamie 5 3.87 2020 Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 2: Off-World
author: Michael Green
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 1: Los Angeles]]> 45033606 Return to the original world of Blade Runner 2019.

Welcome to the rain soaked world of Los Angeles 2019 - a dystopic world of Replicants, Spinners and hardboiled future noir. There's a new Blade Runner in town, and she's out for blood. Replicant blood.

This officially sanctioned sequel comic to the original Blade Runner film is written by Michael Green, the screenwriter of Blade Runner 2049.]]> 114 Michael Green 1787731618 Jamie 5 4.02 2019 Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 1: Los Angeles
author: Michael Green
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Legion of Super-Heroes, Vol. 1: Millennium]]> 48932523 The future of the DC Universe is NOW! Join superstar writer BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS and visionary artist RYAN SOOK for an all-new incarnation of a legendary superhero team!

One thousand years into the future, a new generation of young heroes has gathered, inspired by the actions and lessons of the greatest heroes of the past. They are the Legion of Super-Heroes, and they're here to stop the universe from repeating its past mistakes.

But by inducting the 21st century's Superboy, Jonathan Kent, into the Legion, they've broken the United Planets' cardinal rule: never, ever mess with the time stream. Now, they've placed themselves in the crosshairs of the powers that be.

Origins will be revealed. Secrets will be uncovered. Friendships will be forged--and shattered. New members of the Legion will be inducted--including Superboy's best friend Damian Wayne, a.k.a. Robin!

And one thing's for certain: the future is not what it used to be!

This bold new reinvention of an iconic DC franchise unleashes fresh, new reader-friendly stories! Guest-starring a legion of special guest artists, including JIM LEE, JIM CHEUNG, NICOLA SCOTT, ANDREA SORRENTINO, and more, this first volume collects Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1-2 and Legion of Super-Heroes #1-6!]]> 160 Brian Michael Bendis 1401295770 Jamie 4 3.23 2020 Legion of Super-Heroes, Vol. 1: Millennium
author: Brian Michael Bendis
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> Pale Ink 25646694 179 Henriette Mertz 1465578943 Jamie 3 2.76 2009 Pale Ink
author: Henriette Mertz
name: Jamie
average rating: 2.76
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/18
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]]> Family Family 127282881 “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 1250236800 Jamie 0 to-read 3.96 2024 Family Family
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club]]> 196845474 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 432 Helen Simonson 1984801317 Jamie 5 3.84 2024 The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
author: Helen Simonson
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/11
date added: 2024/01/11
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]]> Palestine 769712 Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995—Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism—the acclaimed author was best known for Palestine, a two-volume graphic novel that won an American Book Award in 1996.

Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present the first single-volume collection of this landmark of journalism and the art form of comics.

Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism. Like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine has been favorably compared to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus for its ability to brilliantly navigate such socially and politically sensitive subject matter within the confines of the comic book medium.

Sacco has often been called the first comic book journalist, and he is certainly the best. This edition of Palestine also features an introduction from renowned author, critic, and historian Edward Said (Peace and Its Discontents and The Question of Palestine), one of the world's most respected authorities on the Middle Eastern conflict.

]]> 288 Joe Sacco 156097432X Jamie 5 4.23 1996 Palestine
author: Joe Sacco
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> Selling Out 1408847 Dan Wakefield 0140089829 Jamie 4 3.40 1986 Selling Out
author: Dan Wakefield
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Purloined Letter (C. Auguste Dupin, #3)]]> 278854 48 Edgar Allan Poe 0886820618 Jamie 4 3.65 1844 The Purloined Letter (C. Auguste Dupin, #3)
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1844
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail]]> 9791 A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).]]> 397 Bill Bryson 0307279464 Jamie 4 4.07 1998 A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
author: Bill Bryson
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> The Haunting of Hill House 89717 182 Shirley Jackson 0143039989 Jamie 4 3.85 1959 The Haunting of Hill House
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves:
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]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X Jamie 4 4.33 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Harlan Ellison Hornbook / Harlan Ellison's Movie (Edgeworks, #3)]]> 216184 Edgeworks program, in which White Wolf and its Borealis Legends imprint continue to release damned near every book ever written by Harlan Ellison. And this time, in yet another gigantic volume featuring two complete Ellison titles, we combine a major collection of his incomparable, troublemaking, uncompromising, confrontational essays, plus a foreword by award-winning author Robert Crais, with a rare, previously unavailable (except in a $100 very limited edition) publication of Harlan Ellison's Movie, the full-length feature film he created when a producer at 20th Century-Fox said to him, "If we gave you the money, and no interference, what sort of movie would you write?" Well, that producer is not only no longer at 20th, he left the whole entire venue of moviemaking after Harlan Ellison's Movie was seen by the Suits at the studio. There's no use even trying to describe what this film is about, except to confirm the long-standing rumor that it contains a scene in which a 70-foot-tall boll weevil chews and swallows an entire farmhouse and silo on camera. (It's Scene 33C.) What you might want to do, if you have a moment before carrying this swell book to the cash register up front, is to grab the book clerk who filed Edgeworks 3 in with the crappy Star Trek novelizations and all those dumb books with unicorns lifting their legs to pee golden on an elm tree, and say to that clerk, "You really ought to cross-file this lovely volume with Current Affairs or Pop Culture or Essays or Film of Books About Movies." Because if they've got it in a section that employs the letter "s" and "f"--well, that's just the behavior of zombies.]]> 539 Harlan Ellison 1565049624 Jamie 4 4.18 1997 The Harlan Ellison Hornbook / Harlan Ellison's Movie (Edgeworks, #3)
author: Harlan Ellison
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> Where You End 127278989 A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
A Mary Calvi Book Club Pick

“A perfectly paced, addictive thriller with a vicious twist.� —Paula Hawkins

When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma, she sees her mirror image: Jude, her twin sister. Jude’s face and name are the only memories Kat has from before her accident. As Kat tries to make sense of things, she believes Jude will provide all the answers to her most pressing questions: What happened? Where am I? Who am I?

Amid this tragedy, Jude sees an irresistible opportunity: she can give her sister a brand-new past, one worlds away from the lives they really led. She spins tales of an idyllic childhood, exotic travels, and a bright future.

But if everything was so perfect, who are the mysterious people following Kat? And what explains her uncontrollable flashes of violent anger, which begin to jeopardize a sweet new romance?

Duped by the one person she trusted, Kat must try to untangle fact from fiction. Yet as she pulls at the threads of Jude’s elaborate tapestry, she has no idea of the catastrophe she’s inviting.

Intensely creepy and beautifully written, Abbott Kahler’s Where You End is an unforgettable tale of intrigue, revenge, and the quest for redemption.]]> 336 Abbott Kahler 125087324X Jamie 5 3.12 2024 Where You End
author: Abbott Kahler
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
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]]> Blacksad (Blacksad, #1-3) 7342071
Whether John Blacksad is falling for dangerous women or getting beaten to within an inch of his life, his stories are, simply put, unforgettable.

* Dark Horse is very proud to present the first three Blacksad stories in a beautiful hardcover collection, completely relettered to the artist's specifications and with the latest album, Red Soul , in English for the very first time.

* This internationally acclaimed series has won nearly a dozen prestigious awards � including the Angoulême Comics Festival prizes for Best Series and Best Artwork-and is a three-time Eisner Award nominee.]]> 184 Juan Díaz Canales 159582393X Jamie 0 4.31 2006 Blacksad (Blacksad, #1-3)
author: Juan Díaz Canales
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land]]> 180871112 368 Vanessa Miller 0840708874 Jamie 5 4.11 The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land
author: Vanessa Miller
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
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]]> The Phoenix Crown 64417401
San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.]]> 384 Kate Quinn 0063304732 Jamie 5 3.76 2024 The Phoenix Crown
author: Kate Quinn
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again]]> 83817467 Comedian and musician Reggie Watts shares his story of growing up in Montana as a biracial oddball struggling to navigate life, girls, drugs, and his own identity in America's heartland--and having a blast doing it.

Reggie Watts is weird. But you knew that. Anyone who's seen his multifaceted, entirely improvised comedy and music shows knows that. Reggie Watts is also from the town of Great Falls, MT.

These two facts are not unrelated.

Watts grew up in Montana in the '80s, half French, half American, half white, half Black, speaking a bunch of different languages and slipping between the orchestra geeks and the football jocks until he finally found a squad of fellow misfits with an affinity for trouble. It was a wide-open time and place that invited freedom and exploration--as well as car theft and the not infrequent use of recreational cough syrup. And it helped him become the uniquely strange creative voice he is today.

In Great Falls, MT, Watts takes us through his story, hitting on the culture shock he experienced after moving from Europe to the heart of America, where he was called racial slurs by neighbors but wasn't Black enough for his father's extended family. Where he fought with his authoritarian dad, built a new family of antiestablishment, post-punk oddballs--and ultimately knew he had to leave. But after Watts's career exploded in Seattle and New York, ultimately scoring him a nightly place next to James Corden on The Late Late Show, he found himself drawn back to his hometown after the deaths of his parents. This is his love letter to the town that made him. But like love itself, it's messy and complicated and dirty and beautiful--and as weird and wonderful as Watts himself.]]> 357 Reggie Watts 0593472470 Jamie 4
Not gonna lie, outta nowhere I cried at the end.

Was not expecting that.

Also, I live in Great Falls, my wife went to the same high school as Reggie (a few years behind) so this book really hits in a special way. If you have a chance to see him live, I highly recommend it.]]> 4.01 Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again
author: Reggie Watts
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.01
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2023/11/20
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Fun, strange, wonderful, heartfelt memoir.

Not gonna lie, outta nowhere I cried at the end.

Was not expecting that.

Also, I live in Great Falls, my wife went to the same high school as Reggie (a few years behind) so this book really hits in a special way. If you have a chance to see him live, I highly recommend it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency]]> 31493380
Most students of the Old West and American law enforcement history know the story of the notorious and ruthless Pinkerton Detective Agency and the legends behind their role in establishing the Secret Service and tangling with Old West Outlaws. But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America—and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters—are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne’s probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.]]> 184 Chris Enss 1493008331 Jamie 0 3.51 2017 The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency
author: Chris Enss
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/11/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silk Roads: A New History of the World]]> 30689343
Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century--this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now--as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.]]> 647 Peter Frankopan 1101912375 Jamie 0 to-read 4.17 2015 The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
author: Peter Frankopan
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[We Are Not Strangers: A Graphic Novel]]> 98652044
Marco Calvo always knew his grandfather, affectionately called Papoo, was a good man. After all, he was named for him. A first-generation Jewish immigrant, Papoo was hardworking, smart, and caring. When Papoo peacefully passes away, Marco expects the funeral to be simple. However, he is caught off guard by something unusual. Among his close family and friends are mourners he doesn’t recognize—Japanese American families—and no one is quite sure who they are or why they are at the service. How did these strangers know his grandfather so well?

Set in the multicultural Central District of Seattle during World War II and inspired by author and artist Josh Tuininga’s family experiences, We Are Not Strangers explores a unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war. Following Marco’s grandfather’s perspective, we learn of his life as a Sephardic Jewish immigrant living in America and his struggles as he settles into an America gearing up its war efforts. Despite the war raging just outside US borders, Papoo befriends Sam Akiyama, a Japanese man who finds his world upended from President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Determined to keep Sam’s business afloat while he and his family are unjustly incarcerated, Papoo creates a plan that not only changes the lives of the Akiyamas but of the entire Nihonmachi community.]]> 197 Josh Tuininga 1419759949 Jamie 5 4.34 2023 We Are Not Strangers: A Graphic Novel
author: Josh Tuininga
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/16
date added: 2023/10/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story]]> 609782 220 Clark Humphrey 092291527X Jamie 0 to-read 4.11 Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story
author: Clark Humphrey
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Becoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon]]> 35852435 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

The author of the New York Times bestseller You Are the Placebo, as well as Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and Evolve Your Brain, draws on research conducted at his advanced workshops since 2012 to explore how common people are doing the uncommon to transform themselves and their lives.

Becoming Supernatural marries the some of the most profound scientific information with ancient wisdom to show how people like you and me can experience a more mystical life.

Readers will learn that we are, quite literally supernatural by nature if given the proper knowledge and instruction, and when we learn how to apply that information through various meditations, we should experience a greater expression of our creative abilities; that we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind, and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth. Topics include:

� Demystifying the body’s 7 energy centers and how you can balance them to heal
� How to free yourself from the past by reconditioning your body to a new mind
� How you can create reality in the generous present moment by changing your energy
� The difference between third-dimension creation and fifth-dimension creation
� The secret science of the pineal gland and its role in accessing mystical realms of reality
� The distinction between Space-Time vs. Time-Space realities

And much more...]]> 375 Joe Dispenza 1401953107 Jamie 0 to-read 4.25 2017 Becoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon
author: Joe Dispenza
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Jamie 5
It was as you'd imagine, a lobby full of moms and sons (dressed in their finest nerdery), and us in a room as the casting agent called the children in one by one to read lines. Some were amazing, others clearly didn't want to be there or if they did, they were nervous to the point of paralysis.

The whole thing made me very uncomfortable.

Afterwards as I left with the director, we passed one of the moms on the street, berating her child to the chagrin of passers-by. This boy stared feebly at the ground while she yelled.

I said, "HI, THANKS FOR COMING IN!" I spoke loudly, so she'd know we were watching and she clammed up and scuttled away with her child. I wish I could say she looked embarrassed, but to this day I've never forgotten how shameless she looked exploiting her kid.

This book was an incredible, tragic, painful, darkly humorous look at the derangement of unstable parents who live their lives through their children--at the expense of their children.

Will definitely recommend this to my book club.

]]> 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/15
date added: 2023/10/15
shelves:
review:
My previous career was in advertising, which often required casting talent for TV commercials. On one particular visit to a casting agency, we were casting for the role of a young boy, 10-12 years old. The part was essentially for a "Young Bill Gates," so we needed a young boy, bookish and nerdy.

It was as you'd imagine, a lobby full of moms and sons (dressed in their finest nerdery), and us in a room as the casting agent called the children in one by one to read lines. Some were amazing, others clearly didn't want to be there or if they did, they were nervous to the point of paralysis.

The whole thing made me very uncomfortable.

Afterwards as I left with the director, we passed one of the moms on the street, berating her child to the chagrin of passers-by. This boy stared feebly at the ground while she yelled.

I said, "HI, THANKS FOR COMING IN!" I spoke loudly, so she'd know we were watching and she clammed up and scuttled away with her child. I wish I could say she looked embarrassed, but to this day I've never forgotten how shameless she looked exploiting her kid.

This book was an incredible, tragic, painful, darkly humorous look at the derangement of unstable parents who live their lives through their children--at the expense of their children.

Will definitely recommend this to my book club.


]]> Orientalism 355190
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.]]> 424 Edward W. Said Jamie 0 to-read 4.13 1978 Orientalism
author: Edward W. Said
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Yellowface 59357120
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 329 R.F. Kuang Jamie 4 3.84 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Jamie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Chinese Playground: A Memoir 231088 277 Bill Lee 0967002303 Jamie 4 4.08 1999 Chinese Playground: A Memoir
author: Bill Lee
name: Jamie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/10
date added: 2023/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]>