Maija's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 14:59:43 -0700 60 Maija's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter]]> 8310410 Are you a genius or a genius maker?

We've all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, lightbulbs go off over people's heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now, when leaders are expected to do more with less.

In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman and management consultant Greg McKeown explore these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.

In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman and McKeown have identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use, even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. Multipliers will show you how.

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288 Liz Wiseman 0061964395 Maija 0 to-read 3.96 2010 Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
author: Liz Wiseman
name: Maija
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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Black Cake 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right�? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]>
385 Charmaine Wilkerson Maija 4 2025, fiction 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Maija
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: 2025, fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir]]> 177772457 A spirited and timely exploration of group living that encourages readers to reconsider the meaning of family and home.


Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Her mom—energetic and intense at work and at play, whether at her job marketing for an agricultural co-op or paddling down a river, fat spliff in hand—had spent her life revolting against the strictures of her American and Filipino upbringing. Her dad, a child of the eastern Oregon desert, was a jovial documentary filmmaker and historian who loved to collect ephemera. Both threw open the doors of the Holman House, their rambling home in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents� separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in choosing to further the experiment of communal living into a new generation.


Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. From spending time at her aunt and uncle’s intentional community in Washington State to finding her footing as a student in Japan in the kitchen with her host family to mushroom hunting in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Milholland offers an expansive and vibrant reevaluation of the structures at the very center of our lives.


Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes introduces a gifted memoirist and thinker, making a convincing case that �now is always the right time to reimagine home and family.�

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320 Lola Milholland 1954118570 Maija 4 2025, memoir 3.67 2024 Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir
author: Lola Milholland
name: Maija
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: 2025, memoir
review:

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Paradise 765618 256 Abdulrazak Gurnah Maija 0 to-read 3.63 1994 Paradise
author: Abdulrazak Gurnah
name: Maija
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.]]> 38532113
The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age twenty, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.

Then, at nearly thirty, her It girl days numbered, Babitz was discovered—as a writer—by Joan Didion. She would go on to produce seven books, usually billed as novels or short story collections, always autobiographies and confessionals. Under-known and under-read during her career, she’s since experienced a breakthrough. Now in her mid-seventies, she’s on the cusp of literary stardom and recognition as an essential—as the essential—LA writer. Her prose achieves that American ideal: art that stays loose, maintains its cool, and is so sheerly enjoyable as to be mistaken for simple entertainment.

For Babitz, life was slow days, fast company until a freak fire in the 90s turned her into a recluse, living in a condo in West Hollywood, where Lili Anolik tracked her down in 2012. Anolik’s elegant and provocative new book is equal parts biography and detective story. It is also on dangerously intimate terms with its subject: artist, writer, muse, and one-woman zeitgeist, Eve Babitz.]]>
288 Lili Anolik 1501125796 Maija 0 to-read 3.58 2019 Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
author: Lili Anolik
name: Maija
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Known World 67 The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.

The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.]]>
388 Edward P. Jones 0061159174 Maija 4 2025, fiction 3.83 2003 The Known World
author: Edward P. Jones
name: Maija
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: 2025, fiction
review:

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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 Maija 4 2025, fiction 3.54 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Maija
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: 2025, fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV]]> 203020280 Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.

Nussbaum traces four paths of reality innovation—game shows, prank shows, soap operas, and clip shows—that united in the Survivor format, sparking a tumultuous Hollywood gold-rush. Along the way, we meet tricksters and innovators—from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; Bachelor mastermind Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray, the visionary behind The Real World—along with dozens of crew members and ordinary people whose lives became fodder for the reality revolution. We learn about the tools of the trade—like Candid Camera’s brilliant “reveal� and the notorious Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and the moral outrage that reality shows provoked. But Cue The Sun! also celebrates what made the genre so powerful: a jolt of authentic emotion.

Through broad-ranging reporting, Nussbaum examines seven tumultuous decades, exploring the celebreality boom, reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, and the dark truth behind The Apprentice. A shrewd observer who cares about television, she is the ideal voice for the first substantive cultural history of the genre that has, for better or worse, made America what it is today.]]>
464 Emily Nussbaum 0525508996 Maija 4 nonfiction, 2025 3.94 2024 Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV
author: Emily Nussbaum
name: Maija
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: nonfiction, 2025
review:

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Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]>
402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Maija 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Maija
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
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The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]>
564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Maija 0 to-read 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Maija
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption]]> 60835840 Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee.

Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.

At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.

The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.]]>
256 Shannon Gibney 0593111990 Maija 0 to-read 3.86 2023 The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
author: Shannon Gibney
name: Maija
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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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 Maija 0 to-read 3.89 2023 The Chinese Groove
author: Kathryn Ma
name: Maija
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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Maame 60784605 Shortlisted for the TikTok Book Awards in the Book of the Year, 2023 and the ŷ Debut and Fiction Book of the Year, 2023.

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts�: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her life on the line.

Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.]]>
320 Jessica George Maija 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Maame
author: Jessica George
name: Maija
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts]]> 205363955 Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life � one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism�. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind� or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.]]>
208 Oliver Burkeman 0374611998 Maija 0 to-read 4.27 2024 Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Maija
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
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Blob: A Love Story 212994452 'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend...

The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.

As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.

Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light
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256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Maija 0 to-read 3.43 2025 Blob: A Love Story
author: Maggie Su
name: Maija
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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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 Maija 0 to-read 4.07 2024 Behind You Is the Sea
author: Susan Muaddi Darraj
name: Maija
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[What You Are Looking For Is in the Library]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

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

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

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]>
304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Maija 0 to-read 4.07 2020 What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Maija
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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Greta & Valdin 176443453
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Māori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings� misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.]]>
352 Rebecca K. Reilly 1668028042 Maija 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Greta & Valdin
author: Rebecca K. Reilly
name: Maija
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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This Is How It Always Is 34275215
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

"This is a novel everyone should read. It’s brilliant. It’s bold. And it’s time.�
―Elizabeth George, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Banquet of Consequences
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336 Laurie Frankel 1250088569 Maija 0 to-read 4.28 2017 This Is How It Always Is
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Maija
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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The Manicurist's Daughter 127305940 An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during plastic surgery

Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers about her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success―until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened.

For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone―why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself, and the impossible ideal of beauty.]]>
320 Susan Lieu Maija 0 to-read 3.93 2024 The Manicurist's Daughter
author: Susan Lieu
name: Maija
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
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Shark Heart 62919375
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with her college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds.]]>
416 Emily Habeck 1668006499 Maija 0 to-read 3.96 2023 Shark Heart
author: Emily Habeck
name: Maija
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
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One Last Summer 200121624
Clara Millen’s life is spiraling out of control: her dream job is a nightmare, she’s resoundingly single, and it’s been years since she’s taken some time off. Thankfully, the last problem she can fix—this year she’ll join her friends on their annual summer vacation to their beloved childhood sleepover camp for a much-needed escape.

But when Clara arrives at Pine Lake Camp, she faces yet another unwelcome change: the owners are retiring and selling the property. The news turns her plans for revelry into a night of reminiscing . . . and prompts a surprise heart-to-heart between Clara and Mack, her old camp nemesis and constant competitor, who's still just as annoying (and annoyingly handsome).

Soon the campfires aren't all that's throwing off sparks. And when one wildly passionate night turns into two (then too many to count!), Clara begins to wonder if she and Mack could have a future together. But when Clara's boss finally offers her everything she's worked so hard for, Clara will need to decide if the life she's always wanted is the life that makes her feel truly alive]]>
320 Kate Spencer 1538737663 Maija 3 2024, fiction 3.45 One Last Summer
author: Kate Spencer
name: Maija
average rating: 3.45
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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The Lost Daughter 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]>
140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Maija 0 to-read 3.70 2006 The Lost Daughter
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Maija
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Women & Power: A Manifesto 36525023 Women & Power, she traces the origins of this misogyny to its ancient roots, examining the pitfalls of gender and the ways that history has mistreated strong women since time immemorial. As far back as Homer’s Odyssey, Beard shows, women have been prohibited from leadership roles in civic life, public speech being defined as inherently male. From Medusa to Philomela (whose tongue was cut out), from Hillary Clinton to Elizabeth Warren (who was told to sit down), Beard draws illuminating parallels between our cultural assumptions about women’s relationship to power—and how powerful women provide a necessary example for all women who must resist being vacuumed into a male template. With personal reflections on her own online experiences with sexism, Beard asks: If women aren’t perceived to be within the structure of power, isn’t it power itself we need to redefine? And how many more centuries should we be expected to wait?]]> 115 Mary Beard 1631494759 Maija 0 to-read 4.02 2017 Women & Power: A Manifesto
author: Mary Beard
name: Maija
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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Priestdaddy 31920820
When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.]]>
336 Patricia Lockwood 1594633738 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.84 2017 Priestdaddy
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Maija
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 33917107
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.�

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]>
127 Timothy Snyder 0804190119 Maija 0 to-read 4.24 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Maija
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]>
416 Ann Napolitano Maija 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Maija
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris]]> 198563717
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists, and a thirst for long overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged 46, unmarried with no children, spent 16 months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt like less of a risk than a necessity.

What follows is a decadent, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.

The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.

In the spirit of Deborah Levy and Annie Ernaux, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expands far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.

The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.

Here’s the proof.]]>
288 Glynnis MacNicol 0593655753 Maija 3 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.40 2024 I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
author: Glynnis MacNicol
name: Maija
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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Arcadia 11866694
Arcadia follows this lyrical, rollicking, tragic, and exquisite utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after. The story is told from the point of view of Bit, a fascinating character and the first child born in Arcadia.]]>
291 Lauren Groff 1401340873 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.69 2012 Arcadia
author: Lauren Groff
name: Maija
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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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 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.84 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Maija
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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Taste: My Life Through Food 55360284
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley's signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.]]>
291 Stanley Tucci 1982168013 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 4.19 2021 Taste: My Life Through Food
author: Stanley Tucci
name: Maija
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]>
389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Maija 4 2024, fiction 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Maija
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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My Murder 62952152 What if the murder you had to solve was your own?

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.

Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed--she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.]]>
304 Katie Williams 0593543769 Maija 0 to-read 3.61 2023 My Murder
author: Katie Williams
name: Maija
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Midnight Feast 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at� The Midnight Feast.]]>
354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 Maija 0 to-read 3.55 2024 The Midnight Feast
author: Lucy Foley
name: Maija
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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Wildflower: A Memoir 61984801 This extraordinary memoir of struggle and perseverance offers new ways of envisioning economic equality for everyone--from a leading activist and fashion pioneer.

Aurora James's story is not a "success story." Or at least, it shouldn't be told that way. Having dropped out of high school, struggled with body image, and dabbled in street racing, her eventual arrest might have been her rock bottom. But as a visionary and optimist, that experience became one of many that reshaped her way of thinking about the world. After a brief modeling stint, James discovered the real power in creating for the runway and started her own business in a flea market, a sustainable fashion line showcasing traditional African design that would become an award-winning international brand. Then she founded one of the fastest-growing social justice nonprofits, the Fifteen Percent Pledge. But none of this came from a desire to "succeed." It came from a desire to forge a new creative path--and to lift others up alongside her.

Already a rising star in fashion and the first Black American female designer to win a CFDA Award, James was inspired by the activism that swept the nation in the summer of 2020 to think bigger about how to empower Black business owners. With an idea and an Instagram post, she founded the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which challenges retailers to commit 15% of their shelf space and spending power to Black businesses. To date, more than two dozen of the world's most recognized retailers have taken the pledge, redirecting $10 billion in revenue to Black brands.

Empowering and full of heart, Wildflower is the story of how Aurora James got to where she is now and a rallying cry for those eager to make change.]]>
304 Aurora James 0593239458 Maija 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Wildflower: A Memoir
author: Aurora James
name: Maija
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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Bad Summer People 61884844 A whip-smart, propulsive debut about infidelity, backstabbing, and murderous intrigue, set against an exclusive summer haven on Fire Island
None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder?
Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court, and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single friend, Rachel Woolf, is looking to meet her match, whether he's the tennis pro-or someone else's husband. But even with plenty to gossip about, this season starts out as quietly as any other.
Until a body is discovered, face down off the side of the boardwalk.
Stylish, subversive and darkly comedic, this is a story of what's lurking under the surface of picture-perfect lives in a place where everyone has something to hide.]]>
272 Emma Rosenblum 1250887003 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.32 2023 Bad Summer People
author: Emma Rosenblum
name: Maija
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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The Mountains Sing 49631287 Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the H� Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.]]>
352 Nguyễn Phan Qu� Mai 161620818X Maija 5 2024, fiction 4.31 2020 The Mountains Sing
author: Nguyễn Phan Qu� Mai
name: Maija
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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You Deserve Good Gelato 198137983 You Deserve Good Gelato, covering everything from travel fails and homesickness to the joy of culture shocks and the power of doing the s*** that scares you. Because life is too short not to.

Kacie decided to leave her life as a pro dancer in New York City and move to Italy in 2021 - and she never looked back. Okay, that isn't strictly true...

In You Deserve Good Gelato, Kacie reflects on the pure terror of driving on Italian roads, the trials of speaking a new language (and getting it horribly, horribly wrong), and the genuine beauty of a slower pace of life, all with humor and heart. And by sharing her personal stories of life under the Tuscan sun, Kacie explains how travel is a privilege, why cultural differences are the coolest things in the world, and how there's a positive you can take away from literally any situation.

You Deserve Good Gelato will have you buying that ticket and embracing this big, beautiful world that we all call home.]]>
272 Kacie Rose 0593840437 Maija 3 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.70 2024 You Deserve Good Gelato
author: Kacie Rose
name: Maija
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk]]> 78130090 An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want

Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl� and “Double Dare Ya� are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul­tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band� in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.]]>
326 Kathleen Hanna 0062825232 Maija 5 2024, memoir, nonfiction 4.40 2024 Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
author: Kathleen Hanna
name: Maija
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:
Loved loved loved this book. Took me back to 90s Olympia and the PNW. Full of honesty and felt like a friend writing you a letter.
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Grief Is for People 127282631 Following the death of her closest friend, Sloane Crosley explores multiple kinds of loss in this disarmingly witty and poignant memoir.

Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.]]>
208 Sloane Crosley 0374609845 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.85 2024 Grief Is for People
author: Sloane Crosley
name: Maija
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:
Oddly I enjoyed this book about grief as I don’t think many books grapple with the loss of a friend.
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<![CDATA[The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story]]> 61783855
In 2014, the landmarks of Victoria Belim’s personal geography were plunged into tumult at the hands of Russia. Her hometown Kyiv was gripped by protests and violent suppression. Crimea, where she’d once been sent to school to avoid radiation from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, was invaded. Kharkiv, where her grandmother Valentina studied economics and fell in love; Donetsk, where her father once worked; and Mariupol, where she and her mother bought a cherry tree for Valentina’s garden all became battlegrounds.

A naturalized American citizen then living in Brussels, Belim felt she had to go back. She had to spend time with her aging grandmother and her cousin Dima. She had to unravel a family mystery spanning several generations. And she needed to understand how her country’s tragic history of communist revolution, civil war, famine, world war, totalitarianism, and fraught independence had changed the course of their lives.

The Rooster House is a beautifully written memoir of a family, a country’s past, and its dangerous present. It is about parents and children, true believers and victims, gardens and art, secrets and tragedy. Compulsively readable, deeply moving, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, it is a stunning debut book by an experienced, expressive, and gifted writer.]]>
304 Victoria Belim 1419767852 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.95 2022 The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story
author: Victoria Belim
name: Maija
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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The House of Eve 61273858 From the award-winning author of Yellow Wife, a daring and redemptive novel set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.]]>
384 Sadeqa Johnson 1982197366 Maija 0 to-read 4.23 2023 The House of Eve
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Maija
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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Anita de Monte Laughs Last 127306192 New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.]]>
342 Xóchitl González 1250786215 Maija 0 to-read 3.76 2024 Anita de Monte Laughs Last
author: Xóchitl González
name: Maija
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]>
490 Liz Moore Maija 0 to-read 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Maija
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]>
368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Maija 4 2024, fiction 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Maija
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Honey From a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia]]> 425708 375 Patience Gray 190301820X Maija 0 to-read 4.25 1986 Honey From a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia
author: Patience Gray
name: Maija
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals]]> 54785515 The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless battle against distraction; we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,� Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]>
271 Oliver Burkeman 0374159122 Maija 0 to-read 4.20 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Maija
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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A Thousand Times Before 199373441 A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.

Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.

Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold. As Ayukta unspools these generations of women—whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival—she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.

What would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?

Sweeping, deeply felt and intergenerational, A Thousand Times Before is a debut as poetic as it is propulsive, as healing as it is heartbreaking, as it examines what it means to carry our past with us and to pass it on. Rooted in a tender love story, and spun with a tremendous amount of care, this book is a rare, remarkable feat from an incredible new literary talent.]]>
368 Asha Thanki 0593654641 Maija 0 to-read 3.64 2024 A Thousand Times Before
author: Asha Thanki
name: Maija
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]>
400 Emily Henry Maija 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Maija
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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I Hope This Finds You Well 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]>
338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 Maija 0 to-read 3.75 2024 I Hope This Finds You Well
author: Natalie Sue
name: Maija
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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When We Were Birds 58065031 A mythic love story set in Trinidad and Tobago, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

You were never the smartest child, but even you should know that when a dead woman offers you a cigarette, the polite thing to do would be to take it. Especially when that dead woman is your mother.

The St. Bernard women have lived in Morne Marie, the house on top of a hill outside Port Angeles, for generations. Built from the ashes of a plantation that enslaved their ancestors, it has come to shelter a lineage that is bonded by much more than blood. One woman in each generation of St. Bernards is responsible for the passage of the city's souls into the afterlife. But Yejide's relationship with her mother, Petronella, has always been contorted by anger and neglect, which Petronella stubbornly carries to her death bed, leaving Yejide unprepared to fulfill her destiny.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when his ailing mother can no longer work and the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life she built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, Port Angeles's largest and oldest cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.]]>
292 Ayanna Lloyd Banwo 0385547269 Maija 4 2024, book-club, fiction 3.78 2022 When We Were Birds
author: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
name: Maija
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves: 2024, book-club, fiction
review:
Beautiful listen as an audiobook!
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<![CDATA[Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century]]> 51456746
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.]]>
309 Alice Wong 1984899422 Maija 0 to-read 4.46 2020 Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
author: Alice Wong
name: Maija
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Stars and the Blackness Between Them]]> 36412998 Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus’s bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.

Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,� she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.

Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.]]>
312 Junauda Petrus 052555548X Maija 0 to-read 4.26 2019 The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
author: Junauda Petrus
name: Maija
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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Land of Milk and Honey 101673225 The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.]]>
240 C Pam Zhang 0593538242 Maija 0 to-read 3.50 2023 Land of Milk and Honey
author: C Pam Zhang
name: Maija
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[I'll Just Be Five More Minutes: And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain]]> 173403935 A hilariously honest, heartwarming essay collection about life, love, and discovering you have ADHD at age 35

Despite being a published writer with a family, a gaggle of internet fans, and (most shockingly) a mortgage,Emily Farriscould never get her act together. As she saw it, disorganization was one of her countless character flaws—that is, until she was diagnosed with ADHD at age 35. Like many women and girls who go undiagnosed, Farris grew up internalizing criticisms about her impulsivity and lack of follow-through. She held on to that shame as she tried (and often failed) to fit into a world designed for neurotypical brains.

I'll Just Be Five More Minutesis a personal essay collection of laugh-out-loud funny, tear-jerking, and at times cringe-worthy true stories of Farris's experiences as a neurodivergent woman. With the newfound knowledge of her ADHD, Farris candidly reexamines her complicated relationships (including one with a celebrity stalker), her money problems, the years she spent unknowingly self-medicating, and her hyper-fixations.

I'll Just Be Five More Minutes is a powerful collection of deeply relatable, wide-ranging stories about a woman's right to control her own body, about overwhelm and oversharing, about drinking too much and sleeping too little, and about being misunderstood by the people closest to you. At its heart, it's about not quite fitting in and not understanding why.]]>
304 Emily Farris 0306830310 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.57 2024 I'll Just Be Five More Minutes: And Other Tales from My ADHD Brain
author: Emily Farris
name: Maija
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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The Sicilian Inheritance 182486315 From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Jo Piazza, comes atransportingnovel rooted inthe author's ownfamily history about a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect . . .

Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage.On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft withgrief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret.Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.

Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn’t long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger.

As Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight.]]>
384 Jo Piazza 0593474163 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.93 2024 The Sicilian Inheritance
author: Jo Piazza
name: Maija
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:
Such a fun read especially since I went to Sicily last fall so I could picture the Sicilian countryside and coast as I read the two intertwining stories. A little bit of a mystery, a little bit of how do you get yourself unstuck or find yourself, and overall well worth reading.
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<![CDATA[One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In]]> 123921296
One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned generation.

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

With her trademark style and vulnerability, One In a Millennial is sharp, hilarious, and heartwarming all at once. She tackles AOL Instant Messenger, purity culture, American Girl Dolls, going out tops, Spice Girl feminism, her feelings about millennial motherhood, and more. Kate’s laugh-out-loud asides and keen observations will have you nodding your head and maybe even tearing up.]]>
328 Kate Kennedy 1250285127 Maija 3 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.73 2024 One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In
author: Kate Kennedy
name: Maija
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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The Sentence 56816904
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written]]>
387 Louise Erdrich 006267112X Maija 0 to-read 3.92 2021 The Sentence
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Maija
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History]]> 198681944
On August 5th, 2003, Ryan Atwood found himself a long way from his home in Chino—he was in The O.C., an exclusive suburb full of beautiful girls, wealthy bullies, corrupt real-estate tycoons, and a new family helmed by his public defender, Sandy Cohen. Ryan soon warms up to his nerdy, indie band-loving new best friend Seth, and quickly falls for Marissa, the stunning girl next door who has secrets of her own. Completing the group is Summer, Seth’s dream girl and Marissa’s loyal—and fearless—best friend. Together, the friends fall in and out of love, support each other amidst family strife, and capture the hearts of audiences across the country.

Just in time for the show’s twentieth anniversary, The O.C.’s creator Josh Schwartz and executive producer Stephanie Savage are ready to dive into how the show was made, the ups and downs over its four seasons, and its legacy today. With Rolling Stone’s chief TV critic and bestselling author Alan Sepinwall conducting interviews with the key cast members, writers, and producers who were there when it all happened, Welcome to the O.C. will offer the definitive inside look at the beloved show—a nostalgic delight for audiences who watched when it aired, and a rich companion to viewers currently discovering the show while it streams on HBO Max and Hulu.

The O.C. paved the way for a new generation of iconic teen soaps, launched the careers of young stars, and even gave us the gift of Chrismukkah. Now, it’s time to go back where we started from and experience it all over again.

Includes exclusive interviews with: Ben McKenzie * Mischa Barton * Adam Brody * Rachel Bilson * Peter Gallagher * Kelly Rowan * Melinda Clarke * Tate Donovan * Chris Carmack * Autumn Reeser * Willa Holland * Samaire Armstrong * Alan Dale * Colin Hanks * Amanda Righetti * Navi Rawat * Shannon Lucio * Michael Cassidy * McG * Imogen Heap * Alex Greenwald * Ben Gibbard * Paul Scheer * Doug Liman * and many more!]]>
1 Maija 4 2024, nonfiction 4.14 2023 Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History
author: Alan Sepinwall; Josh Schwartz; Stephanie Savage
name: Maija
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: 2024, nonfiction
review:
Obviously you go into this not expecting fine literature. I’ve been rewatching The OC over this past winter when I just needed a comfort/mental break kinda show so this was a perfect companion. Fun read if you watched the series back in the day, and you will probably want a rewatch when you’re done. Also poor Marissa/Mischa!
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If I Survive You 59808611
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper--himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica--Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.]]>
260 Jonathan Escoffery 037460598X Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.67 2022 If I Survive You
author: Jonathan Escoffery
name: Maija
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:

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Laziness Does Not Exist 54304124
Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.

Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,� including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.

Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now� (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet ).]]>
256 Devon Price 1982140100 Maija 4 2024, nonfiction 3.92 2021 Laziness Does Not Exist
author: Devon Price
name: Maija
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune]]> 62039222 The devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult.



In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill became available and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from societal norms, and the revolution needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family--and monogamous marriage--would free kids from the repressive forces of their parents. The movement attracted many brilliant people as patients, including the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other artists, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. By the 1960s, it had become an urban commune of hundreds of people, with patients living with other patients, leading a creative, polyamorous life.

By the mid-1970s, under the leadership of its cofounder Saul Newton, it devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients' lives, from where they lived to how often they saw their children. Although the group was highly secretive, even after its dissolution in 1991, Alexander Stille has reconstructed the inner life of this hidden parallel world. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia in the heart of New York City.]]>
432 Alexander Stille 0374600392 Maija 3 2024, nonfiction 3.45 2023 The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune
author: Alexander Stille
name: Maija
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, nonfiction
review:

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Paris: The Memoir 61812425 Behind Paris Hilton's meteoric rise from Upper West Side club kid to household name lies her self-proclaimed "superpower" of ADHD and a hidden history that traumatized and defined her. Shocking, funny, and surprisingly profound, Paris is the deeply personal memoir of the ultimate It Girl and a stunning inside view of a pop culture phenomenon.

Until, in a revealing documentary, Paris Hilton disclosed that her childhood was shattered by two years of strip searches, isolation, beatings, restraint, and brainwashing within the now infamous "troubled teen industry," Paris Hilton was simply the billionaire heiress America had watched grow up on television, on the internet, and in tabloids. But there was always more to Paris Hilton than met the eye. Yes, she is the media personality, DJ, entrepreneur, model, singer, actress, and icon beloved all over the globe. And yet...

Paris is the story people have always wanted Paris Hilton to tell--the story of who she really is. In this revealing and thought-provoking book, Hilton will separate the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, and show the woman who grew up with incredible privilege but was also trapped in a world of unreasonable expectation at a moment when young women were humiliated for sport in a gossip economy on steroids. Paris recounts her perilous journey through pre-#METOO sexual politics with grace, generosity, and plenty of fun, rising above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love, and a life of meaning and purpose.

The parallel story arcs in Hilton's braided narrative come to full bloom as a watershed portrait of the Aughts, challenging each of us to question our role in her story and her role in ours. The result is an intimate and unexpected memoir about persona and personification, the price of being young and disobedient, and the complexity of manifesting your dreams after watching part of yourself disappear.]]>
336 Paris Hilton 0063224623 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 4.21 2023 Paris: The Memoir
author: Paris Hilton
name: Maija
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/14
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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Somebody's Daughter 54860610 One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the ever looming absence of her incarcerated father and the path we must take to both honor and overcome our origins.

For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who understands her. She thinks she understands him too. He's sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just as afraid of the dark. She's certain that one day they'll be reunited again, and she'll finally feel complete. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there.

Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where the story really begins.

Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.]]>
224 Ashley C. Ford 1250305977 Maija 4 2024, memoir, nonfiction 4.02 2021 Somebody's Daughter
author: Ashley C. Ford
name: Maija
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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Call You When I Land 134490448 Call You When I Land is a soul-stirring memoir from Colombian immigrant and Fodor’s Travel Senior Editor, Nikki Vargas, whisking us through the countries that brought her new love, self-discovery, and the inspiration to launch the internationally-sold women's travel magazine, Unearth Women.

At twenty-six years old, life looked a certain way for Nikki. She’d settled in New York City, had landed in a promising advertising career, and was newly engaged to her college sweetheart. But between corporate happy hours and wedding dress fittings, she couldn’t shake a deep underlying sense of imposter syndrome, a voice telling her that she was rocketing towards a future that didn’t look like her. And so, she bought a plane ticket.

Taking her from the street food stalls of Vietnam to the cascading waterfalls of Argentina, Nikki whisks readers away on a coming-of-age journey set against the backdrop of stunning locales. Whether chasing an unlikely career dream around the globe, investigating a mysterious unsolved murder in her family, grappling with heartbreak, navigating new love, or learning how to celebrate success and recover from failure�Call You When I Land is a memoir that promises to both inspire and transport readers.

Told in transporting detail and candid reflections, Call You When I Land takes the familiar story of a woman going abroad to find herself and turns it on its head, as the act of traveling becomes, for Nikki, a life-transforming endeavor—and ultimately a tool to champion women’s voices across the world.]]>
288 Nikki Vargas 1335455094 Maija 2 2024, memoir, nonfiction 3.14 2023 Call You When I Land
author: Nikki Vargas
name: Maija
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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How to Say Babylon 62919742 Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.']]>
352 Safiya Sinclair 1982132337 Maija 0 to-read 4.44 2023 How to Say Babylon
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: Maija
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted]]> 50743767
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.]]>
352 Suleika Jaouad 0399588582 Maija 5 2024, memoir, nonfiction 4.40 2021 Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: Maija
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves: 2024, memoir, nonfiction
review:
While the premise is sad, it was so well written that I couldn’t put it down. I wish I had read this before my coworker struggled through her cancer journey. This gave me so much more insight. Recommend if you have a loved one facing a long term illness or really anyone should read, because it will be us or a loved one at some point in our lives.
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<![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]>
401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Maija 4 2024, fiction 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Maija
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:
So much good nostalgia of the 80s and growing up through to now. A story of friendship and some interesting twists. Definitely recommend!
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Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]>
336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Maija
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/09
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:
Quirky, messed up characters set in an upstate NY town where everyone knows each other. Greta and Sabine’s house is a character as much as the dogs. Definitely a unique story and a quick read.
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First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

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

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

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

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]>
340 Ashley Elston Maija 0 to-read 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Maija
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Monk of Mokha 35215524 The Monk of Mokha is the exhilarating true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana’a by civil war.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen’s central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral homeland to tour terraced farms high in the country’s rugged mountains and meet beleagured but determined farmers. But when war engulfs the country and Saudi bombs rain down, Mokhtar has to find a way out of Yemen without sacrificing his dreams or abandoning his people.]]>
353 Dave Eggers Maija 0 to-read 4.08 2018 The Monk of Mokha
author: Dave Eggers
name: Maija
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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Celine 30687236 The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.

Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI. But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found. Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed--that this is a case someone desperately wants to keep closed.

Combining the exquisite plotting and gorgeous evocation of nature that have become his hallmark, with a wildly engrossing story of family, privilege, and childhood loss, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date.]]>
12 Peter Heller 1524751065 Maija 0 to-read 3.70 2017 Celine
author: Peter Heller
name: Maija
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club]]> 61653268 From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.

Ned is also an heir—to a chain of home-style diners—and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?

In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.]]>
340 J. Ryan Stradal 1984881078 Maija 4 2024, fiction 3.58 2023 Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
author: J. Ryan Stradal
name: Maija
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/19
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: 2024, fiction
review:
I’ve always enjoyed this author and his telling of interwoven stories over different years. I’ll warn this one may be hard for anyone who has suffered fertility issues, but interestingly enough the author noted his own experience with it in his endnotes. I loved this world he created. I can see the town and the lake and the supper club. I wanted to stay longer!
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<![CDATA[Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life]]> 50887097 A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a foola cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.]]>
225 Lulu Miller Maija 4 nonfiction, 2024 4.15 2020 Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
author: Lulu Miller
name: Maija
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: nonfiction, 2024
review:
Wow this book went in directions I didn’t expect or rather by the title alone, I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoyed the mix of personal story, science, and how do we handle it when someone is not who we hoped they were.
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<![CDATA[Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up]]> 59519684
'Funny and frank, a chance to spend time with a brave and big-hearted woman who's grown up to be not so mean, after all' JENNIFER LARUE, WASHINGTON POST

'Grabs you by the collar and says listen to all that I have to say: about love, pain, motherhood, illness, celebrity and the tidal ferocity that pours through all our lives. Read it and be caught in the voice of one of our luminous stars' ESMÉ WEIJUN WANG

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, shocking memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is violence, love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood and, finally, the simultaneous devastation and surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

'A fascinating exploration about the power of prophecy, of labels, and of one woman's determination to defy them all. Blair is a rebel, an artist, and it turns out: a writer' GLENNON DOYLE

'I laughed out loud more than I cried' FRANCES RYAN, GUARDIAN]]>
299 Selma Blair 0525659501 Maija 4 2023, memoir, nonfiction 3.92 2022 Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up
author: Selma Blair
name: Maija
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/08
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home]]> 42202117 Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana!

This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost and found� (Kirkus Reviews) set in the lush Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hours.

It was love at first sight when actress Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of his marrying a black American woman. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forged on. They built a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships, and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopted at birth. Eventually, they reconciled with Saro’s family just as he faced a formidable cancer that would consume all their dreams.

From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family, now she finds solace and nourishment—literally and spiritually—at her mother-in-law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s romance—an incredible love story that leaps off the pages.

In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death—in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. “Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones� (Publishers Weekly), but her story is also about love, finding a home, and chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is...delicious.]]>
339 Tembi Locke 1501187651 Maija 0 to-read 3.94 2019 From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home
author: Tembi Locke
name: Maija
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[How to Keep House While Drowning]]> 60139504 How to Keep House While Drowning will introduce you to six life-changing principles that will revolutionize the way you approach home care—without endless to-do lists. Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.

Inside you will learn:
· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional;
· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks;
· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished;
· How to motivate yourself to care for your space.]]>
151 K.C. Davis 166800285X Maija 0 2023, nonfiction 4.22 2022 How to Keep House While Drowning
author: K.C. Davis
name: Maija
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: 2023, nonfiction
review:

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Worthy 123279501 A gripping, painfully honest, and ultimately inspirational memoir from global superstar and creator of the Red Table Talk series Jada Pinkett Smith. In a media driven landscape that crafts narratives for our celebrities, Smith recounts her story in an intimate conversation with readers. Along the way, she explores her path to accepting her power as a woman, and her discovery that a strong sense of self is every woman’s right and saving grace.

An impactful and rare memoir that engages and educates, Worthy is a courageous love song to self, to family, to life, and to the world.

From an unconventional upbringing in Baltimore, to an unconventional marriage to one of the most famous men in the world, adhering to the status quo has never been a familiar road for Jada Pinkett Smith. In Worthy, Smith strips herself of all the labels and stories crafted by others, and reclaims her narrative with radical self-love. Worthy teaches us who Jada is, and how to embrace our most authentic lovable souls.]]>
416 Jada Pinkett Smith 0063320681 Maija 0 2023, memoir, nonfiction 3.62 2023 Worthy
author: Jada Pinkett Smith
name: Maija
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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Inciting Joy: Essays 59892269 The Book of Delights

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it.

In “We Kin� he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in “Share Your Bucket� he explores skateboarding’s reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in “Grief Suite�; and in “Through My Tears I Saw,� he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.

In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers.]]>
256 Ross Gay 1643753045 Maija 3 2023, memoir, nonfiction 4.13 2022 Inciting Joy: Essays
author: Ross Gay
name: Maija
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:
A mixed bag - really loved a few essays but some dragged on too much and I could never decide if I should read the extensive footnotes as they showed up or at the end.
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Sister of the Bride 125454481 A romcom retake on Father of the Bride about letting go, falling in love, and a whole lot of lasagna

For someone who doesn’t do well with change, Pippin Marino sure is dealing with a lot of it. First her twin sister returns from Europe with a fiancé and a plea for Pippin to plan the wedding. Then her mom announces plans to sell the 100 year old family restaurant that Pippin has been running since her father died.

But at least there’s one good development in Pippin’s life. After eight years on the west coast, her best friend Toby Sullivan surprises her by moving back to Boston. Having him back is the one bright spot amidst her summer of panic, especially when he offers to help her plan the wedding.

But then one kiss changes everything.

And Pippin Marino does not do well with change.

Sister of the Bride is a steamy, slow-burn friends-to-lovers romcom with wedding planning, pasta, a Grey's Anatomy-loving Nonna, and a guaranteed HEA.]]>
302 Lauren Morrill Maija 4 2023, fiction 3.92 2023 Sister of the Bride
author: Lauren Morrill
name: Maija
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/24
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: 2023, fiction
review:
Fun read for vacation and loved that it was set in Boston as I could imagine so much of the settings.
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Firekeeper’s Daughter 52346471
After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. How far will she go to protect her community if it means tearing apart the only world she’s ever known?]]>
496 Angeline Boulley Maija 0 to-read 4.32 2021 Firekeeper’s Daughter
author: Angeline Boulley
name: Maija
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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Thank You for Listening 59314703
On her return home, Sewanee discovers one of the world’s most beloved romance novelists wanted her to perform her last book—with Brock McNight, the industry’s hottest, most secretive voice. Sewanee doesn’t buy what romance novels are selling—not after her own dreams were tragically cut short—and she stopped narrating them years ago. But her admiration of the late author, and the opportunity to get her grandmother more help, makes her decision for her.

As Sewanee begins work on the book, resurrecting her old romance pseudonym, she and Brock forge a real connection, hidden behind the comfort of anonymity. Soon, she is dreaming again, but secrets are revealed, and the realities of life come crashing down around her once more.

If she can learn to risk everything for desires she has long buried, she will discover a world of intimacy and acceptance she never believed would be hers.

From the author of My Oxford Year, Julia Whelan’s uplifting novel tells the story of a former actress turned successful audiobook narrator—who has lost sight of her dreams after a tragic accident—and her journey of self-discovery, love, and acceptance when she agrees to narrate one last romance novel.]]>
432 Julia Whelan 0063095564 Maija 0 to-read 3.99 2022 Thank You for Listening
author: Julia Whelan
name: Maija
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]>
400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Maija 0 to-read 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: Maija
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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My Oxford Year 35068830
American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was thirteen: Study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day.

When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by none other than that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks for the first time that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns Jamie has a life-changing secret.

Immediately, Ella is faced with a seemingly impossible decision: turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with to follow her political dreams or be there for him during a trial neither are truly prepared for. As the end of her year in Oxford rapidly approaches, Ella must decide if the dreams she’s always wanted are the same ones she’s now yearning for.]]>
352 Julia Whelan 0062740652 Maija 0 to-read 3.85 2018 My Oxford Year
author: Julia Whelan
name: Maija
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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Maybe Once, Maybe Twice 65212083 Filled with the romance and angst that defines the years you come to know yourself, with a shifting timeline covering two decades and ratcheting up the tension, Maybe Once, Maybe Twice is a novel of second chances and finding your own way.

You know that old saying, “if we are still single when we’re 35, we should get married?� Well, Maggie Vine made that vow with two different people, at two very different stages of her life.

And they both showed up.

Maggie Vine’s life is going extra-medium. At 35 she’s pursuing her dreams of being a singer and being a mother—though neither is successfully panning out. So when Garrett Scholl—stifled hedge fund manager by day but electrifying aspiring rock singer by night—comes to her 35th birthday party with the intention to kiss Maggie senseless, it feels like one piece might click into place. Except he’s engaged to someone else, and Maggie knows she won’t fit into the cookie-cutter life he’s building for himself.

Enter Asher Reyes. Her first boyfriend from summer camp, turned into heartthrob actor, he’s lived a successful yet private life ever since he got famous. When a career-changing opportunity is presented to Maggie after her reconnection with Asher, it feels like everything—music, love, family—will fall into place. But her past won’t let her move on without a fight.]]>
336 Alison Rose Greenberg 1250791626 Maija 0 to-read 3.61 2023 Maybe Once, Maybe Twice
author: Alison Rose Greenberg
name: Maija
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]>
309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Maija 3 2023, fiction 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Maija
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves: 2023, fiction
review:
3.5 stars. Fun read especially the beginning if you’ve ever been an SNL fan. And I enjoyed the chapter of emails back and forth. But the final chapter was a bit weak and their relationship never felt truly believable.
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The Woman in Me 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]>
288 Britney Spears 1668009048 Maija 4 2023, memoir, nonfiction 3.83 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Maija
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:
Listened to the audiobook read by Michelle Williams and was truly engrossed. Such a sad story of control, child stardom, and truly bad men. I hope Britney’s next chapters of life have more joy and freedom.
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<![CDATA[Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time]]> 103454997
The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the quality of schools our kids go to, our sense of security and belonging, and even how long we live.

Yet too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued byrising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. Even the wealthiest neighborhoods are not immune; while poverty exacerbates these challenges, they exist in zip codes rich and poor, rural and urban, and everything in between.

In Fragile Neighborhoods , fragile states expert Seth D. Kaplan offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America, one zip code at a time. By revitalizing our local institutions—and the social ties that knit them together—we can all turn our neighborhoods into places where people and families can thrive.

Readers will meet the innovative individuals and organizations pioneering new approaches to everything from youth mentoring to affordable people like Dreama, a former lawyer whose organization works with local leaders and educators in rural Appalachia to equip young people with the social support they need to succeed in school; and Chris, whose Detroit-based non-profit turns vacant school buildings into community resource hubs.

Along the way, Kaplan offers a set of practical lessons to inspire similar work, reminding us that when change is hyperlocal, everyone has the opportunity to contribute.]]>
272 Seth D. Kaplan 0316521396 Maija 0 to-read 3.64 Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time
author: Seth D. Kaplan
name: Maija
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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None of This Is True 62334530 Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]>
390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Maija 0 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Maija
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

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Tell Me Everything 62971594 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Washington Post best celebrity memoir of 2023
An Audible best celebrity memoir of 2023

“A timely, urgent portrait of working-class American women.�
—Gabrielle Union

In her highly anticipated memoir Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly shares a story as powerful as it is page-turning.

Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in these pages, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy.

Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. At times they even lived in storage units. She reconnected with her father, Aerosmith’s Rick Dufay, and eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she landed the role of a lifetime on Friday Night Lights.

Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer. She has poured her soul into the pages of this book, which ultimately tells a story of triumph over adversity, and how resilience and love are all we have in the end.]]>
288 Minka Kelly 1250852064 Maija 4 2023, memoir, nonfiction 4.30 2023 Tell Me Everything
author: Minka Kelly
name: Maija
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Emotional Magnetism: How to Communicate to Ignite Connection in Your Relationships]]> 61295925

Emotional Magnetism is communication expert, Sandy Gerber's newest release. It is a self-help book for people who want to improve their communication and connection in their personal and professional relationships.

Have you ever felt unheard or misunderstood? Maybe your partner just doesn’t seem to get why some things are important to you. Or perhaps your boss is seemingly oblivious to half the things you’ve pointed out in the past week. You’re not alone.

In this unique and timely book, award-winning communications expert, Sandy Gerber shares how to quickly identify what you emotionally need to be happy (1 of 4 Emotional Magnets) and how to communicate that to the people in your life to be understood and accepted.

There are four communication motivators that magnetize our attention and motivate us to listen or act. These Emotional Magnets drive our choices in our relationships, career, and life with our partners, family, friends, team, customers, and strangers.

Gerber’s highly relatable stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and Emotional Magnets quiz, helps you to:
- Identify what blocks your communication NOW.
- Discover what you emotionally NEED to be happy.
- Learn HOW to create greater engagement with your words.
- Understand WHY the people in your life make the choices they do.

As you’ll quickly discover, when you know how to communicate what you need to be happy and respond to the Emotional Magnets of the people around you, you’ll magnetize your relationships. Not only will you be heard and understood, but you’ll understand what people want—and how to deliver it.

"My mission is to help people to understand themselves better so they can communicate what they emotionally need to people at home and work. I call it a "love train". My philosophy: the more of us who know our Emotional Magnets and share them, the more empathy we create, the more relationships we nurture and potentially save, and the more love and acceptance we create in our world."~ S. Gerber]]>
206 Sandy Gerber 1774582007 Maija 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Emotional Magnetism: How to Communicate to Ignite Connection in Your Relationships
author: Sandy Gerber
name: Maija
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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True North: A Memoir 107426 250 Jill Ker Conway 0679744614 Maija 3 book-club-at-work, 2009 3.88 1994 True North: A Memoir
author: Jill Ker Conway
name: Maija
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2009/02/21
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves: book-club-at-work, 2009
review:
Read it for my book club at work - I liked this, but I think it may have helped to have read her previous book first. I also was bummed it didn't cover her years at Smith (the book ends as she is to become president of Smith College - the first woman president, I believe, of all-women college). plus, I love Western Massachusetts and would have liked to read about it. Her style is somewhat removed - she is clearly an academic, not very emotional. I enjoyed most the parts about her experiences such as how women were treated in the Ivy Leagues at this time and the politics of Canada.
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<![CDATA[The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness]]> 44490676 An essential mindfulness and compassion-based approach to confront racial injustice and work towards healing

Law professor and mindfulness practitioner Rhonda Magee shows that the work of racial justice begins with ourselves. When conflict and division are everyday realities, our instincts tell us to close ranks, to find the safety of our own tribe, and to blame others. The practice of embodied mindfulness--paying attention to our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in an open, nonjudgmental way--increases our emotional resilience, helps us to recognize our unconscious bias, and gives us the space to become less reactive and to choose how we respond to injustice.

For victims of injustice, embodied mindfulness calms our fears and helps us to exercise self-compassion. Magee shows us how to slow down and reflect on microaggressions--to hold them with some objectivity and distance--rather than bury unpleasant experiences so they have a cumulative effect over time. She helps us develop the capacity to address the fears and anxieties that would otherwise lead us to re-create patterns of separation and division.

It is only by healing from injustices and dissolving our personal barriers to connection that we develop the ability to view others with compassion and to live in community with people of vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints. Incorporating mindfulness exercises, research, and Magee's hard-won insights, The Inner Work of Racial Justice offers a road map to a more peaceful world.]]>
368 Rhonda Magee 059308392X Maija 4 2023, nonfiction 4.16 2019 The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness
author: Rhonda Magee
name: Maija
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, nonfiction
review:

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Happy-Go-Lucky 58989873
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.]]>
272 David Sedaris 0316392456 Maija 4 2023, memoir, nonfiction 4.15 2022 Happy-Go-Lucky
author: David Sedaris
name: Maija
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, memoir, nonfiction
review:

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Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Maija 5 2023, fiction 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Maija
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City]]> 21976701 256 Elizabeth Minchilli 1250047684 Maija 4 2023, nonfiction 4.09 2015 Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City
author: Elizabeth Minchilli
name: Maija
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, nonfiction
review:

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<![CDATA[The Sweetness of Doing Nothing]]> 49082732

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing explores the southern Italian philosophy of Dolce Far Niente to help you find pleasure in the everyday.


How often do you focus on being in the moment, doing nothing? Whether it’s sitting outside at a cafe watching the world go by, whiling away the hours with your loved ones sipping a glass of wine or being immersed in nature at the beach taking in the sun, these seemingly ordinary moments are the ones that bring happiness in the long run and highlight the joy in living.


The Italians know the importance of enjoying good food and good company and the pleasures of being idle. The Sweetness of Doing Nothing will share this philosophy, with recipes, suggestions and advice to help you to let go of anxiety and savour life’s precious moments.]]>
288 Sophie Minchilli 0008366497 Maija 3 2023, nonfiction 4.12 The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
author: Sophie Minchilli
name: Maija
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/25
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, nonfiction
review:

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Spare 62296528
For Harry, this is that story at last.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.

At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.

Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . .

For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.]]>
410 Prince Harry 0593593804 Maija 3 2023, memoir 3.78 2023 Spare
author: Prince Harry
name: Maija
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, memoir
review:

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The House of the Spirits 9328
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]>
448 Isabel Allende 0553383809 Maija 5 2023, book-club, fiction 4.26 1982 The House of the Spirits
author: Isabel Allende
name: Maija
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, book-club, fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[The Last House on Needless Street]]> 54621094
All these things are true. And yet they are all lies...

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.

In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...]]>
337 Catriona Ward 1788166167 Maija 4 2023, book-club, fiction 3.82 2021 The Last House on Needless Street
author: Catriona Ward
name: Maija
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/18
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: 2023, book-club, fiction
review:

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