Annie's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 30 Mar 2025 03:01:38 -0700 60 Annie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg My Year of Meats 12349 A cross-cultural tale of two women brought together by the intersections of television and industrial agriculture, fertility and motherhood, life and love—the breakout hit by the celebrated author of A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki’s mesmerizing debut novel has captivated readers and reviewers worldwide. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband.

Hailed by USA Today as “rare and provocative� and awarded the Kirayama Prize for Literature of the Pacific Rim, My Year of Meats is a modern-day take on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for fans of Michael Pollan, Margaret Atwood, and Barbara Kingsolver.]]> 366 Ruth Ozeki 0140280464 Annie 0 currently-reading 4.02 1998 My Year of Meats
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Annie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Annie 3 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Annie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> The Seventh Son 64645745
When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, one they hope no one ever discovers, they set in motion an experiment that is set to upend the human race as we know it.

Seth, a baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.

The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power. It asks the just because you can do something, does it mean you should?]]> 353 Sebastian Faulks Annie 1 3.49 2023 The Seventh Son
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Annie
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea]]> 162332 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679750154

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.]]> 181 Yukio Mishima Annie 4 3.87 1963 The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Annie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Annie 3 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Annie
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/20
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]]> Fingersmith 64399418
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.]]> 552 Sarah Waters 0349017468 Annie 5 4.08 2002 Fingersmith
author: Sarah Waters
name: Annie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
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]]> Stone Blind 61102615 A fresh take on the story of Medusa, the original monstered woman.

They will fear you and flee you and call you a monster.

The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.

When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene's temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge--on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon's actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude.

Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon...

In Stone Blind, classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes turns our understanding of this legendary myth on its head, bringing empathy and nuance to one of the earliest stories in which a woman--injured by a powerful man--is blamed, punished, and monstered for the assault. Delving into the origins of this mythic tale, Haynes revitalizes and reconstructs Medusa's story with her passion and fierce wit, offering a timely retelling of this classic myth that speaks to us today.]]> 373 Natalie Haynes 0063258390 Annie 3 3.79 2022 Stone Blind
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Annie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Annie 4 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Annie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housekeeper and the Professor]]> 3181564
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.]]> 180 YĹŤko Ogawa 0312427808 Annie 4 4.04 2003 The Housekeeper and the Professor
author: YĹŤko Ogawa
name: Annie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[South of the Border, West of the Sun]]> 15840207 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 13: 9780099448570

Growing up in the suburbs in post-war japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collections. but when his family moved away, the two lost touch.

Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery.

Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]> 187 Haruki Murakami Annie 2 3.71 1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Annie 4 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Annie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
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]]> The Trial 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Annie 2 4.00 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: Annie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> The Frolic of the Beasts 35952941
Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, The Frolic of the Beasts tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle between a former university student, Kōji; his would-be mentor, the eminent literary critic Ippei Kusakudo; and Ippei’s beautiful, enigmatic wife, Yūko. When brought face-to-face with one of Ippei’s many marital indiscretions, Kōji finds his growing desire for Yūko compels him to action in a way that changes all three of their lives profoundly. Originally published in 1961 and now available in English for the first time, The Frolic of the Beasts is a haunting examination of the various guises we assume throughout our lives, and a tale of psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and crime.]]> 166 Yukio Mishima 0525434151 Annie 3 3.54 1961 The Frolic of the Beasts
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Annie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/04
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]]> A Prayer for Owen Meany 4473 637 John Irving 0552135399 Annie 2 4.24 1989 A Prayer for Owen Meany
author: John Irving
name: Annie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1989
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]> 10374 Lord Jim.

Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.]]> 400 Haruki Murakami Annie 2 4.14 1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami Annie 3 3.87 2007 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Annie 4 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Annie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
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]]> If I Survive You 59808611
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper--himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica--Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.]]> 260 Jonathan Escoffery 037460598X Annie 3 3.67 2022 If I Survive You
author: Jonathan Escoffery
name: Annie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/05/04
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]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Annie 2 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Annie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/14
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]]> Western Lane 60784812
A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself.

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.]]> 160 Chetna Maroo 0374607494 Annie 4 3.50 2023 Western Lane
author: Chetna Maroo
name: Annie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/03/21
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Annie 3 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Annie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/31
date added: 2024/03/15
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]]> The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Annie 3 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Annie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Annie 4 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Annie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/03
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]]> Dune Messiah (Dune #2) 44492285
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known--and feared--as the man christened Muad'Dib. As Emperor of the Known Universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremens, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne--and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.

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

Includes an introduction by Brian Herbert]]> 336 Frank Herbert 0593098234 Annie 2 3.89 1969 Dune Messiah (Dune #2)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Annie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1969
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/22
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]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X Annie 4 4.33 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Annie
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
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]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Annie 0 to-read 4.26 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Annie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Annie 4 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Annie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Annie 2 3.67 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Annie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/18
date added: 2023/12/18
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]]> A Tale for the Time Being 15811545
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. 

Full of Ozeki's signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.]]> 432 Ruth Ozeki 0670026638 Annie 4 4.06 2013 A Tale for the Time Being
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Annie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/06
date added: 2023/12/06
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]]> Time Shelter 58999261
In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a “clinic for the past� that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. As Gaustine’s assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a “time shelter”—a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter announces Gospodinov to American readers as an essential voice in international literature.]]> 304 Georgi Gospodinov 1324090952 Annie 3 3.59 2020 Time Shelter
author: Georgi Gospodinov
name: Annie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/12/06
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]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Annie 4 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Annie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/10/28
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]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Annie 3 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Annie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/19
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves:
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]]> The Marriage Portrait 60353768 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de� Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.]]> 355 Maggie O'Farrell Annie 4 3.97 2022 The Marriage Portrait
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Annie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/06
date added: 2023/10/06
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]]> The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 Annie 4 4.16 1994 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/23
date added: 2023/09/23
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris]]> 58999202 One of The New York Times'  100 Notable Books of 2022
One of ArtNet's  Art Books They Couldn’t Put Down in 2022
One of Harper Bazaar’s Top 100 in 2022

A dazzling portrait of Paris’s forgotten artist and cabaret star, whose incandescent life asks us to see the history of modern art in new ways. In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse captivated as a nightclub performer, sold out gallery showings of her paintings, starred in Surrealist films, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Her best-selling memoir―featuring an introduction by Ernest Hemingway―made front-page news in France and was immediately banned in America. All before she turned thirty. Kiki was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder, and especially photographer Man Ray. Why has Man Ray’s legacy endured while Kiki has become a footnote? Kiki and Man Ray met in 1921 during a chance encounter at a café. What followed was an explosive decade-long connection, both professional and romantic, during which the couple grew and experimented as artists, competed for fame, and created many of the shocking images that cemented Man Ray’s reputation as one of the great artists of the modern era. The works they made together, including the Surrealist icons Le Violon d’Ingres and Noire et blanche , now set records at auction. Charting their volatile relationship, award-winning historian Mark Braude illuminates for the first time Kiki’s seminal influence not only on Man Ray’s art, but on the culture of 1920s Paris and beyond. As provocative and magnetically irresistible as Kiki herself, Kiki Man Ray is the story of an exceptional life that will challenge ideas about artists and muses―and the lines separating the two. 8 page insert]]> 304 Mark Braude 1324006013 Annie 3 3.81 2022 Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris
author: Mark Braude
name: Annie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/22
date added: 2023/08/22
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]]> The Woman in the Dunes 9998 The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.

After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman, and together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side through this Sisyphean of tasks.]]> 241 KĹŤbĹŤ Abe 0679733787 Annie 2 3.90 1962 The Woman in the Dunes
author: KĹŤbĹŤ Abe
name: Annie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1962
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/07
date added: 2023/08/07
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]]> Summer Crossing 9922 Summer Crossing is a precocious, confident first novel from one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Set in New York just after World War II, the story follows a young carefree socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer. Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she's been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.]]> 142 Truman Capote 0812975936 Annie 2 3.43 2005 Summer Crossing
author: Truman Capote
name: Annie
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/24
date added: 2023/07/24
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]]> To Paradise 57739876 From the author of the classic A Little Life, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.

These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love � partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens � and the pain that ensues when we cannot.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385547935 Annie 3 3.74 2022 To Paradise
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Annie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/15
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]]> In Cold Blood 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 Annie 4 4.08 1966 In Cold Blood
author: Truman Capote
name: Annie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/12
date added: 2023/06/12
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Annie 3 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Annie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/29
date added: 2023/05/18
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]]> Killing Commendatore 38820047
In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby�Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.]]> 681 Haruki Murakami 052552004X Annie 4 3.88 2017 Killing Commendatore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/18
date added: 2023/05/18
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]]> White Teeth 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Annie 3 3.80 2000 White Teeth
author: Zadie Smith
name: Annie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/29
date added: 2023/04/29
shelves:
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]]> A Story of Yesterday 58913358 Under a sky of different colors germinates a magical story of survival, where the result of each choice, enclosed in this particular tale, will snatch the whereabouts of each story forever.]]> 70 Sergio Cobo Annie 0 to-read 4.45 2014 A Story of Yesterday
author: Sergio Cobo
name: Annie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Form and Emptiness]]> 57004637 A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.]]> 548 Ruth Ozeki 0399563644 Annie 5 4.01 2021 The Book of Form and Emptiness
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Annie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/04
date added: 2023/03/24
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]]> Sharp Objects 18045891
Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)]]> 254 Gillian Flynn 0297851535 Annie 3 4.05 2006 Sharp Objects
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Annie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/19
date added: 2023/03/24
shelves:
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]]> The Lonely Londoners 612888
In the hopeful aftermath of war they flocked to the Mother Country � West Indians in search of a prosperous future in the "glitter-city."

Instead, they have to face the harsh realities of living hand to mouth, of racism, of bone-chilling weather and bleak prospects. Yet friendships flourish among these Lonely Londoners and, in time, they learn to survive.]]> 142 Sam Selvon 0582642647 Annie 4 3.71 1956 The Lonely Londoners
author: Sam Selvon
name: Annie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/24
date added: 2023/03/24
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]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Annie 4 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/13
date added: 2023/03/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Consolations of Philosophy]]> 23419 The Consolations of Philosophy takes the discipline of logic and the mind back to its roots. Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock and roll'.]]> 265 Alain de Botton Annie 4 4.04 2000 The Consolations of Philosophy
author: Alain de Botton
name: Annie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/02
date added: 2023/03/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ladies' Paradise (Les Rougon-Macquart #11)]]> 28413 The Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the rise of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family: it is emblematic of changes in consumer culture, and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. This new translation of the eleventh novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of his greatest works.]]> 438 Émile Zola 0192836021 Annie 2 4.01 1883 The Ladies' Paradise (Les Rougon-Macquart #11)
author: Émile Zola
name: Annie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1883
rating: 2
read at: 2023/02/22
date added: 2023/02/22
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]]> The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Annie 2 4.08 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Annie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/02/02
date added: 2023/02/05
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]]> The Penelopiad 17645 Now that all the others have run out of air, it's my turn to do a little story-making.

In Homer's account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids.

In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.]]> 198 Margaret Atwood 1841957178 Annie 3 3.71 2005 The Penelopiad
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Annie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/23
date added: 2023/01/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Redbreast (Harry Hole, #3)]]> 465226 The Redbreast is a fabulous introduction to Nesbø’s tough-as-nails series protagonist, Oslo police detective Harry Hole. A brilliant and epic novel, breathtaking in its scope and design—winner of The Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel and selected as the best Norwegian crime novel ever written by members of Norway’s book clubs�The Redbreast is a chilling tale of murder and betrayal that ranges from the battlefields of World War Two to the streets of modern-day Oslo. Follow Hole as he races to stop a killer and disarm a ticking time-bomb from his nation’s shadowy past. Vogue magazine says that “nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer”…and nobody does it better than Jo Nesbø! James Patterson fans should also take note.
]]> 519 Jo Nesbø 184343217X Annie 4 3.94 2000 The Redbreast (Harry Hole, #3)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Annie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/01
date added: 2023/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Annie 5 4.17 2005 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Annie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/01/13
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]]> Memoirs of a Geisha 929
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 503 Arthur Golden 1400096898 Annie 0 to-read 4.31 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: Annie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/13
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]]> The Time Traveler's Wife 18619684 537 Audrey Niffenegger 1939126010 Annie 4 4.07 2003 The Time Traveler's Wife
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Annie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/12
date added: 2023/01/12
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]]> Girl, Woman, Other 41081373
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.]]> 453 Bernardine Evaristo 0241364906 Annie 4 4.27 2019 Girl, Woman, Other
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: Annie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> The Forgotten 57432348
London 1958. Twenty-six-year-old Betty Fisher is one of the first to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and attend its inaugural meeting, where she meets John Harris. Posted to Berlin towards the end of the war, John has been left traumatised by his experiences in Germany. And, as his initial admiration for Betty shifts into an overwhelming need to protect her, he is plagued by flashbacks and fantasies. John's increasing fragility brings to the surface Betty's own memories. And soon her past, too, begins to unravel…]]> Mary Chamberlain 1786079070 Annie 3 3.78 2021 The Forgotten
author: Mary Chamberlain
name: Annie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Darkest Day: A Thrilling Mystery from the Godfather of Swedish Crime (The Barbarotti Series)]]> 35167446 The Darkest Day is the first novel in the five part Inspector Barbarotti series from renowned Swedish crime author HĂĄkan Nesser.

It’s December in the quiet Swedish town of Kymlinge, and the Hermansson family are gathering to celebrate father Karl-Erik and eldest daughter Ebba’s joint landmark birthdays. But beneath the guise of happy festivities, tensions are running high, and it’s not long before the night takes a dark and unexpected turn . . .

Before the weekend is over, two members of the Hermansson family are missing, and it’s up to Inspector Barbarotti � a detective who spends as much of his time debating the existence of God as he does solving cases � to determine exactly what has happened. And he soon discovers he’ll have to unravel a whole tangle of sinister family secrets in the process . . .

]]> 545 HĂĄkan Nesser 1509809368 Annie 2 3.73 2006 The Darkest Day: A Thrilling Mystery from the Godfather of Swedish Crime (The Barbarotti Series)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Annie
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2022/01/31
date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> Art as Therapy 17899481
De Botton argues that certain great works of art offer clues on managing the tensions and confusions of everyday life. Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.

De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.]]> 240 Alain de Botton 0714865915 Annie 4 4.11 2013 Art as Therapy
author: Alain de Botton
name: Annie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> Still Life 57001545
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot -- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics -- he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.]]> 464 Sarah Winman 0593330757 Annie 4 4.08 2021 Still Life
author: Sarah Winman
name: Annie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Annie 4 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Annie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/31
date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Annie 3 4.01 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Annie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/30
date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Annie 3 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Annie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at: 2022/03/31
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves:
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]]> Snow (St. John Strafford, #2) 50353739
The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in this tight-knit community. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything.

The incomparable Booker Prize winner's next great crime novel - the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home.]]> 304 John Banville 1335230009 Annie 3 3.38 2020 Snow (St. John Strafford, #2)
author: John Banville
name: Annie
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/31
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves:
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]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Annie 5 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Annie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/10
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves:
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