Dorcas's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 11 Jul 2020 20:42:31 -0700 60 Dorcas's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack]]> 40392307 As a girl, Alia Joy came face to face with weakness, poverty, and loss in ways that made her doubt God was good. There were times when it felt as if God had abandoned her. What she didn't realize then was that God was always there, calling her to abandon herself.

In this deeply personal exploration of what it means to be "poor in spirit," Joy challenges our cultural proclivity to "pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps." She calls on readers to embrace true vulnerability and authenticity with God and with one another, showing how weakness does not disqualify us from inclusion in the kingdom of God--instead, it is our very invitation to enter in.

Anyone who has struggled with feeling inadequate, disillusioned, or just too broken will find hope. This message is an antidote to despair, helping readers reclaim the ways God is good, even when life is anything but.]]>
240 Alia Joy 0801093341 Dorcas 5 4.52 2019 Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack
author: Alia Joy
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/07/11
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<![CDATA[Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers]]> 15737147 A New York Times bestseller from the author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Almost Everything

Author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.

It is these three prayers � asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us � that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.]]>
102 Anne Lamott Dorcas 3 3.98 2012 Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
author: Anne Lamott
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2019/01/25
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<![CDATA[Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up]]> 39686482
In some communities, certain voices are amplified and elevated while others are erased and suppressed. It can be hard to speak up, especially in the ugliness of social media. Power dynamics keep us silent and marginalized, especially when race, ethnicity, and gender are factors. What can we do about it?

Activist Kathy Khang roots our voice and identity in the image of God. Because God created us in our ethnicity and gender, our voice is uniquely expressed through the totality of who we are. We are created to speak, and we can both speak up for ourselves and speak out on behalf of others. Khang offers insights from faithful heroes who raised their voices for the sake of God's justice, and she shows how we can do the same today, in person, in social media, in organizations, and in the public square.

Be silent no more. If you have wondered when and how to speak, hear God's invitation to you to find and steward your authentic voice, whether in word or deed, to communicate the good news in a messed-up world. As you discern God's voice calling you to speak, you will discover how your voice sounds as you express God's heart to others. And the world will hear you loud and clear.]]>
176 Kathy Khang 0830845402 Dorcas 4 4.16 2018 Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up
author: Kathy Khang
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Braving the Future: Christian Faith in a World of Limitless Tech]]> 38811684 256 Douglas Estes 1513803255 Dorcas 4 3.50 Braving the Future: Christian Faith in a World of Limitless Tech
author: Douglas Estes
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.50
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rating: 4
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All You Can Ever Know 30297153
Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From early childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes of giving her a better life; that forever feeling slightly out of place was simply her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as she grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.

With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography / Longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award / Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, TIME, Newsday, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Real Simple, Paste Magazine, Chicago Public Library, Seattle Public Library, Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, Shelf Awareness, Electric Literature, and more]]>
240 Nicole Chung 1936787970 Dorcas 5 3.84 2018 All You Can Ever Know
author: Nicole Chung
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Color of Life: A Journey toward Love and Racial Justice]]> 40589792 240 Cara Meredith 0310351847 Dorcas 5 4.24 The Color of Life: A Journey toward Love and Racial Justice
author: Cara Meredith
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.24
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rating: 5
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date added: 2019/01/25
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Social change often happens when we break down barriers and get to know, and eventually love, the "other." And what happens when the "other" is your spouse and your own children? Cara Meredith weaves heartfelt personal storytelling with unblinking honesty about our country's history of violence, hatred, and discrimination toward people of color, especially African Americans. Even then, she writes with a lot of grace--for herself and for others who are trying to do the right thing but often feel like they have no idea what that is. That, to me, is what makes this book special. Racial reconciliation is extremely complicated, and we will all make mistakes along the way. Meredith readily acknowledges that and, in humility and hope, presses on anyways.
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<![CDATA[Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward]]> 39986958 193 Skot Welch 1513803328 Dorcas 4
I found the multiple-author voice to be disorienting, especially in the beginning of the book (which isn't helped by the fact that one of the authors has passed away). Thankfully that becomes less of an issue as the focus of the narrative turns to history and practical recommendations. I also wish that there had been more recognition of Asian Americans' experience of racism and prejudice, alongside the mentions of our Hispanic and Native American brothers and sisters.

Overall, though, those were minor issues in what is a rich and worthy read. One of the final chapters about who Jesus really is and the beauty of his diverse kingdom is particularly poignant and nearly brought me to tears. I would recommend this to anyone who desires an American Church that is truly just and inclusive.]]>
4.00 Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward
author: Skot Welch
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/04/29
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This book lays out a clear, well-researched, and convicting case for how the church has been both complicit and oftentimes an active part of perpetuating white supremacy and white nationalism. I especially appreciated how the authors draw clear lines through history from the slave trade to Jim Crow to systemic prejudice today, including around issues ranging from housing and police brutality to college athletics.

I found the multiple-author voice to be disorienting, especially in the beginning of the book (which isn't helped by the fact that one of the authors has passed away). Thankfully that becomes less of an issue as the focus of the narrative turns to history and practical recommendations. I also wish that there had been more recognition of Asian Americans' experience of racism and prejudice, alongside the mentions of our Hispanic and Native American brothers and sisters.

Overall, though, those were minor issues in what is a rich and worthy read. One of the final chapters about who Jesus really is and the beauty of his diverse kingdom is particularly poignant and nearly brought me to tears. I would recommend this to anyone who desires an American Church that is truly just and inclusive.
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<![CDATA[Love Undocumented: Risking Trust in a Fearful World]]> 36025352 Will you beware or be welcoming?


As a young Christian, Sarah Quezada had a heart for social justice. She was also blissfully unaware of the real situations facing today's immigrants. Until she met someone new. . . who happened to be undocumented.


In Love Undocumented, Quezada takes readers on a journey deep into the world of the U.S. immigration system. Follow her as she walks alongside her new friend, meets with lawyers, stands at the U.S.–Mexico border, and visits immigrants in detention centers. With wisdom from Scripture, research, and these experiences, Quezada explores God’s call to welcome the stranger and invites Christians to consider how to live faithfully in the world of closed doors and high fences.


Is it possible to abandon fear and cultivate authentic relationships with new arrivals?


What if hospitality to immigrant and refugee neighbors puts us at personal risk?


How can churches create safe spaces for those living at the precarious edge of our society?


With Quezada as your guide, discover a subversive Savior who never knew a stranger. Get to know the God of the Bible, whose love and grace cross all borders. Respond to an invitation to turn away from fear and enter a bigger story.]]>
205 Sarah Quezada 1513803077 Dorcas 5 4.50 Love Undocumented: Risking Trust in a Fearful World
author: Sarah Quezada
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.50
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When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naĂŻve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]>
208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Dorcas 4 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/05
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<![CDATA[A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness]]> 18654422 This book offers a window into suffering through the motif of desert spirituality, revealing how God can use our painful experiences to show himself faithful. While no one welcomes suffering, God often uses desert experiences--those we initially despise and wouldn't wish on anyone--to transform us into beautiful souls who better resemble Jesus. Graves shows how God can bring life out of circumstances reeking of death and destruction, whether those circumstances are crises or daily doses of quiet desperation.


Readers who have experienced suffering and question God's purpose for it will benefit from this book, as will counselors, pastors, professors, and mentors. It includes a foreword by John Ortberg and Laura Ortberg Turner.

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220 Marlena Graves 1587433419 Dorcas 4 4.16 2014 A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness
author: Marlena Graves
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/05
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<![CDATA[Love Letters to Writers: Encouragement, Accountability, and Truth-Telling]]> 36325540 209 Andi Cumbo-Floyd 0692960805 Dorcas 5 4.65 2017 Love Letters to Writers: Encouragement, Accountability, and Truth-Telling
author: Andi Cumbo-Floyd
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/11/03
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Most books about writing stress me out. They tell me everything I should or should not be doing, and I usually feel like a failure by the end of it. Love Letters to Writers is different. Cumbo-Floyd offers gentle words of encouragement, affirmation, and hope--along with practical advice that you can keep or discard. She covers all aspects of the writing life, from the external writing drafts and marketing to the internal self-doubt we all wrestle with. I'd highly recommend this for any writer who is struggling or just needs a little extra encouragement.
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<![CDATA[A Woman's Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World]]> 27274409 The managing editor of Christianity Today and founder of the popular Her.meneutics blog encourages women to find joy in vocation in this game-changing look at the importance of women and work.

Women today inhabit and excel in every profession, yet many Christian women wonder about the value of work outside the home. And in circles where the traditional family model is highly regarded, many working women who sense a call to work find little church or peer support.

In A Woman’s Place, Katelyn Beaty, print managing editor of Christianity Today and cofounder of Her.meneutics, insists it’s time to reconsider women’s work. She challenges us to explore new ways to live out the Scriptural call to rule over creation—in the office, the home, in ministry, and beyond.

Starting with the Bible’s approach to work—including the creation story, the Proverbs 31 woman, and New Testament models—Beaty shows how women’s roles in Western society have changed; how the work-home divide came to exist; and how the Bible offers models of women in leadership. Readers will be inspired by stories of women effecting dynamic cultural change, leading institutions, and living out grand and beautiful vocations.

Far from insisting that women must work outside the home, Beaty urges all believers into a better framework for imagining career, ambition, and calling. Whether caring for children, running a home, business, or working full-time, all readers will be inspired to live in a way that glorifies God.

Sure to spark discussion, A Woman’s Place is a game-changing look at the importance of work for women and men alike.]]>
272 Katelyn Beaty 1476794162 Dorcas 4 4.11 2016 A Woman's Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World
author: Katelyn Beaty
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/15
date added: 2017/09/15
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<![CDATA[Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America]]> 6452749
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.

With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative� thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.]]>
206 Barbara Ehrenreich 0805087494 Dorcas 4 3.71 2009 Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/09/05
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<![CDATA[Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America]]> 1869
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.]]>
240 Barbara Ehrenreich 0805063897 Dorcas 5 3.65 2001 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/09/05
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<![CDATA[The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster]]> 13547258 Based on a popular ESPN magazine article selected by Dave Eggers for The Best American Nonrequired Reading and a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the inspiring true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess prodigy from the slums of Kampala, Uganda.

PHIONA MUTESI sleeps in a decrepit shack with her mother and three siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day. Phiona has been out of school most of her life because her mother cannot afford it, so she is only now learning to read and write. Phiona Mutesi is also one of the best chess players in the world.

One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, who had also grown up in the Kampala slums. Katende, a war refugee turned missionary, had an improbable dream: to empower kids through chess—a game so foreign there is no word for it in their native language. Laying a chessboard in the dirt of the Katwe slum, Robert painstakingly taught the game each day. When he left at night, slum kids played on with bottlecaps on scraps of cardboard. At first they came for a free bowl of porridge, but many grew to love chess, a game that—like their daily lives—means persevering against great obstacles. Of these kids, one stood out as an immense talent: Phiona.

By the age of eleven Phiona was her country’s junior champion and at fifteen, the national champion. In September 2010, she traveled to Siberia, a rare journey out of Katwe, to compete in the Chess Olympiad, the world’s most prestigious team-chess event. Phiona’s dream is to one day become a Grandmaster, the most elite title in chess. But to reach that goal, she must grapple with everyday life in one of the world’s most unstable countries, a place where girls are taught to be mothers, not dreamers, and the threats of AIDS, kidnapping, and starvation loom over the people.

Like Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, The Queen of Katwe is an intimate and heartrending portrait of human life on the poor fringes of the twenty-first century.]]>
224 Tim Crothers 1451657811 Dorcas 4 3.73 2012 The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster
author: Tim Crothers
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/09/05
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<![CDATA[Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior]]> 2118114 A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.

Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important�? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.

Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect� (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us).

Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.]]>
206 Ori Brafman 0385524382 Dorcas 4 3.78 2008 Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
author: Ori Brafman
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/09/01
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<![CDATA[Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time]]> 17934399
Author Brigid Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post - and harried mother of two - began the journey quite by accident, after a time-use researcher insisted that she, like all American women, had 30 hours of leisure each week. Stunned, she accepted his challenge to keep a time diary and began a journey that would take her from the depths of what she described as the Time Confetti of her days to a conference in Paris with time researchers from around the world, to North Dakota, of all places, where academics are studying the modern love affair with busyness, to Yale, where neuroscientists are finding that feeling overwhelmed is actually shrinking our brains, to exploring new lawsuits uncovering unconscious bias in the workplace, why the US has no real family policy, and where states and cities are filling the federal vacuum.

She spent time with mothers drawn to increasingly super intensive parenting standards, and mothers seeking to pull away from it. And she visited the walnut farm of the world's most eminent motherhood researcher, an evolutionary anthropologist, to ask, are mothers just "naturally" meant to be the primary parent? The answer will surprise you.

Along the way, she was driven by two questions, Why are things the way they are? and, How can they be better? She found real world bright spots of innovative workplaces, couples seeking to shift and share the division of labor at home and work more equitably and traveled to Denmark, the happiest country on earth, where fathers - and mothers - have more pure leisure time than parents in other industrial countries. She devoured research about the science of play, why it's what makes us human, and the feminist leisure research that explains why it's so hard for women to allow themselves to. The answers she found are illuminating, perplexing and ultimately hopeful. The book both outlines the structural and policy changes needed - already underway in small pockets - and mines the latest human performance and motivation science to show the way out of the overwhelm and toward a state that time use researchers call ... Time Serenity.]]>
353 Brigid Schulte 0374228442 Dorcas 5 3.82 2014 Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
author: Brigid Schulte
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/09/01
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<![CDATA[How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia]]> 22168192 324 Shannon Young 9881219523 Dorcas 4 3.71 2014 How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia
author: Shannon Young
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/09/01
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The Poisonwood Bible 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Dorcas 3 4.10 1998 The Poisonwood Bible
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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date added: 2017/08/09
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<![CDATA[The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate]]> 567795 Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that's the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?

In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you'll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman's proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.

The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.]]>
204 Gary Chapman 1881273156 Dorcas 5 4.21 1990 The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
author: Gary Chapman
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It]]> 23281639 The author of The Willpower Instinct delivers a controversial and groundbreaking new book that overturns long-held beliefs about stress.
Ěý
More than forty-four percent of Americans admit to losing sleep over stress. And while most of us do everything we can to reduce it, Stanford psychologist and bestselling author Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., delivers a startling message: Stress isn’t bad. In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal highlights new research indicating that stress can, in fact, make us stronger, smarter, and happier—if we learn how to embrace it.
Ěý
The Upside of Stress is the first book to bring together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience—the human capacity for stress-related growth—and mind-set, the power of beliefs to shape reality. As she did in The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal combines science, stories, and exercises into an engaging and practical book that is both entertaining and life-changing, showing you:

how to cultivate a mind-set to embrace stress
how stress can provide focus and energy
how stress can help people connect and strengthen close relationships
why your brain is built to learn from stress, and how to increase its ability to learn from challenging experiences
Ěý
McGonigal’s TED talk on the subject has already received more than 7 million views. Her message resonates with people who know they can’t eliminate the stress in their lives and want to learn to take advantage of it. The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a guide to getting better at stress, by understanding it, embracing it, and using it.]]>
294 Kelly McGonigal 1583335617 Dorcas 5 4.07 2012 The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It
author: Kelly McGonigal
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/08/07
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<![CDATA[The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert]]> 849380 271 John M. Gottman 0609805797 Dorcas 5 4.23 1999 The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert
author: John M. Gottman
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/08/07
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<![CDATA[The Just Church: Becoming a Risk-Taking, Justice-Seeking, Disciple-Making Congregation]]> 14331074 Finally, a practical guide on how to do justice and grow in discipleship ―from those on the frontlines of the battle in the world’s darkest and most dangerous places. Jim Martin and International Justice Mission are experts not only at bringing rescue to victims of violence, sex trafficking, slavery, and oppression, but also, at bringing churches into the fight, through concrete steps that actually make a difference. Learn how to carry out one of the Bible’s core commands� to seek justice ―in a way that amounts to more than mere words and good intentions. In the process, you’ll discover one of the most powerful tools to grow faith and deepen discipleship. In The Just Church , Martin shares tangible, accessible strategies to respond to God’s call to seek justice, defend the widow and orphan, and rescue the oppressed . . . whether in far-off places or right in your own community]]> 286 Jim Martin 1414371284 Dorcas 4 4.25 2012 The Just Church: Becoming a Risk-Taking, Justice-Seeking, Disciple-Making Congregation
author: Jim Martin
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/02/13
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<![CDATA[Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong]]> 18509633 352 Susan Blumberg-Kason 1402293348 Dorcas 4 3.64 2014 Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong
author: Susan Blumberg-Kason
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead]]> 13588356 Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.� —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.]]>
287 Brené Brown 1592407331 Dorcas 5 4.29 2012 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
author: Brené Brown
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You]]> 18951090 When is the last time you thought about the state of your soul?

The health of your soul isn’t just a matter of saved or unsaved. It’s the hinge on which the rest of your life hangs. It’s the difference between deep, satisfied spirituality and a restless, dispassionate faith.

In an age of materialism and consumerism that tries to buy its way to happiness, many souls are starved and unhealthy, unsatisfied by false promises of status and wealth. We’ve neglected this eternal part of ourselves, focusing instead on the temporal concerns of the world—and not without consequence.

Bestselling author John Ortberg presents another classic that will help you discover your soul—the most important connection to God there is—and find your way out of the spiritual shallow-lands to true divine depth. With characteristic insight and an accessible story-filled approach, Ortberg brings practicality and relevance to one of Christianity’s most mysterious and neglected topics.]]>
208 John Ortberg 0310275962 Dorcas 4 4.24 2014 Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You
author: John Ortberg
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Reclaiming Eve: The Identity and Calling of Women in the Kingdom of God]]> 18608109
The authors set out to discover what scripture says about every woman's identity. What they uncovered will help women, no matter their stage in life, find freedom to become all they can be in God's kingdom.

Whether the reader feels discouraged and damaged or desire a greater understanding of his or her spiritual condition, this book will help readers embrace their identity as people reclaimed by Jesus Christ.]]>
192 Suzanne Burden 0834132265 Dorcas 4 4.02 2014 Reclaiming Eve: The Identity and Calling of Women in the Kingdom of God
author: Suzanne Burden
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Broke: What Financial Desperation Revealed about God's Abundance]]> 18500020 173 Caryn Rivadeneira 0830843116 Dorcas 2 3.83 2014 Broke: What Financial Desperation Revealed about God's Abundance
author: Caryn Rivadeneira
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2014
rating: 2
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<![CDATA[The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited]]> 18695386 In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR's China correspondent Louisa Lim offers an insider's account of this seminal tragedy, revealing the enormous impact it had on China and the reverberations still felt today. Official hypocrisy and the government's obsession with maintaining stability and silence have deepened June 4th's impact on the nation's psyche. Lim interweaves portraits of eight individuals whose lives have been shaped by June 4--including the two women who started Tiananmen Mothers, one of the first and most prominent grassroots organizations outside the Chinese government's control; a student survivor involved in the protests; a soldier who took part in the suppression; and a high-ranking government administrator who played a role in ordering the tanks into the square. In the process she offers a textured, intimate, and haunting look at the national tragedy and an unhealed wound.]]> 264 Louisa Lim 0199347700 Dorcas 5 4.26 2014 The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
author: Louisa Lim
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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Maxed Out 17347347
Alcorn wondered how a woman like herself, with a loving husband, a supportive boss, three healthy kids, and a good income, was unable to manage the demands of having a career and a family. Over time, she realized that she wasn’t alone. As she questioned other working moms, she realized that many women were struggling to do it all, crashing, and feeling as if they were somehow failing as a result.

Mothers are the breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, yet the American workplace is uniquely hostile to the needs of parents. Weaving in surprising research about the dysfunction between the careers and home lives of working mothers, as well as the consequences to women’s health, Alcorn tells a deeply personal story about "having it all," failing miserably, and what comes after. Ultimately, she offers readers a vision for a healthier, happier, and more productive way to live and work.]]>
393 Katrina Alcorn 1580055230 Dorcas 4 3.80 2013 Maxed Out
author: Katrina Alcorn
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Dorcas 5 4.57 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 12262741 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State � and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.]]>
336 Cheryl Strayed 0307592731 Dorcas 3 4.06 2012 Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Cheryl Strayed
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/03/19
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The Time Traveler's Wife 18619684 537 Audrey Niffenegger 1939126010 Dorcas 4 4.07 2003 The Time Traveler's Wife
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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Heart of the Matter 7114761
Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie—a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance—and even to some degree, friendships—believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children.Ěý But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.Ěý

In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances.ĚýEach being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.]]>
368 Emily Giffin 0312554168 Dorcas 2 3.74 2010 Heart of the Matter
author: Emily Giffin
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 2
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<![CDATA[Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1)]]> 42156 Something Borrowed tells the story of Rachel, a young attorney living and working in Manhattan.

Rachel has always been the consummate good girl—until her thirtieth birthday, when her best friend, Darcy, throws her a party. That night, after too many drinks, Rachel ends up in bed with Darcy's fiancé. Although she wakes up determined to put the one-night fling behind her, Rachel is horrified to discover that she has genuine feelings for the one guy she should run from. As the September wedding date nears, Rachel knows she has to make a choice. In doing so, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk all to win true happiness.

Something Borrowed is a phenomenal debut novel that will have you laughing, crying, and calling your best friend.
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336 Emily Giffin 031232118X Dorcas 4 3.89 2004 Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1)
author: Emily Giffin
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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Can You Keep a Secret? 33724 374 Sophie Kinsella 0440241901 Dorcas 3 3.82 2003 Can You Keep a Secret?
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey]]> 44441 192 Brian D. McLaren 078795599X Dorcas 5 3.83 2001 A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey
author: Brian D. McLaren
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality]]> 7214 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0785263705 here.

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." ―Donald Miller

In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

For anyone wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant in a postmodern culture.

For anyone thirsting for a genuine encounter with a God who is real.

For anyone yearning for a renewed sense of passion inĚý life.

Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption.

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243 Donald Miller 0785263705 Dorcas 4 3.90 2003 Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
author: Donald Miller
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible]]> 495395
Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the hundreds of less-publicised rules. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.]]>
388 A.J. Jacobs 0743291476 Dorcas 4 3.76 2007 The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
author: A.J. Jacobs
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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The Screwtape Letters 17383917 The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging and humorous account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.

Now, for the first time, The Screwtape Letters is presented with its full text alongside helpful annotations provided by Lewis enthusiast and dramatist Paul McCusker. The notes include literary, theological, and biographical information to enhance Lewis's core themes and demystify complex ideas. McCusker also guides readers to concepts and references from the beloved author's other treasured volumes to deepen and enrich this timeless classic. The annotated edition is the ultimate guide for understanding the heavenly truths buried in these epistles from below.]]>
223 C.S. Lewis 0062023179 Dorcas 4 4.25 1942 The Screwtape Letters
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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Mere Christianity 11138 191 C.S. Lewis 0684823780 Dorcas 5 4.32 1952 Mere Christianity
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over]]> 17934779 Ěý
Evangelical poster child Addie Zierman wore three bracelets asking what Jesus would do. She also led two Bible studies and listened exclusively to Christian music. She was on fire for God and unaware that the flame was dwindling—until it burned out.
Ěý
Addie chronicles her journey through church culture and first love, and her entrance—unprepared and angry—into marriage. When she drops out of church and very nearly her marriage as well, it is on a sea of tequila and depression. She isn’t sure if she’ll ever go back.
Ěý
When We Were on FireĚýis a funny, heartbreaking story of untangling oneself from what is expected to arrive at faith that is not bound by tradition or current church fashion. Addie looks for what lasts when nothing else seems worth keeping. It’s a story for doubters, cynics, and anyone who has felt alone in church.]]>
256 Addie Zierman 1601425457 Dorcas 3 3.98 2013 When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over
author: Addie Zierman
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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Where We Belong 12987977
For the precocious and determined Kirby, the encounter will spur a process of discovery that ushers her across the threshold of adulthood, forcing her to re-evaluate her family and future in a wise and bittersweet light. As the two women embark on a journey to find the one thing missing in their lives, each will come to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.]]>
372 Emily Giffin 0312554192 Dorcas 3 3.89 2004 Where We Belong
author: Emily Giffin
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/08
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<![CDATA[A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail]]> 9791 A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).]]> 397 Bill Bryson 0307279464 Dorcas 4 4.07 1998 A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
author: Bill Bryson
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Outliers: The Story of Success]]> 3228917 Learn what sets high achievers apart � from Bill Gates to the Beatles � in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.]]>
309 Malcolm Gladwell 0316017922 Dorcas 5 4.19 2008 Outliers: The Story of Success
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking]]> 8520610 The book that started the Quiet Revolution

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.Ěý

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.]]>
333 Susan Cain 0307352145 Dorcas 5 4.07 2012 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
author: Susan Cain
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life]]> 1999475 Full of beautiful, heart-wrenching, and hilarious stories, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details one man's opportunity to edit his life as if he were a character in a movie.

Years after writing his best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another.

But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don's life for film--changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative--the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges readers to reconsider what they strive forĚýin life. It shows how to get a second chance atĚýlife theĚýfirst time around.

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255 Donald Miller 0785213066 Dorcas 4 4.12 2009 A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
author: Donald Miller
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (Current Issues, Missions)]]> 152620 48 Gary A. Haugen 0830822356 Dorcas 4 4.02 1999 Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (Current Issues, Missions)
author: Gary A. Haugen
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/04
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Me Talk Pretty One Day 4137 272 David Sedaris 0349113912 Dorcas 4 4.01 2000 Me Talk Pretty One Day
author: David Sedaris
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses Who Led the West to Victory in World War II]]> 6065741 ĚýĚýMichael Gove, Mail on Sunday Books of the Year 'Scintillating historical writing on the whole rich panorama of Britain and the US at war'
ĚýĚýMartin Gilbert, Evening Standard 'A compelling analysis of American and British military strategy during the war. He also tells a profoundly human story'
ĚýĚýLaurence Rees, Sunday Times 'A masterpiece'
ĚýĚýChristopher Silvester, Daily Express 'Britain's finest contemporary military historian'
ĚýĚýEconomist Books of the Year Andrew Roberts is a biographer and historian of international renown whose previous books include Victorian Titan (1999), which won the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction; Napoleon and Wellington (2001); Hitler and Secrets of Leadership (2003), which coincided with four-part BBC2 history series, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (2005).]]>
720 Andrew Roberts 0141029269 Dorcas 4 4.17 2008 Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses Who Led the West to Victory in World War II
author: Andrew Roberts
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War]]> 9850339 From "Britain's finest military historian" (The Economist) comes a magisterial new history of World War II and the flawed axis strategy that led to their defeat.

The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won? Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war—the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism—as never before.

In researching this magnificently vivid history, Roberts walked many of the key battlefields and wartime sites in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, and the Far East, and drew on a number of never-before-published documents, such as a letter from Hitler's director of military operations explaining the reasoning behind the FĂĹ“hrer's order to halt the Panzers outside Dunkirk—a delay that enabled British forces to evacuate. Roberts illuminates the principal actors on both sides and analyzes how they reached critical decisions. He also presents the tales of many little-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the terrible depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War gives a dramatic account of this momentous event and shows in remarkable detail why the war took the course it did.

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712 Andrew Roberts 0061228591 Dorcas 4 4.16 2009 The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War
author: Andrew Roberts
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption]]> 8664353
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.]]>
475 Laura Hillenbrand 1400064163 Dorcas 4 4.38 2010 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Seabiscuit: An American Legend]]> 110737 There's an alternate cover edition here

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:

Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.

Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
457 Laura Hillenbrand 0345465083 Dorcas 5 4.22 1999 Seabiscuit: An American Legend
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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Cause Celeb 4529 Cause Celeb is the hilarious debut novel by British literary sensation Helen Fielding. With the same wit and candor that shot and to the top of bestseller lists and forever altered the vocabulary of dating, Fielding executes a remarkable spoof on the altruistic endeavors of commoners and celebrities alike as they unite to combat the horror of famine and neglect in Africa. Populated by larger-than-life characters from London's West End and the unsung heroes toiling anonymously on the Continent, Cause Celeb is a cunning and poignant tale that discloses the romantic underpinnings of life and love in the 21st century.


Rosie Richardson, a frothy young woman trapped in the cauldron of the publishing world, finds herself involved in a dysfunctional relationship with TV personality Oliver Marchant, a Teflon-coated Romeo who slips in and out of her life with greater frequency than she'd like. Disenchanted with their glamorous lifestyle, Rosie packs her bags and (quite literally) heads for the hills, embarking on a personal odyssey through the majestic deserts of Africa to the fictional state of Nambula, where each day's sunrise brings a daunting challenge.


Upon arrival in the sparse refugee camp, Rosie immediately gets a sense of just how eccentric some of her new neighbors are. Muhammed, a local go-between with a flair for melodrama, the burly Irish doctor O'Rourke, and two seasoned nurses are all catalysts for the story who keep spirits alive and send emotions on a roller-coaster ride. When a carpet of locusts wreaks havoc among vestiges of the season's last crops, disease and starvation become a palpable threat that plagues the proud refugees of Nambula with fear.


But stubborn government regimes turn a blind eye to the dangers facing the village, the relief workers' pleas for food and assistance are ignored, and fever and calamity run rampant, forcing Rosie to return to London and enlist the help of her former lover and the motley crew of friends they once shared. In a final, inspired act of desperation, the former publicity flak miraculously pulls off an international appeal with results that far surpass anything she had imagined.


With a winning combination of pathos and humor, Fielding suggests that the real voyage of discovery is not simply in the quest for new landscapes, but in having new eyes to view them with. Ultimately, Rosie does find the peace of mind and passion she so desperately sought, and the success of her cause adds substance to her life and a depth to her character she had never suspected. Like the Bridget Jones novels, Cause Celeb is an easy, enjoyable read. But despite its seeming frivolity, the book paints an insightful and sanguine portrait of modern-day philanthropy. It's just that in the world according to Helen Fielding, even saving lives can be cause for merriment.


--Lauren Foster

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342 Helen Fielding 0142000221 Dorcas 2 3.05 1994 Cause Celeb
author: Helen Fielding
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.05
book published: 1994
rating: 2
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<![CDATA[Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination]]> 4530 At the close of the last millennium, Helen Fielding debuted the irrepressible (and blockbuster-bestselling) Bridget Jones. Now, Fielding gives us a sensational new heroine for a new era...Move over 007, a stunning, sexy-and decidedly female-new player has entered the world of international espionage. Her name is Olivia Joules (that’s "J.O.U.L.E.S. the unit of kinetic energy") and she's ready to take America by storm with charm, style, and her infamous Overactive Imagination.

How could a girl not be drawn to the alluring, powerful Pierre Ferramo-he of the hooded eyes, impeccable taste, unimaginable wealth, exotic international homes, and dubious French accent? Could Ferramo really be a major terrorist bent on the Western world’s destruction, hiding behind a smokescreen of fine wines, yachts, and actresses slash models? Or is it all just a product of Olivia Joules’s overactive imagination?

Join Olivia in her heart-stopping, hilarious, nerve-frazzling quest from hip hotel to eco-lodge to underwater cave, by light aircraft, speedboat, helicopter, and horse, in this witty, contemporary, and utterly unputdownable novel deluxe.

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305 Helen Fielding 0143035363 Dorcas 3 3.14 2003 Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
author: Helen Fielding
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Bridget Jones, #2)]]> 363752 352 Helen Fielding 0140298479 Dorcas 3 3.64 1999 Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Bridget Jones, #2)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement � a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and � like millions of readers the world round � you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]>
288 Helen Fielding 014028009X Dorcas 4 3.81 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad]]> 13147885 From the author of the New York Times bestselling Holy War, Inc., this is the definitive account of the decade-long manhunt that killed the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.

Al Qaeda expert and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen paints a multidimensional picture of the hunt for bin Laden over the past decade, including the operation that killed him. Other key elements of the book will include:

A careful account of Obama’s decision-making process as the raid was planned

The fascinating story of a group of CIA analysts—largely women—who never gave up assembling the tiniest clues about OBL’s whereabouts

The untold and action-packed history of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the SEALs

An analysis of what the death of OBL means for al Qaeda, and for Obama’s legacy.Ěý

Just as Too Big to Fail captured, in riveting detail, the anatomy of this decade’s financial disaster, so too is Manhunt one of the key stories of this decade: the authoritative, immersive account of the operation that killed the man who organized the largest mass murder in American history.]]>
Peter L. Bergen 030796955X Dorcas 4 4.08 2012 Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden--from 9/11 to Abbottabad
author: Peter L. Bergen
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
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<![CDATA[Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex]]> 2082136 Mary Roach, "The funniest science writer in the country" (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn't Viagra help women - or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm - two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth - can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.]]> 319 Mary Roach 0393064646 Dorcas 4 3.83 2008 Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
author: Mary Roach
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers]]> 32145 Stiff an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.]]> 304 Mary Roach 0393324826 Dorcas 4 4.06 2003 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
author: Mary Roach
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]>
304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Dorcas 3 4.01 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World]]> 171827 208 Lee C. Camp 1587430495 Dorcas 4 4.17 2003 Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World
author: Lee C. Camp
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.]]> 275903 352 Coretta Scott King 0140368051 Dorcas 4 4.14 1969 My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.
author: Coretta Scott King
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1969
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Chronicles of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia, #1-7)]]> 11127 Librarian note: An alternate cover for this edition can be found here: 2005.

Journeys to the end of the world, fantastic creatures, and epic battles between good and evil—what more could any reader ask for in one book? The book that has it all is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, written in 1949 by Clive Staples Lewis. But Lewis did not stop there. Six more books followed, and together they became known as The Chronicles of Narnia.

For the past fifty years, The Chronicles of Narnia have transcended the fantasy genre to become part of the canon of classic literature. Each of the seven books is a masterpiece, drawing the reader into a land where magic meets reality, and the result is a fictional world whose scope has fascinated generations.

This edition presents all seven books—unabridged—in one impressive volume. The books are presented here in chronlogical order, each chapter graced with an illustration by the original artist, Pauline Baynes. Deceptively simple and direct, The Chronicles of Narnia continue to captivate fans with adventures, characters, and truths that speak to readers of all ages, even fifty years after they were first published.]]>
767 C.S. Lewis 0066238501 Dorcas 5 4.27 1956 The Chronicles of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia, #1-7)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World]]> 10235 Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.]]>
333 Tracy Kidder 0812973011 Dorcas 5 4.19 2003 Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]>
391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Dorcas 4 4.34 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Hobbit, or There and Back Again]]> 5907 Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]> 366 J.R.R. Tolkien Dorcas 4 4.29 1937 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1937
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]>
374 Suzanne Collins Dorcas 5 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]>
390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 Dorcas 4 4.10 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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Disappointment with God 53829
Philip Yancey has a gift for articulating the knotty issues of faith. In Disappointment with God, he poses three questions that Christians wonder but seldom ask aloud: Is God unfair? Is he silent? Is he hidden? This insightful and deeply personal book points to the odd disparity between our concept of God and the realities of life. Why, if God is so hungry for relationship with us, does he seem so distant? Why, if he cares for us, do bad things happen? What can we expect from him after all? Yancey answers these questions with clarity, richness, and biblical assurance. He takes us beyond the things that make for disillusionment to a deeper faith, a certitude of God's love, and a thirst to reach not just for what God gives, but for who he is.]]>
304 Philip Yancey 0310517818 Dorcas 3 4.17 1988 Disappointment with God
author: Philip Yancey
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1988
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[What's So Amazing About Grace?]]> 53817 Original Cover Edition for ISBN 0310245656

In 1987, an IRA bomb buried Gordon Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter beneath five feet of rubble. Gordon alone survived. And forgave. He said of the bombers, ' I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge . . . I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them.' His words caught the media's ears — and out of one man's grief, the world got a glimpse of grace. Grace is the church's great distinctive. It's the one thing the world cannot duplicate, and the one thing it craves above all else — for only grace can bring hope and transformation to a jaded world.

In What's So Amazing About Grace? award-winning author Philip Yancey explores grace at street level. If grace is God's love for the undeserving, he asks, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a world that knows far more of cruelty and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Yancey sets grace in the midst of life's stark images, tests its mettle against horrific 'ungrace.' Can grace survive in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust? Can it triumph over the brutality of the Ku Klux Klan? Should any grace at all be shown to the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed and cannibalized seventeen young men? Grace does not excuse sin, says Yancey, but it treasures the sinner. True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence on getting close to sinners and touching them with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today's AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus' day.

In his most personal and provocative book ever, Yancey offers compelling, true portraits of grace's life-changing power. He searches for its presence in his own life and in the church. He asks, How can Christians contend graciously with moral issues that threaten all they hold dear? And he challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately wants to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

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304 Philip Yancey Dorcas 5 4.18 1997 What's So Amazing About Grace?
author: Philip Yancey
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?]]> 53827
In his most powerful book since What’s So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey probes the most fundamental, challenging, perplexing, and deeply rewarding aspect of our relationship with God: prayer. What is prayer? How does it work? And more importantly, does it work? In theory, prayer is the essential human act, a priceless point of contact between us and the God of the universe. In practice, prayer is often frustrating, confusing, and fraught with mystery. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? is an exploration of the mysterious intersection where God and humans meet and relate. Writing as a fellow pilgrim, Yancey explores such questions as:

Is God listening?
Why should God care about me?
If God knows everything, what’s the point of prayer?
Why do answers to prayer seem so inconsistent and capricious?
Why does God seem sometimes close and sometimes far away?
How can I make prayer more satisfying?

"I have found that the most important purpose of prayer may be to let ourselves be loved by God," says Yancey. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? encourages us to pray to God the Father who sees what lies ahead of us, knows what lies within us, and who invites us into an eternal partnership--through prayer.]]>
351 Philip Yancey Dorcas 4 4.20 2006 Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
author: Philip Yancey
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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How to Be Good 4268 305 Nick Hornby 3426615355 Dorcas 3 3.24 2001 How to Be Good
author: Nick Hornby
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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Slam 411527 When the wheels come off the trucks and your life slams into a wall... who do you turn to then? I turn to Tony Hawk. You maybe would not expect the world's best skater to know everything you need to know about hour life, but he does. And if you don't understand what he's saying, then he'll just whizz you into the future.]]> 309 Nick Hornby 0399250484 Dorcas 3 3.26 2007 Slam
author: Nick Hornby
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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A Long Way Down 10073 New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line.

Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year's Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives.

In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Nick Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances.

Intense, hilarious, provocative, and moving, A Long Way Down is a novel about suicide that is, surprisingly, full of life.

What's your jumping-off point?

Maureen
Why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvelous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queue-jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the post office, people tut. Or sometimes they say "Excuse me, I was here first." They don't say "You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity." That would be a bit strong.

Martin
I'd spent the previous couple of months looking up suicides on the Internet, just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time, the coroner says the same thing: "He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed." And then you read the story about the poor bastard: His wife was sleeping with his best friend, he'd lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some months before . . . Hello, Mr. Coroner? I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it just right.

Jess
I was at a party downstairs. It was a shit party, full of all these ancient crusties sitting on the floor drinking cider and smoking huge spliffs and listening to weirdo space-out reggae. At midnight, one of them clapped sarcastically, and a couple of others laughed, and that was it-Happy New Year to you, too. You could have turned up to that party as the happiest person in London, and you'd still have wanted to jump off the roof by five past twelve. And I wasn't the happiest person in London anyway. Obviously.

JJ
New Year's Eve was a night for sentimental losers. It was my own stupid fault. Of course there'd be a low-rent crowd up there. I should have picked a classier date-like March 28, when Virginia Woolf took her walk into the river, or November 25 (Nick Drake). If anybody had been on the roof on either of those nights, the chances are they would have been like-minded souls, rather than hopeless f*ck-ups who had somehow persuaded themselves that the end of a calendar year is in any way significant.
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368 Nick Hornby 1594481938 Dorcas 3 3.45 2005 A Long Way Down
author: Nick Hornby
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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Juliet, Naked 6224826
But between Annie and her second chance lie a few obstacles. There's Malcolm, the world's most judgemental therapist, and Barnesy, the north's most extrovert dancer. There's what men and women will do and won't do for love. And, of course, there's Tucker...]]>
406 Nick Hornby 1594488878 Dorcas 3 3.50 2009 Juliet, Naked
author: Nick Hornby
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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Remember Me? 1358844
Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.

Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?

With the same wicked humor and delicious charm that have won her millions of devoted fans, Sophie Kinsella, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Shopaholic & Baby, returns with an irresistible new novel and a fresh new heroine who finds herself in a life-changing and utterly hilarious predicament…]]>
352 Sophie Kinsella Dorcas 4 3.82 2008 Remember Me?
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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Twenties Girl 6063187
When the spirit of Lara’s great-aunt Sadie—a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance—mysteriously appears, she has one request: Lara must find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie’s possession for more than seventy-five years, because Sadie cannot rest without it.

Lara and Sadie make a hilarious sparring duo, and at first it seems as though they have nothing in common. But as the mission to find Sadie’s necklace leads to intrigue and a new romance for Lara, these very different “twenties� girls learn some surprising truths from and about each other. Written with all the irrepressible charm and humor that have made Sophie Kinsella’s books beloved by millions, Twenties Girl is also a deeply moving testament to the transcendent bonds of friendship and family.]]>
435 Sophie Kinsella 0385342020 Dorcas 3 3.85 2009 Twenties Girl
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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The Undomestic Goddess 33722 Alternative cover edition of ISBN 9780385338691

Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership.

Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer–and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope–and finds love–is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake.

But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?]]>
404 Sophie Kinsella Dorcas 5 3.87 2005 The Undomestic Goddess
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1)]]> 9416
Her job writing at Successful Savings not only bores her to tears, it doesn't pay much at all. And lately Becky's been chased by dismal letters from the bank –letters with large red sums she can't bear to read–and they're getting ever harder to ignore.

She tries cutting back. But none of her efforts succeeds. Becky's only consolation is to buy herself something ... just a little something....

Finally a story arises that Becky actually cares about, and her front-page article catalyzes a chain of events that will transform her life–and the lives of those around her–forever.]]>
368 Sophie Kinsella 0440241413 Dorcas 3 3.71 2000 Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1)
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Dorcas
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith]]> 10890 Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. The people in Anne Lamott's real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers: Her friend Pammy; her son, Sam; and the many funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness.

Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God, and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, "My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers." At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and very funny, Traveling Mercies tells in exuberant detail how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.]]>
275 Anne Lamott 0385496095 Dorcas 4 4.14 1999 Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
author: Anne Lamott
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith]]> 12535 From the New York Times bestselling author of Hallelujah Anyway and Help, Thanks, Wow, a spiritual antidote to anxiety and despair in increasingly fraught times.

As Anne Lamott knows, the world is a dangerous place. Terrorism and war have become the new normal. Environmental devastation looms even closer. And there are personal demands on her faith as well: getting older; her mother's Alzheimer's; her son's adolescence; and the passing of friends and time.

Fortunately for those of us who are anxious about the state of the world, whose parents are also aging and dying, whose children are growing harder to recognize as they become teenagers, Plan B offers hope that we’re not alone in the midst of despair. It shares with us Lamott's ability to comfort and to make us laugh despite the grim realities.

Anne Lamott is one of our most beloved writers, and Plan B is a book more necessary now than ever. It is further evidence that, as The New Yorker has written, "Anne Lamott is a cause for celebration."]]>
320 Anne Lamott 1594481571 Dorcas 4 4.04 2004 Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
author: Anne Lamott
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year]]> 12540 Crooked Little Heart) is a single mother and ex-alcoholic with a pleasingly warped social circle and a remarkably tolerant religion to lean on. She responds to the changes, exhaustion, and love Sam brings with aplomb or outright insanity. The book rocks from hilarious to unbearably poignant when Sam's burgeoning life is played out against a very close friend's illness. No saccharine paean to becoming a parent, this touches on the rage and befuddlement that dog sweeter emotions during this sea change in one's life.]]> 251 Anne Lamott 1400079098 Dorcas 4 4.18 1993 Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
author: Anne Lamott
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]>
912 J.K. Rowling Dorcas 3 4.50 2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]>
352 J.K. Rowling Dorcas 3 4.42 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Dorcas 3 4.56 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)]]> 136251
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited.]]>
759 J.K. Rowling Dorcas 5 4.61 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Dorcas 5 4.57 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)]]> 3 309 J.K. Rowling 0439554934 Dorcas 4 4.47 1997 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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The Lord of the Rings 33 One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

From Sauron's fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.

When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.

The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.]]>
1216 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618640150 Dorcas 5 4.52 1954 The Lord of the Rings
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Dorcas
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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