en-US Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:27:55 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 48037
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day�� Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.]]> 108 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 0809510839 gina 4 3.88 1872
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: gina
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1872
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
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]]> 49190 477 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 0140437460 gina 0 to-read 3.75 1864
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: gina
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6327 Note: This edition shares ISBN 0590032496 with another edition.

This is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches. Real witches don't ride around on broomsticks. They don't even wear black cloaks and hats. They are vile, cunning, detestable creatures who disguise themselves as nice, ordinary ladies. So how can you tell when you're face to face with one? Well, if you don't know yet you'd better find out quickly-because there's nothing a witch loathes quite as much as children and she'll wield all kinds of terrifying powers to get rid of them.]]> 208 Roald Dahl 0590032496 gina 4 4.18 1981
author: Roald Dahl
name: gina
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1981
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/04/22
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]]> 212342605 Hungerstone is a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood and Emilia Hart’s Weyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband's affection and Carmilla's ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution, Hungerstone is a compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the book that inspired Dracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.]]> 336 Kat Dunn 1638932166 gina 5 4.02 2025
author: Kat Dunn
name: gina
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
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4.5- this is awesome. Must discuss. Wanted more romance tho!
]]> 211143113
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 336 Lucy Rose 0063374609 gina 4 3.5 3.90 2025
author: Lucy Rose
name: gina
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
3.5
]]> 16328
The peaceful English village of King’s Abbot is stunned. The widow Ferrars dies from an overdose of Veronal. Not twenty-four hours later, Roger Ackroyd—the man she had planned to marry—is murdered. It is a baffling case involving blackmail and death that taxes Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells�� before he reaches one of the most startling conclusions of his career.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on ŷ������.]]> 288 Agatha Christie 1579126278 gina 4 4.26 1926
author: Agatha Christie
name: gina
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1926
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
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review:
4.5�� omg this was crazy!!!! Need to sit and have tea with Caroline. I fear I guessed it early on so that kindve spoiled it a bit but that was still a wild ride. Love my good sister Agatha
]]> 27276428
The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a ‘unit of heredity��. It intersects with Darwin’s theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganizes our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds �� from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes.

This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the author of The Emperor of All Maladies. But woven through The Gene, like a red line, is also an intimate history �� the story of Mukherjee’s own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. These concerns reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to “read�� and “write�� the human genome �� unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.

Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity �� and a vision of both humanity’s past and future.]]> 592 Siddhartha Mukherjee gina 0 to-read 4.34 2016
author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
name: gina
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 gina 4 4.28 1939
author: Agatha Christie
name: gina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 2998
Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors after the death of her parents. There she meets a hearty housekeeper and her spirited brother, a dour gardener, a cheerful robin, and her wilful, hysterical, and sickly cousin, Master Colin, whose wails she hears echoing through the house at night.

With the help of the robin, Mary finds the door to a secret garden, neglected and hidden for years. When she decides to restore the garden in secret, the story becomes a charming journey into the places of the heart, where faith restores health, flowers refresh the spirit, and the magic of the garden, coming to life anew, brings health to Colin and happiness to Mary.]]> 331 Frances Hodgson Burnett 0517189607 gina 4 4.16 1911
author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
name: gina
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris gina 0 to-read 4.02 2016
author: Robert Harris
name: gina
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 559585
The Blue Lenses: The terrifying post-operative nightmare of a woman who 'sees' anew.

Ganymede: A cameo of an ageing homosexual's experiences with a young boy and his predatory relatives.

The Alibi: A would-be murderer turned artist is hoist with his own petard.

The Pool: Delicately evokes the fantasy world of a young girl on the brink of puberty.

The Lordly Ones: A simple, poignant tale of a dumb child.

The Archduchess: An ironical fable about revolution and change in the perfect mini-duchy.

The Mendee and The Chamois: Each throw a different light on aspects of modern sexuality.]]> 288 Daphne du Maurier 0140030859 gina 4 3.85 1959
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: gina
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 2871390 Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn she transformed the small dramas of everyday life—love, grief, jealousy—into the stuff of nightmares. Less known, though no less powerful, are her short stories, in which she gave free rein to her imagination in narratives of unflagging suspense.

Patrick McGrath's revelatory new selection of du Maurier's stories shows her at her most chilling and most psychologically astute: a dead child reappears in the alleyways of Venice; routine eye surgery reveals the beast within to a meek housewife; nature revolts against man's abuse by turning a benign species into an annihilating force; a dalliance with a beautiful stranger offers something more dangerous than a broken heart. McGrath draws on the whole of du Maurier's long career and includes surprising discoveries together with famous stories like "The Birds". Don't Look Now is a perfect introduction to a peerless storyteller.]]> 346 Daphne du Maurier 1590172884 gina 4 4.05 2007
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: gina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
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Literally had no idea where this was going but loved it
]]> 60880807
“Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human war, mortality, family, love.�� –Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm

The enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose. Though the novel turns on the death of its central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Observed across the years at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. To the Lighthouse enacts a moving allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life.]]> 224 Virginia Woolf 0593468864 gina 4 4.14 1927
author: Virginia Woolf
name: gina
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1927
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/26
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review:
This took forever to read but brb while I read her love letters again
]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 gina 0 to-read 3.87 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: gina
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 gina 4 3.81 2018
author: Sally Rooney
name: gina
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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review:
I really enjoyed this read despite going into it with high doubts (I always think popular books will somehow let me down because they are “beneath�� me- something I need to work on!) I thought it was very real and introspective, and felt myself relating to both Connell and Marianne. I think the criticisms people have are fair, but idk this story was genuinely captivating and resonated a lot with me. I wasn’t quite prepared for the grief segment or the “masochism��- but it made the story what it is. Glad I finally read it!
]]> 34956885 A global movement guided by love.

Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.

The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.]]> 137 Sonya Renee Taylor 1626569762 gina 0 to-read 4.22 2018
author: Sonya Renee Taylor
name: gina
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> 27344 The Sense of Wonder is a refreshing antidote to indifference and a guide to capturing the simple power of discovery that Carson views as essential to life.

In her insightful new introduction, Linda Lear remembers Rachel Carson's groundbreaking achievements in the context of the legendary environmentalist's personal commitment to introducing young and old to the miracles of nature.

Kelsh's lush photographs inspire sensual, tactile reactions: masses of leaves floating in a puddle are just waiting to be scooped up and examined more closely. An image of a narrow path through the trees evokes the earthy scent of the woods after a summer rain. Close-ups of mosses and miniature lichen fantasy-lands will spark innocent'as well as more jaded'imaginations. Like a curious child studying things underfoot and within reach, Kelsh's camera is drawn to patterns in nature that too often elude hurried adults'a stand of beech trees in the springtime, patches of melting snow and the ripples from a pebble tossed into a slow-moving stream.

The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from children to grandchildren, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time.]]> 112 Rachel Carson gina 5 favorites 4.41 1965
author: Rachel Carson
name: gina
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: favorites
review:
This got me good! I fear I cried. Really reminded me of the times my dad and I would be walking around in the forest and he would show me different rocks and trees, or the times he would point out different constellations/planets. These are some of the conversations I miss the most. Would recommend for all to read.
]]> 982462

More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.]]> 370 Carol F. Karlsen 0393317595 gina 0 to-read 3.80 1987
author: Carol F. Karlsen
name: gina
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 59808605 Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel―until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.]]> 288 Rachel Aviv 0374600848 gina 0 to-read 4.10 2022
author: Rachel Aviv
name: gina
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> 75739729 Radical alternatives to consent and trauma.

Arguing that we have become culturally obsessed with healing trauma, Sexuality Beyond Consent calls attention to what traumatized subjects do with their pain. The erotics of racism offers a paradigmatic example of how what is proximal to violation may become an unexpected site of flourishing. Central to the transformational possibilities of trauma is a queer form of consent, limit consent, that is not about guarding the self but about risking experience. Saketopoulou thereby shows why sexualities beyond consent may be worth risking-and how risk can solicit the future.

Moving between clinical and cultural case studies, Saketopoulou takes up theatrical and cinematic works such as Slave Play and The Night Porter, to chart how trauma and sexuality join forces to surge through the aesthetic domain. Putting the psychoanalytic theory of Jean Laplanche in conversation with queer of color critique, performance studies, and philosophy, Sexuality Beyond Consent proposes that enduring the strange in ourselves, not to master trauma but to rub up against it, can open us up to encounters with opacity. The book concludes by theorizing currents of sadism that, when pursued ethically, can animate unique forms of interpersonal and social care.]]> 272 Avgi Saketopoulou gina 0 to-read 4.52 2023
author: Avgi Saketopoulou
name: gina
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 9923277
Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0553213512]]> 115 H.G. Wells gina 4 3.73 1895
author: H.G. Wells
name: gina
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 6609765 295 Sharon M. Draper 141697170X gina 0 to-read 4.34 2010
author: Sharon M. Draper
name: gina
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40538605
The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central, enigmatic character has endured for more than a hundred years, but the legend often outstrips the story. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper articles, previously withheld lawyer's journals, unpublished local reports, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a definitive account of the Borden murder case and offers a window into America in the Gilded Age, showcasing its most deeply held convictions and its most troubling social anxieties.]]> 375 Cara Robertson 1501168371 gina 3 3.38 2019
author: Cara Robertson
name: gina
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2019
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]> 448 Mario Puzo gina 4 favorites 4.39 1969
author: Mario Puzo
name: gina
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar gina 0 to-read 3.86 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: gina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 gina 0 to-read 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: gina
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born �� a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam �� and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 gina 0 to-read 4.05 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: gina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 1030934 75 Daphne du Maurier 3150092876 gina 3 3.92 1952
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: gina
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
review:
Her mind! She was honestly crazy for this
]]> 54304105 The Pisces and So Sad Today.

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.]]> 304 Melissa Broder 1982142499 gina 3 3.56 2021
author: Melissa Broder
name: gina
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
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3.5. I really enjoyed this and understood it- would love to discuss with the girls next time we hang. Perhaps a st paddies day discussion.
]]> 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 gina 0 to-read 3.35 2024
author: Rachel Kushner
name: gina
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 41681
When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.

The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.]]> 335 Upton Sinclair 1884365302 gina 0 to-read 3.77 1906
author: Upton Sinclair
name: gina
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1906
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
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]]> 18854 ]]> 352 Virginia Woolf 0156031639 gina 4 3.89 1938
author: Virginia Woolf
name: gina
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf gina 5 favorites 4.22 1929
author: Virginia Woolf
name: gina
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: favorites
review:
Amazing. Need to discuss with the girls
]]> 45685 126 Oscar Wilde gina 3 3.90 1887
author: Oscar Wilde
name: gina
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1887
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
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]]> 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 gina 0 to-read 3.74 2017
author: Sally Rooney
name: gina
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.�� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 gina 1 This sucked 3.75 2017
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: gina
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
This sucked
]]> 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 gina 4 4.00 2022
author: Elif Batuman
name: gina
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
Okay yall�� I loved this at the beginning but it kind of went downhill towards the end! The thing I loved about The Idiot was the amount of content set in college and Selin’s interactions/friendship with Svetlana- so the lack of that here was disappointing! I found it to be less relatable (particularly towards the second half) but I did ultimately enjoy it to the last page despite my complaints! Would love to discuss with the girls.
]]> 179780 385 William Peter Blatty gina 3 4.20 1971
author: William Peter Blatty
name: gina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
More of a 3.5. This was super entertaining but the writing style was a little dull for me and I didn’t really care about the characters. I can totally understand why this is considered a classic tho.
]]> 217163697 #1��New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 gina 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: Fredrik Backman
name: gina
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 gina 0 to-read 3.64 2023
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: gina
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 32871394 An original, imaginative, and hilarious debut novel about love, anxiety, and sea creatures, from the author of So Sad Today.

Lucy has been writing her dissertation about Sappho for thirteen years when she and Jamie break up. After she hits rock bottom in Phoenix, her Los Angeles-based sister insists Lucy housesit for the summer—her only tasks caring for a beloved diabetic dog and trying to learn to care for herself. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube atop Venice Beach, but Lucy can find no peace from her misery and anxiety—not in her love addiction group therapy meetings, not in frequent Tinder meetups, not in Dominic the foxhound’s easy affection, not in ruminating on the ancient Greeks. Yet everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer one night while sitting alone on the beach rocks.

Whip-smart, neurotically funny, sexy, and above all, fearless, The Pisces is built on a premise both sirenic and incredibly real—what happens when you think love will save you but are afraid it might also kill you.]]> 270 Melissa Broder 1524761559 gina 1 3.31 2018
author: Melissa Broder
name: gina
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
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review:
This was so funny at times but then the philosophical and suicidal thought breaks weren’t for me, it was a bit much. I skipped over some chapters lol. However, I do really like authors writing style an listened to Lana del ray while reading. Would be willing to read another book of hers. Also I knew that damn dog was gonna die
]]> 195703882 Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying�� yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.]]> 278 Monika Kim 1645661237 gina 3 3.81 2024
author: Monika Kim
name: gina
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:
3.5. This had so much potential and had me so locked in but then towards the end it kind of fell apart. I felt like there was too much going on and it wasn’t done well/was rushed to fit the ending. If some of the details had been left out and there had been more elaboration and thought put into the major plot and the MC’s descent into madness this would’ve been a 5 star for sure. Nevertheless I obviously enjoyed reading this, despite the disappointing ending in my opinion. Love a crazy girlboss!
]]> 16143402 111 Nemo Ramjet gina 4 4.19 2006
author: Nemo Ramjet
name: gina
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
Girl this was crazy and I loved it! Listened to the whole thing while organizing the micro lab fridges. I would def recommend if you like freaky sci fi
]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 gina 2 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: gina
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:
I did not like this book I’m sorry! The characters were boring and annoying to me and the story was flat. I found myself not caring about the plot (or lack thereof). Ik this is some people’s fave book but this was absolutely not for me.
]]> 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 gina 4 3.67 2017
author: Elif Batuman
name: gina
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
This book is what being a 21 year old college girl is
]]> 220726833
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies�� side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.

Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.]]> Mona Awad 1668059886 gina 0 to-read 3.50 2025
author: Mona Awad
name: gina
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214151420 From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.

Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.

As the family’s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby’s delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.

Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: “Finally.��

For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family’s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt’s cultish life coaching program, “ConneXions.�� No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother’s cruelty.]]> 320 Shari Franke 1668065398 gina 4 4.43 2025
author: Shari Franke
name: gina
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
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]]> 561635
Medical school students Fettes and Macfarlane are charged with the unenviable task of receiving and paying for the institution’s research cadavers. When Fettes recognizes the dead body of a woman he saw alive and well just the day before, he suspects murder. Macfarlane, however, insists that the authorities would never believe they had nothing to do with her death. Reluctantly, Fettes agrees to keep quiet, but soon regrets his decision when another familiar corpse turns up—and takes on a life of its own.]]> 22 Robert Louis Stevenson 1860920012 gina 2 A boring ah listen 3.38 1884
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: gina
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1884
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:
A boring ah listen
]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 gina 2 4.17 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: gina
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
I’m sorry this was not for me! It read like a dry, boring textbook- even when I listened to parts of it. I didn’t care about any of the characters and was tired of hearing the same stuff repeated over and over again. However, I will acknowledge that this book was ambitious and obviously well researched- it was just not the dark academia story that I was looking for
]]> 5413 Also contains: One For the Road, Jerusalem's Lot. For standalone novel see ISBN 9780450031069.

Stephen King's second novel, the classic vampire bestseller 'Salem's Lot, tells the story of evil in small-town America. For the first time in a major trade edition, this terrifying novel is accompanied by previously unpublished material from King's archive, two short stories, and eerie photographs that bring King's fictional darkness and evil to vivid life.

When Stephen King’s classic thriller 'Salem's Lot hit the stands in 1975, it thrilled and terrified millions of readers with tales of demonic evil in small-town America. Now, thirty years later and still scaring readers witless, 'Salem's Lot reemerges in a brilliant new edition, complete with photographs, fifty pages of deleted and alternate scenes, and two short stories related to the events of the novel.

While the original edition of 'Salem's Lot will forever be a premier horror classic, 'Salem's Lot: Illustrated Edition, with the inclusion of material from King’s archive, is destined to become a classic in its own right and a must-have for all Stephen King fans. In this edition, the hair-raising story of Jerusalem’s Lot, a small town in Maine whose inhabitants succumb to the evil allure of a new resident, is told as the author envisioned it, complete with fifty pages of alternate and deleted scenes. With a new introduction by the author, two short stories related to the events and residents of Jerusalem’s Lot, the lavishly creepy photographs of Jerry Uelsmann, and a stunning new page design, this edition brings the story to life in words and pictures as never before.

No library will be complete without this ideal collector’s item for any King aficionado, the definitive illustrated edition of the great 'Salem's Lot.]]> 594 Stephen King 0385516487 gina 3 4.28 1975
author: Stephen King
name: gina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
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]]> 62919394
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.]]> 288 Sarah Rose Etter 1668011638 gina 0 to-read 3.60 2023
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: gina
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 127282554 A New York Times Book Review Editors�� Choice
A Belletrist Book Club Pick

An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all

Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X gina 0 to-read 3.40 2024
author: Lottie Hazell
name: gina
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63017297 In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?

At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together?

Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him--setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.

Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .

The winner of France's First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies--how well can you really know your spouse?--and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read--compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable.

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan]]> 272 Maud Ventura 0063274825 gina 0 to-read 3.67 2021
author: Maud Ventura
name: gina
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219445683 A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere.

It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.

Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.

But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.

What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.]]> 288 Catherine Dang 0349125775 gina 0 to-read 4.03
author: Catherine Dang
name: gina
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 37976541 ومع ذيوعصيت "(ثيرانوس)، بدأت بعض الوقائع بالتكشف عن عدم جهوزية، بل عدم صلاحية، الأجهزة المنتجة، رغم أن إليزابيث قد فتحت قنوات تسويقية كبيرة مع كبيريات الشركات الدوائية (نوفارتيس)، وسلسلة المتاجر الصيدلانية الكبرى (وولغرينز)، ومتاجر الأغذية متعددة الفروع (سيفواي)، ومع تسرب أخبار تؤكد أن الأجهزة مزودة ببرنامج يظهر نتائج عشوائية لعينات الدم، الأمر الذي قد يودي بحيوات أناس كثيرين، وعلى الرغم من أن مجلس إدارة الشركة قد استقطب مجموعة من السياسيين والعسكريين المخضرمين في أعلى هرم السياسة الأمريكية، مثل جورج شولتز وهنري كيسنجر وروبرت مردوخ وجيمس ماتيس، وحتى أوباما، الذي استقبلها في مكتبه البيضاوي- على الرغم من ذلك، وفي حقل مليء بالتهديدات والألغام، بدأت رحلة الصحافي الكبير جون كاريرو في وول ستريت جورنال، إثر معلومة وصلته في ٢٠١٥، في تحري أسرار (ثيرانوس)، من أفواه الشرفاء الذين قدموا استقالاتهم من الشركة، وعلى رأسهم تيلر شولتز، حفيد جورج شولتز، والحصول على الوثائق والأدلة التي تثبت تورط الشركة في أسوأ عملية غش طالت المرضى قبل المستثمرين ومالكي الأسهم في ثيرانوس.
يفضح هذا الكتاب الذي استغرق إنجازه ثلاث سنوات ونصف السنة، رؤوس الفساد في قلب المؤسسة السلطوية الأميركية منجهة، ويشير إلى الظمائر النبيلة التي قدمت الأدلة الدامغة على تورط ثيرانوس من جهة أخرى، الأمر الذي قاد إليزابيث هولمز، السايكوباثية بحسب تعبير كاريرو، مع أزلامها، إلى قاعات المحاكم، لتنتهي أسطورة شركتها التي بلغ رأس مالها تسعة مليارات دولار.]]> 339 John Carreyrou gina 4 4.38 2018
author: John Carreyrou
name: gina
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
Girl this was absolutely crazy. I haven’t read a nonfiction piece in a while
]]> 75719826 In her electric debut, Madeline Cash synthesizes the godlessness of a digital age into a glimmering, sublime, life-affirming collage of stories.

Earth Angel is a book like no other, the paperback that swallowed the smartphone. An Isis recruit, an adolescent beauty queen, and a childless millennial walk into a bar. A Biblical plague rains down head lice, aerial drone strikes, gender non-conforming frogs. An app throws a slumber party for a friendless office worker. Texans in the winter, the Taliban in Springtime, Teslas with ℮☥ bumper stickers, Frozen 5 in Arabic, architectural consistency laws in Laurel Canyon, the longest recorded nosebleed in history.

An unhinged jet stream that is ultramodern and poignantly timeless, capturing the angst of the post-millennial generation.]]> 130 Madeline Cash 1955904693 gina 0 to-read 3.98 2023
author: Madeline Cash
name: gina
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3205484 213 Virginia Woolf 0140623280 gina 0 to-read 3.65 1925
author: Virginia Woolf
name: gina
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28220782
To the outside world, Spears had seemed like the perfect mother, regularly posting dramatic updates on her son’s harrowing medical problems, but in reality, she was a text book case of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. From the time he was an infant, she deliberately made Garnett sick to elicit sympathy from medical professionals, as well as her hundreds of followers on Facebook and other social media. When a Westchester County jury found her guilty of killing Garnett in April 2015, she was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison.

Using Spears's own never-before-seen Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts, an exclusive prison interview with Spears herself, as well as interviews with her family and the three police investigators who broke the case, My Sweet Angel provides the definitive account of this shocking case.]]> 432 John Glatt 1250071135 gina 4 Made me sick to my stomach 3.89 2016
author: John Glatt
name: gina
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
Made me sick to my stomach
]]> 6671665 They Knew He Was Out There

He took his time. He watched his victims and chose carefully. Then he struck—each attack more brutal than the last. By the time detectives arrived, all they found were gruesome crime scenes of bloodied, brutalized bodies.

They Knew He Would Strike Again

For more than ten years in south Louisiana the killings went on. Task forces were formed. The killer even spent time in jail. But that wouldn't stop the bloodshed. One victim was stabbed with a screwdriver 83 times.

But They Couldn't Stop Him—Until Was Too Late

He was a father. A husband. A co-worker. And a killer. Derrick Todd Lee was ultimately convicted of two savage murders and tied to at least seven more. From the slender trace of DNA that finally nabbed him to the courageous prosecutors who took him down in court, this is the shocking story of a homicidal maniac hiding in plain sight—and an evil that could never be washed away.

Includes 16 pages of shocking photographs. Previously published as I've Been Watching You.]]> 346 Susan D. Mustafa 0786021330 gina 4 3.84 2005
author: Susan D. Mustafa
name: gina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X gina 5 favorites Well damn. 4.11 2017
author: M.L. Rio
name: gina
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: favorites
review:
Well damn.
]]> 8909
Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels,The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published.]]> 192 H.G. Wells 0375759239 gina 3 Lowk boring 3.84 1898
author: H.G. Wells
name: gina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
Lowk boring
]]> 127515 224 Jack Finney 0684852586 gina 3 3.91 1955
author: Jack Finney
name: gina
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1955
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 165940214 A personal and cultural look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating they've wreaked

In Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein tells the story of her own disordered eating alongside, and through, other women from history, pop culture and the girls she's known and loved. Tracing the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and orthorexia, Clein investigates the economic conditions underpinning our eating disorder epidemic, and illuminates the ways racism and today's feminism have been complicit in propping up the thin ideal. While examining Goop, Simone Weil, pro-anorexia blogs, and the flawed logic of our current treatment methods, Clein grapples with the myriad ways disordered eating has affected her own friendships and romantic relationships.

Dead Weight makes the case that we are faced with a culture of suppression and denial that is insidious, pervasive, and dangerous, one that internalizes and promotes the fetish of self-shrinking as a core tenet of the American cult of femininity. This is replicated in our algorithms, our television shows, our novels, and our relationships with one another. Dead Weight is a sharp, perceptive, and revelatory polemic for readers fascinated by the external forces shaping their lives.]]> 288 Emmeline Clein 0593536908 gina 0 to-read 3.86 2024
author: Emmeline Clein
name: gina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17297488
Seventeen-year-old Boy’s never left home. When you’re the son of Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride, it’s tough to go out in public, unless you want to draw the attention of a torch-wielding mob. And since Boy and his family live in a secret enclave of monsters hidden under Times Square, it’s important they maintain a low profile.

Boy’s only interactions with the world are through the Internet, where he’s a hacker extraordinaire who can hide his hulking body and stitched-together face behind a layer of code. When conflict erupts at home, Boy runs away and embarks on a cross-country road trip with the granddaughters of Jekyll and Hyde, who introduce him to malls and diners, love and heartbreak. But no matter how far Boy runs, he can’t escape his demons—both literal and figurative—until he faces his family once more.

This hilarious, romantic, and wildly imaginative tale redefines what it means to be a monster—and a man.]]> 361 Kelley Skovron 0670786209 gina 1 3.71 2013
author: Kelley Skovron
name: gina
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
Genuinely one of the worst things I’ve ever read. I cannot believe someone with a PhD made this a required text for the class
]]> 60109530
Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home when Mia unexpectedly falls pregnant. But just when they think the house is ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. Following the clue up into the eaves, the couple make a gruesome discovery: their dream home was once a house of horrors.

In the wake of their traumatic discovery, the baby arrives and Mia can’t shake her fixation with the monstrous crimes that happened right above them. Haunted by the terrible things she saw and desperate to find answers, her obsession pulls her ever further from her husband.

Secrecy shrouds the mystery of the attic, but when shards of a dark truth start to emerge, Mia realises the danger is terrifyingly present. She is prepared to do anything to protect her family—but is it already too late?]]> 380 John Marrs 1542017289 gina 2 4.08 2022
author: John Marrs
name: gina
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves:
review:
The book was 4 stars in the first half. It became way too over the top and unbelievable the second half, and honestly became unenjoyable to read. I wanted to read something for entertainment but ended up honestly irritated.
]]> 75494215 THE REAL ORIGIN OF OUR SPECIES: a myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution still shapes all our lives today.

How did the female body drive 200 million years of human evolution?
�� Why do women live longer than men?
�� Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s?
�� Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet?
�� Is sexism useful for evolution?
�� And why, seriously why, do women have to sweat through our sheets every night when we hit menopause?

These questions are producing some truly exciting science—and in Eve, with boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Cat Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex: "We need a kind of user's manual for the female mammal. A no-nonsense, hard-hitting, seriously researched (but readable) account of what we are. How female bodies evolved, how they work, what it really means to biologically be a woman. Something that would rewrite the story of womanhood. This book is that story. We have to put the female body in the picture. If we don't, it's not just feminism that's compromised. Modern medicine, neurobiology, paleoanthropology, even evolutionary biology all take a hit when we ignore the fact that half of us have breasts. So it's time we talk about breasts. Breasts, and blood, and fat, and vaginas, and wombs—all of it. How they came to be and how we live with them now, no matter how weird or hilarious the truth is."

Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Picking up where Sapiens left off, Eve will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens has become such a successful and dominant species.]]> 624 Cat Bohannon 0385350546 gina 0 to-read 4.28 2023
author: Cat Bohannon
name: gina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17184 192 H.G. Wells 0451528522 gina 0 to-read 3.63 1897
author: H.G. Wells
name: gina
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51496 139 Robert Louis Stevenson 0451528956 gina 3 3.84 1886
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: gina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1886
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves:
review:
I feel like I would have liked this more if I wasn’t reading it while the world was going up in flames
]]> 7126 The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translation

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas�� epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here]]> 1276 Alexandre Dumas 0140449264 gina 4 4.29 1846
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: gina
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1846
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 10605 320 Richard Bachman 0451190750 gina 2 3.79 1984
author: Richard Bachman
name: gina
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 17899948 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.]]> 449 Daphne du Maurier 0316323705 gina 5 favorites Brilliant 4.28 1938
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: gina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: favorites
review:
Brilliant
]]> 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 gina 5 favorites Mary Shelley is a genius 4.02 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: gina
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: favorites
review:
Mary Shelley is a genius
]]> 13440 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0751504386

In a bumper collection of truly chilling tales, we meet Gramma - who only wanted to hug little George, even after she was dead; The Raft - a primeval sea creature with an insatiable appetite; The Monkey - an innocent-looking toy with sinister powers; the unspeakable horror of The Mist. And there is a gruesome host of other stories, each with the distinctive blend of unimaginable terror and realism that typifies King's writing.]]> 612 Stephen King 0751504386 gina 3 Disappointing tbh 3.98 1985
author: Stephen King
name: gina
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves:
review:
Disappointing tbh
]]> 357664
Opal spends all that sweet summer collecting stories about her new friends and thinking about her mother. But because of Winn-Dixie or perhaps because she has grown, Opal learns to let go, just a little, and that friendship—and forgiveness—can sneak up on you like a sudden summer storm.

Kate DiCamillo's beloved, best-selling debut novel is now available in a paperback digest edition.

Kate DiCamillo's first published novel, like Winn-Dixie himself, immediately proved to be a keeper—a New York Times bestseller, a Newbery Honor winner, the inspiration for a popular film, and most especially, a cherished classic that touches the hearts of readers of all ages. It's now available in a paperback digest format certain to bring this tale's magic to an even wider circle of fans.]]> 182 Kate DiCamillo 0763616052 gina 4 favorites 4.09 2000
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: gina
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 gina 4 3.90 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: gina
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 60764312 Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.

In this haunting collection, the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore stalk the page. Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in Ireland, to create these chilling tales. They are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.


'The stories occupy the reverie world our mind projects onto the backs of our eyelids, where the ordinary mingles with the supernatural' - Wall Street Journal]]> 224 Lafcadio Hearn 0241573726 gina 0 to-read 3.82 1904
author: Lafcadio Hearn
name: gina
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1904
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10517543 58 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 014119572X gina 0 to-read 4.20 1918
author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
name: gina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1918
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n�� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 gina 3 Sadly, I did not love this book like I loved the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I found myself bored at times and the dialogue predictable to the point where I would skip paragraphs. However, I really appreciated how “real�� and complex the characters were- so much so that you’re really rooting for no one (except maybe Camilla and Karen) in the end. All of the characters have their incredible faults and the way relationship dynamics are described is very thought provoking (bc it shows how relationships work and how most people don’t get a happy ending, despite loving each other). The commentary on understanding “that one person�� was very beautiful, but also makes me feel lonely. The book itself is sad in general because all these people have such complicated relationships with each other, yet love each other (just not in the way the other person needs). Would love to discuss more on this topic.

My dad would have enjoyed this book. ]]> 4.20 2019
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: gina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
3.5.
Sadly, I did not love this book like I loved the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I found myself bored at times and the dialogue predictable to the point where I would skip paragraphs. However, I really appreciated how “real�� and complex the characters were- so much so that you’re really rooting for no one (except maybe Camilla and Karen) in the end. All of the characters have their incredible faults and the way relationship dynamics are described is very thought provoking (bc it shows how relationships work and how most people don’t get a happy ending, despite loving each other). The commentary on understanding “that one person�� was very beautiful, but also makes me feel lonely. The book itself is sad in general because all these people have such complicated relationships with each other, yet love each other (just not in the way the other person needs). Would love to discuss more on this topic.

My dad would have enjoyed this book.
]]> 17061
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.

The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.

Only it's different.

At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages.]]> 176 Neil Gaiman 0061139378 gina 5 favorites 4.13 2002
author: Neil Gaiman
name: gina
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 48987 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept is an enigmatic and nearly indescribable book, a small classic of poetic prose whose author has been compared with Anaïs Nin and Djuna Barnes. In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife; the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.]]> 240 Elizabeth Smart 0679738045 gina 0 to-read 3.54 1945
author: Elizabeth Smart
name: gina
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13082435 88 Clarice Lispector 0811219909 gina 0 to-read 4.33 1973
author: Clarice Lispector
name: gina
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10441 401 Kim Edwards 0143037145 gina 3 3.70 2005
author: Kim Edwards
name: gina
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 gina 0 to-read 4.22 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: gina
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 gina 0 to-read 3.72 1994
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: gina
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 177148776 128 Anne de Marcken 0811237850 gina 0 to-read 3.70 2024
author: Anne de Marcken
name: gina
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ��80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 gina 5 favorites 4.39 2017
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: gina
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: favorites
review:
I had low expectations for this book but good god did it shake me to my core. 10s across the board. Cried many times.
]]> 341930
It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...

Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...]]> 356 Kathe Koja 0440207827 gina 0 to-read 3.54 1991
author: Kathe Koja
name: gina
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220772
The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?]]> 194 Sara Gran 0425210316 gina 0 to-read 3.63 2003
author: Sara Gran
name: gina
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62888191 A literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.]]> 336 Gerardo Sámano Córdova 1638930368 gina 0 to-read 4.11 2023
author: Gerardo Sámano Córdova
name: gina
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> 25480342 The bestselling novel about love, loss and hope from the twice Carnegie Medal-winning Patrick Ness.

Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking tale of mischief, healing and above all, the courage it takes to survive.]]> 237 Patrick Ness 1406361801 gina 4 4.28 2011
author: Patrick Ness
name: gina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> 60839741 In this gripping debut tinged with supernatural horror, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie's dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina's untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too--a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina--Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams--and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina's death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?]]> 259 Jessica Johns 0385548699 gina 0 to-read 3.91 2023
author: Jessica Johns
name: gina
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> 61387386 In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine--the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.]]> 256 Jade Song 0063257602 gina 0 to-read 3.67 2023
author: Jade Song
name: gina
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> 2183 460 Gustave Flaubert 0140447970 gina 0 to-read 3.86 1869
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: gina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> 44294655
But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.]]> 250 Chelsea G. Summers gina 3 3.73 2019
author: Chelsea G. Summers
name: gina
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
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review:
“Language always fails, especially in death.��
]]> 30597
The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been adapted for film over a dozen times, in addition to numerous television and stage adaptations, such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney, a 1939 sound film with Charles Laughton, and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce (both as Quasimodo).

The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great change, which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures. The novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.]]> 510 Victor Hugo 0451527887 gina 4 favorites Second half: 5 stars

Girl this was insaneee!!!!! I would definitely recommend if you are interested in French architecture or the layout of 15th century France (because the entire first half of the novel covers it lol). Would definitely reread.]]> 4.01 1831
author: Victor Hugo
name: gina
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1831
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/09
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: favorites
review:
First half: 3 stars
Second half: 5 stars

Girl this was insaneee!!!!! I would definitely recommend if you are interested in French architecture or the layout of 15th century France (because the entire first half of the novel covers it lol). Would definitely reread.
]]> 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 gina 3 4.06 1975
author: Stephen King
name: gina
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/08/09
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]]> 10000 The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him.

His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.]]> 238 Kōbō Abe 0375726535 gina 0 to-read 3.78 1964
author: Kōbō Abe
name: gina
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18405 1037 Margaret Mitchell 0446365386 gina 1 dnf�� it’s a no for me 4.30 1936
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: gina
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1936
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:
dnf�� it’s a no for me
]]> 72193
]]> 223 J.K. Rowling gina 5 favorites 4.45 1997
author: J.K. Rowling
name: gina
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 3950967
Additional notes for each story penned by Professor Albus Dumbledore will be enjoyed by Muggles and wizards alike, as the Professor muses on the morals illuminated by the tales, and reveals snippets of information about life at Hogwarts.

A uniquely magical volume, with illustrations by the author, J. K. Rowling, that will be treasured for years to come.]]> 105 J.K. Rowling 0747599874 gina 4 4.03 2008
author: J.K. Rowling
name: gina
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
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