Em's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:30:10 -0700 60 Em's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Phantom Pain Wings 62972499 208 Kim Hyesoon 0811231712 Em 4 3.94 Phantom Pain Wings
author: Kim Hyesoon
name: Em
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/04/17
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]]> <![CDATA[So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne]]> 7062932 131 John Keats 0141442476 Em 2 Why this man got BPD 4.35 2009 So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
author: John Keats
name: Em
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
Why this man got BPD
]]> Good Girl 195644142
A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out.

In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.

Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?

A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.]]> 368 Aria Aber Em 3 3.73 2025 Good Girl
author: Aria Aber
name: Em
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> Crossing 40988962 From the acclaimed author of My Cat Yugoslavia: a powerful and darkly comedic new novel--part Hedwig and the Angry Inch, part The Talented Mr. Ripley--that speaks to identity, war, exile, love, betrayal, and heartbreak.

In the devastation of post-Communist Albania, inseparable young friends Bujar and Agim feel trapped: Bujar struggling to come to terms with the loss of his father, Agim facing dangerous realizations about his sexuality and his feelings for Bujar. When shame, guilt, and the ruins of authoritarianism push Bujar and Agim to leave everything behind and flee to Italy, the unfamiliar life of an immigrant and asylum seeker sets Bujar on a path of reinvention. He follows an impulse to remake himself--as a man or woman of infinite nationalities and pasts--the burning desire to be seen and heard spurring a desperate search for a different existence to be seized at any cost. But Bujar's quest for identity and belonging is haunted by the mystery of what happened to Agim--his one, true beloved, who somehow got lost along the way.

Like Statovci's acclaimed debut, My Cat Yugoslavia, Crossing is a powerful and symbolic novel of both unending war and unattainable love, but most of all, of the lies that give stories a singular power.]]> 257 Pajtim Statovci 1524747491 Em 3 For my shpirt❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ 3.87 2016 Crossing
author: Pajtim Statovci
name: Em
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
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For my shpirt❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
]]> Prima Facie 133287123 This is not life, this is law�

Tessa Ensler loves her job. She’s worked her way up to being a top criminal defense barrister against all the odds, and fights to defend those pleading not guilty. Tessa believes in the law, believes in the system. Her quick-witted cross-examinations and intelligence in the courtroom see her clocking up win after win - including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocence until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of a civilized society.

But when Tessa is raped by a coworker, she struggles to find the strength to bring him to justice in the face of the barriers and opposition within that same system. Determined to have her day in court, Tessa is forced to confront the stark reality that the law was not written for victims, and that she is the one on trial. She fights on, even as her evidence is manipulated to make her look like a liar, even while she is retraumatized in the stand.

Based on the Olivier and Tony Award-winning play, Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie is an unforgettable story of what happens when a victim is asked to navigate a system that is not set up to accommodate the lived experience of sexual assault survivors.]]> 288 Suzie Miller 1250292204 Em 2 4.35 2018 Prima Facie
author: Suzie Miller
name: Em
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
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Barebones writing but page 81 ❤️❤️❤️❤️
]]> Lady Chatterley’s Lover 32049 376 D.H. Lawrence 039460430X Em 2 3.56 1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Em
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1928
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Because They Wanted To: Stories]]> 84476
Tiny, smiling daddy --
Because they wanted to --
Orchid --
The blanket --
Comfort --
The girl on the plane --
The dentist --
Kiss and tell --
The wrong thing Turgor --
Respect --
Processing --
Stuff]]> 256 Mary Gaitskill 0684841444 Em 0 to-read 3.94 1997 Because They Wanted To: Stories
author: Mary Gaitskill
name: Em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> This Is Pleasure: A Story 53152673 Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident.

The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable.

Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.]]> 83 Mary Gaitskill 1524749133 Em 0 to-read 3.45 2019 This Is Pleasure: A Story
author: Mary Gaitskill
name: Em
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Little Life 25852828 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]> 816 Hanya Yanagihara 0804172706 Em 4
'And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.'

'How hard it is to keep alive someone who doesn't want to stay alive... if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?'

'The person he loved was sick, and would always be sick, and his responsibility was not to make him better but to make him less sick.'

'This is what he meant when he hoped he might someday be touched.']]> 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Em
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
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(So many repetitions of the first rape, so many incarnations of the first rapist; Dr. Traylor was unnecessary. It is enough to have been groomed and survive it. That is enough of a death sentence. I wish it had been more trauma disorder and less retraumatisation.)

'And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.'

'How hard it is to keep alive someone who doesn't want to stay alive... if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?'

'The person he loved was sick, and would always be sick, and his responsibility was not to make him better but to make him less sick.'

'This is what he meant when he hoped he might someday be touched.'
]]> Human Acts 222214380
Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless. Already a controversial bestseller and award-winning book in Korea, it confirms Han Kang as a writer of immense importance.]]> 224 Han Kang Em 1 4.40 2014 Human Acts
author: Han Kang
name: Em
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> To a God Unknown 111300 To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and to understand the ways of God.]]> 240 John Steinbeck 0141185503 Em 3 Calf ❤️ 3.96 1933 To a God Unknown
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1933
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
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Calf ❤️
]]> White Oleander 32234 White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.]]> 446 Janet Fitch 0316182540 Em 0 to-read 4.00 1999 White Oleander
author: Janet Fitch
name: Em
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gilgi, One of Us 49098303 A brilliant, bestselling feminist novel from Weimar Germany, from the author of Child of All Nations

'A formidable literary talent ... Sharp yet naïve, Gilgi is utterly human' Irish Times

Gilgi knows where she's going in life: she's ambitious, focused and determined, even when her boss tries it on with her, even when her parents reveal a terrible secret on her twenty-first birthday. Then she meets the charming but feckless Martin and, for the first time, Gilgi finds herself bewilderingly and dangerously derailed. Irmgard Keun's electrifying debut was an instant sensation in Weimar Germany, with its frank, fearless exploration of sex, work and love.
Translated by Geoff Wilkes

'How contemporary the novel feels, with its portrait of a woman fighting to maintain control over her life and her body' The New York Times

]]> 189 Irmgard Keun 0241391814 Em 2 3.83 1931 Gilgi, One of Us
author: Irmgard Keun
name: Em
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1931
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
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review:

]]> Go Tell It on the Mountain 17143 Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.]]> 256 James Baldwin 0141185910 Em 4 4.06 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain
author: James Baldwin
name: Em
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> Quarantine 92557 Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker Prize finalist.

Two thousand years ago four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. In the blistering heat and barren rocks they encounter the evil merchant Musa � madman, sadist, rapist, even a Satan � who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles... Here, trapped in the wilderness, their terrifying battle for survival begins...]]> 242 Jim Crace 0312199511 Em 3 Miri and Marta lesbianism 3.70 1997 Quarantine
author: Jim Crace
name: Em
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/01/04
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Miri and Marta lesbianism
]]> Physical 23482811
Dispensing with conventional punctuation, the poet is attentive and alert to the quality of breathing, giving the work an extraordinary sense of being vividly poised and present � drawing lines that are deft, lyrical and perfectly pitched from a world of urban dereliction. An elegant stylist and unfashionably honest poet, McMillan’s eye and ear are tuned, exactly, to both the mechanics of the body and the miracles of the heart.]]> 53 Andrew McMillan 0224102133 Em 2 3.95 Physical
author: Andrew McMillan
name: Em
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> Identity 34316330
With his astonishing skill at building on and out from the significant moment, Kundera has placed such a situation and the resulting wave of panic at the core of the novel. In a narrative as intense as it is brief, a moment of confusion sets in motion a complex chain of events which forces the reader to cross and recross the divide between fantasy and reality. Profound, sad and disquieting but above all a love story, Identity provides further proof of Kundera's astonishing gifts as a novelist.

Alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780571195671.]]> 153 Milan Kundera Em 3 3.35 1997 Identity
author: Milan Kundera
name: Em
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/12/13
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'And then I woke up' arse ending
]]> Candide 19380 Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher's immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that � contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss � all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire's most celebrated work.]]> 129 Voltaire 0486266893 Em 0 to-read 3.76 1759 Candide
author: Voltaire
name: Em
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1759
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Knots: Selected Works of RD Laing: Vol 7 (Selected Works of R D Laing)]]> 74064221 91 R.D. Laing Em 4
"Jack wants Jill's want of Jack so Jack tells Jill Jack wants Jill"]]> 3.60 1970 Knots: Selected Works of RD Laing: Vol 7 (Selected Works of R D Laing)
author: R.D. Laing
name: Em
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
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"She does not get what she wants from him so she feels that he is mean... he cannot give her what she wants from him so he feels that she is greedy"

"Jack wants Jill's want of Jack so Jack tells Jill Jack wants Jill"
]]> Time Is a Mother 58582927 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
]]> 114 Ocean Vuong 0593300238 Em 3 3.94 2022 Time Is a Mother
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/12/05
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"I can say it was beautiful now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else."
]]> Strangeland 421500 213 Tracey Emin 0340769467 Em 2 My favourite artist 3.86 2005 Strangeland
author: Tracey Emin
name: Em
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:
My favourite artist
]]> Intimacy 153418 Intimacy gives us the thoughts and memories of a middle-aged writer on the night before he walks out on his wife and two young sons for of a younger woman. A very modern man, without political convictions or religious beliefs, he vaguely hopes to find fulfillment in sexual love. No one is spared Kureishi's cold, penetrating gaze or lacerating pen. "She thinks she's feminist, but she's just bad-tempered," the unnamed narrator says of his abandoned wife. A male friend advises him, "Marriage is a battle, a terrible journey, a season in hell, and a reason for living."

At the heart of Intimacy is this terrible paradox: "You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them." Male readers will wince with recognition at the narrator's hatred of entrapment and domesticity, and his implacable urge towards freedom, escape, even loneliness. Female readers may find it a truly horrific revelation. Kureishi is only telling it like it is, in staccato sentences of pinpoint accuracy. By far the author's best yet: a brilliant, devastating work. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

]]> 252 Hanif Kureishi 349923193X Em 2
"Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history."

"You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them."]]> 3.55 1998 Intimacy
author: Hanif Kureishi
name: Em
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
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Welcome back 'Diary of an Oxygen Thief'!!!

"Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history."

"You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them."
]]> Vibrator 1419828
Suddenly she finds herself embarking on a road journey across the wintry landscape of Japan aboard this stranger's longhaul truck. But can the physical relationship that develops between them offer Rei what she needs, and can she ever free herself from the dangerously self-destructive tendencies that afflict her?

Part-dirty realism, part-fairy tale, Vibrator is a disturbing and highly original novel about the strange situations that life can put you in. Exploring themes of liberation and entrapment, it drives unflinchingly at the lonely heart of the lost generation.]]> 130 Mari; Emmerich Akasaka 0571210821 Em 3
'I want to be stopped. No one in the world but him can stop me, because I've never let anyone see']]> 3.04 1999 Vibrator
author: Mari; Emmerich Akasaka
name: Em
average rating: 3.04
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:
'If he hit me now, I would immediately tell him I was sorry and beg him to forgive me'

'I want to be stopped. No one in the world but him can stop me, because I've never let anyone see'
]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Em 5 Four stars for lines like "Shame was something you passed like kidney stones, and it was leaving her body at last" and for making me laugh and cry in one 8 hour shift.]]> 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Em
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:
Lost a star for "his bray sounded like a deaf man bellowing."
Four stars for lines like "Shame was something you passed like kidney stones, and it was leaving her body at last" and for making me laugh and cry in one 8 hour shift.
]]> Song of Solomon 29779530 Alternate cover edition for ISBN-13 9780099768418.

Song of Solomon is a work of outstanding beauty and power, whose story covers the years from the 1930's to the 1960's in America. At its centre is Macon Dead Jr, the son of a wealthy black property owner, who has been brought up to revere the white world. Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned to escape the tyranny of his father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group of poor blacks, Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. His journey leads to the discovery of something more valuable than gold, his past. Yet the truth about his origins and his true self is not fully revealed to Macon until he and Guitar meet once again in powerful, and deadly confrontation.]]> 448 Toni Morrison Em 4
"Gimme hate, Lord," he whimpered. "I'll take hate any day. But don't give me love. I can't take no more love, Lord. I can't carry it... It's too heavy. Jesus, you know. You know all about it. Ain't it heavy? Jesus? Ain't love heavy? Don't you see, Lord? You own son couldn't carry it. If it killed Him, what You think it's gonna do to me?"

"He had used her- her love, her craziness... he had the power to drive a woman out of her mind, to destroy her, and not because she hated him, or because he had done some unforgivable thing to her, but because he had fucked her and she was driven wild by the absence"

"You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him?"

"You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right... You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain?"]]> 4.22 1977 Song of Solomon
author: Toni Morrison
name: Em
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves:
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"And while he was laying there dying, he turned to the snake and asked him, 'What'd you do that for?' He said, 'Didn't I take good care of you? Didn't I save your life?' The snake said, 'Yes.' 'Then what'd you do it for? What'd you kill me for?' Know what the snake said? Said, 'But you knew I was a snake, didn't you?'"

"Gimme hate, Lord," he whimpered. "I'll take hate any day. But don't give me love. I can't take no more love, Lord. I can't carry it... It's too heavy. Jesus, you know. You know all about it. Ain't it heavy? Jesus? Ain't love heavy? Don't you see, Lord? You own son couldn't carry it. If it killed Him, what You think it's gonna do to me?"

"He had used her- her love, her craziness... he had the power to drive a woman out of her mind, to destroy her, and not because she hated him, or because he had done some unforgivable thing to her, but because he had fucked her and she was driven wild by the absence"

"You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him?"

"You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right... You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain?"
]]> Lupercal 1736210 63 Ted Hughes 0571092462 Em 1
What seemed to be less daunting was chronic adultery and (circa his 40th birthday) a 22-year old wife.]]> 3.82 1960 Lupercal
author: Ted Hughes
name: Em
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1960
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
Soulless man who wrote obfuscated nature poetry because the female psyche was too daunting a Muse.

What seemed to be less daunting was chronic adultery and (circa his 40th birthday) a 22-year old wife.
]]> Selected Poems 295149 85 Sylvia Plath Em 4 4.13 1981 Selected Poems
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Em
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:

]]> In The Box Called Pleasure 1428719
These gutsy and post feminist stories will elicit the shock of recognition from women and may reveal to men something about the further regions of the female psyche. By turns graphic and funny, these urban tales present characters who are teetering on the edge. Indifferent or absent lovers, too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, obsession, paranoia, a desire that is always fresh in spite of the facts—this is the macabre landscape of these very unusual and unrestrained works. In "Reading Sontag," Addonizio invades and recasts Susan Sontag's essay "The Pornographic Imagination" while describing a monumentally failed relationship. In "The Gift," a woman finds a dildo on the street and is magically transformed into a man.These are fictions to prepare us for the real millennium.]]> 154 Kim Addonizio 1573660817 Em 0 to-read 3.88 1999 In The Box Called Pleasure
author: Kim Addonizio
name: Em
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Desdemona (Modern Classics) 200451431
Ripped from the world by her husband's paranoia, Desdemona turns in death towards the memory of Barbary, the North African maid who raised together, they explore the contours of death, race, war, love and motherhood, in a moving elegy.

Audacious with ambition, Desdemona is Toni Morrison's intimate reimagining of the fourth act of Shakespeare's Othello , mixing monologue with Rokia Traore's lyrical songs to re-examine the Bard's presentation of race and female suffering.

Part-play, part-concert, part-quest into the afterlife, Desdemona is published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, featuring a new introduction by Joyce MacDonald.]]> 72 Toni Morrison 1350428981 Em 2 4.09 1994 Desdemona (Modern Classics)
author: Toni Morrison
name: Em
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1994
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/10/25
shelves:
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]]> Giovanni’s Room 38462 here.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.]]> 159 James Baldwin Em 3 4.31 1956 Giovanni’s Room
author: James Baldwin
name: Em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady]]> 36436062 "The morning became a long, drawn-out afternoon that became depthless night dawning innocently through the house."

Tales of desire and madness from this giant of Brazilian literature.]]> 64 Clarice Lispector 0241337607 Em 3 3.54 2018 Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Em
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rough: How violence has found its way into the bedroom and what we can do about it]]> 58255038 352 Rachel Thompson 1529114136 Em 0 to-read 3.50 2021 Rough: How violence has found its way into the bedroom and what we can do about it
author: Rachel Thompson
name: Em
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hell Followed With Us 57911600 Prepare to die. His kingdom is near.

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.

But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.

Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.

A furious, queer debut novel about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors.]]> 416 Andrew Joseph White 1682633241 Em 2 'I do, please stop, there's so much blood.'

Predictable peripeteias. Tired religious imagery.
Began in media res with no world-building or contextualisation.

(For example, not sure how Benji got access to queer theory in New Nazareth. Would have been interesting if his innate feelings of manhood were validated on encountering transness as a concept outside. Also Theo as both trans ally and amoral zealot was discordant.)

Back to my Baldwin and Woolf. Xx]]> 4.12 2022 Hell Followed With Us
author: Andrew Joseph White
name: Em
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
'Do you believe in God?'
'I do, please stop, there's so much blood.'

Predictable peripeteias. Tired religious imagery.
Began in media res with no world-building or contextualisation.

(For example, not sure how Benji got access to queer theory in New Nazareth. Would have been interesting if his innate feelings of manhood were validated on encountering transness as a concept outside. Also Theo as both trans ally and amoral zealot was discordant.)

Back to my Baldwin and Woolf. Xx
]]> Heart of Darkness 420031 Heart of Darkness (1899) explores the limits of human experience as well as the nighmarish realities of imperialism.]]> 136 Joseph Conrad 0141441674 Em 4 3.29 1899 Heart of Darkness
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Em
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1899
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
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review:

]]> Night Sky with Exit Wounds 31348271 Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other. Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects � love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire � and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention: ‘…the chief of police/facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola./A palm-sized photo of his father soaking/beside his left ear.� This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years.

‘These are poems of exquisite beauty, unashamed of romance, and undaunted by looking directly into the horrors of war, the silences of history. One of the most important debut collections for a generation.� Andrew McMillan]]> 80 Ocean Vuong 1911214519 Em 5 4.11 2016 Night Sky with Exit Wounds
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Em
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
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review:

]]> I'm a Fan 122769136 203 Sheena Patel 1783789816 Em 3 3.30 2022 I'm a Fan
author: Sheena Patel
name: Em
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head]]> 55835966 Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire.

Mama, I made it
out of your home,
alive, raised by the
voices in my head.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.

The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.]]> 86 Warsan Shire 0593134354 Em 3 4.21 2022 Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
author: Warsan Shire
name: Em
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
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review:

]]> Tortilla Flat 43342801
Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a "Camelot" on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey,California and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur's castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging. These "knights" are paisanos, men of mixed heritage, whose ancestors settled California hundreds of years before. Free of ties to jobs and other complications of the American way of life, they fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil in the surrounding ocean of civil rectitude.

As Steinbeck chronicles their deeds--their multiple loves, their wonderful brawls, their Rabelaisian wine-drinking--he spins a tale as compelling and ultimately as touched by sorrow as the famous legends of the Round Table, which inspired him.]]> 192 John Steinbeck Em 5
"The good God is not always so good to little beasts... Who can say what makes the good God act the way He does?"

"Am I alone in the world? Will no one fight with me?"

"Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods?"

"A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength... When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction."]]> 3.67 1935 Tortilla Flat
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1935
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
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review:
My fucking man. Finished it sobbing.

"The good God is not always so good to little beasts... Who can say what makes the good God act the way He does?"

"Am I alone in the world? Will no one fight with me?"

"Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods?"

"A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength... When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction."
]]> <![CDATA[In Favour of the Sensitive Man]]> 1581610 ]]> 138 Anaïs Nin 0140184732 Em 0 to-read 3.90 1966 In Favour of the Sensitive Man
author: Anaïs Nin
name: Em
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Pearl 5308
A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.]]> 96 John Steinbeck 0142000698 Em 0 to-read 3.52 1947 The Pearl
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Veiled Woman 36436092 'What did she expect of him? What was her quest? Did she have an unfulfilled desire?'

Transgressive desires and sexual encounters are recounted in these four pieces from one of the greatest writers of erotic fiction.

Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.]]> 56 Anaïs Nin 0241339545 Em 3
'Her yielding almost made him want to hurt her'

'pleasure running over their skins like water'

'Her body emerged like that of Venus coming out of the sea...The stranger watched the heaving of her breasts as if he were watching the sea unfolding at his feet']]> 3.50 2018 The Veiled Woman
author: Anaïs Nin
name: Em
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:
''He parted her legs as if he wanted to break them apart... he lifted her sex to meet his penis as if he did not care if he broke her bones in doing so'

'Her yielding almost made him want to hurt her'

'pleasure running over their skins like water'

'Her body emerged like that of Venus coming out of the sea...The stranger watched the heaving of her breasts as if he were watching the sea unfolding at his feet'
]]> Glass and God 17345882
Blending the modern and the classical, Anne Carson writes with an intensity and an integrity that is transfiguring.]]> 144 Anne Carson 0224051172 Em 0 to-read 4.19 1995 Glass and God
author: Anne Carson
name: Em
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls]]> 159760
Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.
]]> 293 Mary Pipher 1594481881 Em 0 to-read 3.89 1994 Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
author: Mary Pipher
name: Em
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Passion According to G.H. 17573206 208 Clarice Lispector 0141197358 Em 3 3.95 1964 The Passion According to G.H.
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Em
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1964
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
review:

]]> A Breath of Life 17573208 192 Clarice Lispector 0141197374 Em 4
'Do we exist simply to be relieved?'

'We want to penetrate the kingdom of God through sins because if not for sin there wouldn't be forgiveness and we wouldn't manage to reach Him.']]> 4.31 1978 A Breath of Life
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
'Every birth is a cruelty. Things that wish to sleep should be left asleep.'

'Do we exist simply to be relieved?'

'We want to penetrate the kingdom of God through sins because if not for sin there wouldn't be forgiveness and we wouldn't manage to reach Him.'
]]> <![CDATA[Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva (Volume 77) (Theory and History of Literature)]]> 230427 Book by Cixous, Helene 176 Hélène Cixous 0816619417 Em 0 to-read 4.10 1991 Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva (Volume 77) (Theory and History of Literature)
author: Hélène Cixous
name: Em
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Morning, Midnight 43821191 176 Jean Rhys Em 3 3.83 1939 Good Morning, Midnight
author: Jean Rhys
name: Em
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1939
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Milk Fed 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 Em 2 3.56 2021 Milk Fed
author: Melissa Broder
name: Em
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
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review:

]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Em 2
Bullyish, victim-playing, Babitzian narrator.
Get off your knees!!! Your mother loved you!!! Everybody is in pain!!!

Then the prose was somehow barebones AND overstated.

But it was quietly devastating. I didn't notice my lumpy throat until I closed the book.]]> 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Em
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:
'Sister, if Maria had lain down and shut her eyes and endured the sinning would she still be a saint?'

Bullyish, victim-playing, Babitzian narrator.
Get off your knees!!! Your mother loved you!!! Everybody is in pain!!!

Then the prose was somehow barebones AND overstated.

But it was quietly devastating. I didn't notice my lumpy throat until I closed the book.
]]> Wide Sargasso Sea 829372 HERE

Born into an oppressive colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage, disturbing rumours begin to circulate, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

This is a fully annotated edition of Jean Rhys's late literary masterpiece, which was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s.]]> 171 Jean Rhys Em 5
'Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other.'

'I could not touch her. Excepting as the hurricane will touch that tree - and break it.']]> 3.61 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea
author: Jean Rhys
name: Em
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
'I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine.'

'Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other.'

'I could not touch her. Excepting as the hurricane will touch that tree - and break it.'
]]> <![CDATA[De Profundis and Other Writings]]> 5304 252 Oscar Wilde 014043089X Em 5 4.23 De Profundis and Other Writings
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Em
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:

]]> My Men 61032475
My Men is a harrowing read about an enigmatic historical figure: Brynhilde Belle Gunness, a Norwegian servant girl turned serial killer after emigrating to America in the wake of a hopeless love affair at home. She thought she was following her sister to a better life, but what she found in America was a society ruled by the same rigid moral codes that oppressed her at home. Consumed by desire, and thirsty for the love and recognition she never received during her impoverished formative years, Belle seeks revenge on the world that broke her. As Belle racks up a body count of at least 14 men, she grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and—perversely—compelling.

Kielland writes urgently and thoughtfully about a broken person, one who yearns for liberation from the trappings of her class, gender, and traumatic past. My Men is a powerful and intense read, where the turn to violence is barely noticeable, but when it happens, there is no coming back.]]> 200 Victoria Kielland 166260193X Em 4 'She just wanted to feel him where she wasn't supposed to']]> 2.98 2021 My Men
author: Victoria Kielland
name: Em
average rating: 2.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
'He had been so scared when she showed him how hungry she really was'
'She just wanted to feel him where she wasn't supposed to'
]]> Want 207006355 What do you want, when no one is watching?
What do you want, when the lights are off?
What do you want, when you are anonymous?

When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet for many reasons � some complicated, some not � so many of us don't talk about it. Our deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key. Here's the key. In this generation-defining book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous letters of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous letter). Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous.]]> 372 Gillian Anderson 1419777297 Em 3 BUT
This is an anthology of shameless femininity. Gillian Anderson lets women be messy, needy and wanting in this unprecedented moralisation of desire.
Honest, healing, hot, relieving, hot.]]> 3.44 2024 Want
author: Gillian Anderson
name: Em
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves:
review:
Three stars because the general public are SHIT writers.
BUT
This is an anthology of shameless femininity. Gillian Anderson lets women be messy, needy and wanting in this unprecedented moralisation of desire.
Honest, healing, hot, relieving, hot.
]]> Blue Hunger 61921626 An electrifying descent from loneliness and grief into obsessive, all-consuming love, by an Italian literary star.


‘When Xu bites me, when she has me in her teeth, naked and bad on top of me, everything is good.�


In a skyscraper apartment overlooking Shanghai’s blue-tinged, pulsating nightlife and filled with rotting food, two women swallow little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. They’re both running from a turbulent past.


In abandoned factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, Xu pushes Ruben to extremes of pleasure and pain that she has never experienced before, to a place where language breaks down and passion becomes consumption.


Blue Hunger asks how we create our identities and how we escape them; it is a fever-dream of a novel, visionary and uncanny, that demolishes all taboos and wisely explores, in a wildly imaginative language, the twisted peaks of loss and desire.]]> 224 Viola Di Grado 1914484274 Em 0 to-read 3.30 2022 Blue Hunger
author: Viola Di Grado
name: Em
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity]]> 114945 304 Sarah B. Pomeroy 080521030X Em 0 to-read 3.97 1975 Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
author: Sarah B. Pomeroy
name: Em
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)]]> 53317528 Called a masterpiece by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing

Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969-71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child's single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.

Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction.

Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with Tove fever gripping readers.]]> 371 Tove Ditlevsen 0374602395 Em 0 to-read 4.36 1967 The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)
author: Tove Ditlevsen
name: Em
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray]]> 13747794 260 Oscar Wilde 0674066316 Em 5 4.32 1890 The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Em
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/29
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Poems 1962-2020 56227534
For the past fifty years, Louise Glück has been a major force in modern poetry, distinguished as much for the restless intelligence, wit and intimacy of her poetic voice as for her development of a particular form: the book-length sequence of poems. This volume brings together the twelve collections Glück has published to date, offering readers the opportunity to become immersed in the artistry and vision of one of the world's greatest living poets.

From the allegories of The Wild Iris to the myth-making of Averno; the oneiric landscapes of The House on Marshland to the questing of Faithful and Virtuous Night - each of Glück's collections looks upon the events of an ordinary life and finds within them scope for the transcendent; each wields its archetypes to puncture the illusions of the self. Across her work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured - Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain. Taken together, the effect is like a shifting landscape seen from above, at once familiar and unspeakably profound.]]> 720 Louise Glück 0241526078 Em 3
"you must have known, then, how I wanted you. We will always know that, you and I. The proof will be my body."

"I think you let me stare so you can turn against yourself with greater violence, needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away"]]> 4.48 2020 Poems 1962-2020
author: Louise Glück
name: Em
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:
"this is how a god says goodbye: if I am in her head forever I am in your life forever."

"you must have known, then, how I wanted you. We will always know that, you and I. The proof will be my body."

"I think you let me stare so you can turn against yourself with greater violence, needing to show me how you scrape the flesh away"
]]> Acts of Desperation 49535227
Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission, between escaping degradation and eroticizing it, between loving and being lovable. With unsettling, electric precision, Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, and how do we want it?

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new literary talent, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, and power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.]]> 288 Megan Nolan Em 2 YOU'LL NEVER BE KAIROS.]]> 3.71 2021 Acts of Desperation
author: Megan Nolan
name: Em
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:
Started beautiful. Ended with 'Get off your knees.'
YOU'LL NEVER BE KAIROS.
]]> Everyone I Know is Dying 204041701
When she’s having sex with her boss, Iris likes to have the lights on so he can see how much younger she is than his wife. She likes watching her colleagues eat unhealthy lunches at their desk while her stomach aches with emptiness. She likes coasting at work knowing she’s going to land a big promotion anyway.

So why when it arrives does she find herself sprawled on her hallway floor, crying uncontrollably? Why, instead of a sense of triumph, does a crippling depression threaten to overwhelm her? Why does the support and stability of her family and friends feel so suffocating? And why, torn between her flatmate George � good, kind, reliable George � and cold, indifferent Patrick, does she only seem capable of making choices that cause her pain?]]> 352 Emily Slapper 0008629129 Em 0 to-read 3.44 2024 Everyone I Know is Dying
author: Emily Slapper
name: Em
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Of Mice and Men 186521 121 John Steinbeck 0141023570 Em 2 3.90 1937 Of Mice and Men
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1937
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dry Heart 58200109
Four years before she shoots her husband and walks to a café for a coffee, a lonely young woman living in a boarding house meets an older man called Alberto. They go for long walks along the river and on the outskirts of the city; they look like lovers, although they’re not.

Alberto doesn’t tell her anything about himself and she asks few questions. Still, with little else to distract her, she lets her imagination run wild and convinces herself to fall in love. Though he doesn’t feel the same, Alberto asks her to marry him and they have a baby. But Alberto is a man who tires quickly of everything.

The Dry Heart is a short, dark and psychologically rich novel that forensically examines how an unhappy marriage comes to end in murder.

‘In sparse, economical prose, Ginzburg portrays the emotional and social limits placed on women.� � Observer

‘Written in cool, detached tones but propelled by fierce emotional currents, it’s no surprise that Ginzburg’s books are adored by everyone from Sally Rooney to Zadie Smith.� � Stylist Loves

‘This book is a Roman candle � quick and explosive.� � New York Times

‘A feminist classic that exposes the dark side of marriage in clean, captivating prose.� � Chicago Tribune

‘It’s good to have The Dry Heart back.� � The New Yorker

‘I’m utterly entranced by Ginzburg’s style � her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear.� � Maggie Nelson

‘Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.� � Rachel Cusk]]> 108 Natalia Ginzburg 1911547607 Em 2 3.98 1947 The Dry Heart
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: Em
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 2
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]]> The Grapes of Wrath 34383184 'To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.'

Drought and economic depression are driving thousands from Oklahoma. As their land becomes just another strip in the dust bowl, the Joads, a family of sharecroppers, decide they have no choice but to follow. They head west, towards California, where they hope to find work and a future for their family. But while the journey to this promised land will take its inevitable toll, there remains uncertainty about what awaits their arrival . . .

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Grapes of Wrath is an epic human drama. Of this novel, Steinbeck himself said: 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.']]> 536 John Steinbeck 0241980348 Em 4 4.25 1939 The Grapes of Wrath
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/18
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]]> Playing with Matches 56898974
To complement the exquisite and evocative poetry, prose, and short stories, this gorgeous book also gives readers a private glimpse into the author’s life. Comprising of black and white photographs taken by Michael Faudet that capture the inspiration behind the writing.

Playing with Matches is a must-have for fans of Dirty Pretty Things , Bitter Sweet Love , Smoke & Mirrors , Winter of Summers , and Cult of Two . A poetry lover’s delight with an additional 35 new pieces never before published in any Michael Faudet collection. An intricate exploration of love, heartbreak, seduction, self-empowerment, and sex that will spark your imagination and ignite the flames of passion that burn inside all of us.]]> 296 Michael Faudet 1524869899 Em 0 to-read 3.78 Playing with Matches
author: Michael Faudet
name: Em
average rating: 3.78
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> Her Body and Other Parties 42121367 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.]]> 246 Carmen Maria Machado 1781259534 Em 2 3.72 2017 Her Body and Other Parties
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Em
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 2
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Atwoodian feminist predictability.
]]> A Happy Death 15682 A Happy Death is a fascinating first sketch for The Outsider, but it can also be seen as a candid self-portrait, drawing on Camus's memories of his youth, travels, and early relationships. It is infused with lyrical descriptions of the sun-drenched Algiers of his childhood - the place where, eventually, Mersault is able to find peace and die 'without anger, without hatred, without regret'.]]> 144 Albert Camus Em 0 to-read 3.89 1971 A Happy Death
author: Albert Camus
name: Em
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Rilke on Love (Warbler Press Contemplations Book 3)]]> 52820411 117 Rainer Maria Rilke 1734588136 Em 4 3.95 1975 Rilke on Love (Warbler Press Contemplations Book 3)
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: Em
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1975
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> East of Eden 34383185
East of Eden was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America's most enduring novels.]]> 728 John Steinbeck 0241980356 Em 5 4.61 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: Em
average rating: 4.61
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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Fucking exquisite. I have tears on my cheeks.
]]> Anna Karenina 15823480 Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.

Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.]]> 964 Leo Tolstoy 0345803922 Em 4 4.11 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Em
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/08/04
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]]> The Great Gatsby 396094 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780141182636

Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby is the bright star of the Jazz Age, but as writer Nick Carraway is drawn into the decadent orbit of his Long Island mansion, where the party never seems to end, he finds himself faced by the mystery of Gatsby's origins and desires. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life, Gatsby is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon, this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusionment of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.]]> 177 F. Scott Fitzgerald Em 3 3.88 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Em
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1925
rating: 3
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]]> Burnings 9685046 -Roger Bonair-Agard, author of Tarnish and Masquerade and Gully

“Vuong’s perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.�
-Grady Harp, Amazon Top Reviewer and critic

“Ocean Vuong is a poet of rare lyrical gifts and urgent stories to tell. “Memory,� he writes, “has not forgotten you.� No, it hasn’t forgotten the burning city or the taste of blood nor the hanging of rags or the violence of war. Vuong’s poems are testament to the enduring power of poetry and its place in this human universe.�
-Hoa Nguyen, author of Hectate Lochia and As Long as Trees Last]]> 40 Ocean Vuong 0578070596 Em 0 to-read 4.36 2010 Burnings
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Em
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass]]> 43554866 The highly anticipated spoken word poetry collection from Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass

�'Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass' is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each word to make the perfect poem. They are eclectic and honest and not trying to be anything other than what they are and for that reason I’m proud of them, especially because the spirit in which they were written was very authentic.� (Lana Del Rey)

Lana Del Rey brings her breathtaking poetry to life in an unprecedented audiobook. In this stunning spoken word performance, Lana Del Rey reads 14 poems from her debut book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass accompanied by music from Grammy Award-winning musician Jack Antonoff. Lana’s debut book solidifies her further as “the essential writer of her times� (The Atlantic). This audiobook features Lana reading select poems from the book, including "LA Who Am I to Love You?", "The Land of 1,000 Fires", "Past the Bushes Cypress Thriving", "Never to Heaven", "Tessa DiPietro", "Happy", and several others. The result is an extraordinary poetic landscape that reflects the unguarded spirit of its creator.]]> 1 Lana Del Rey Em 1 Put the pen down baby. 4.03 2020 Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass
author: Lana Del Rey
name: Em
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 1
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Put the pen down baby.
]]> In Love 32935093 In Love 128 Alfred Hayes 0241307139 Em 3 3.75 1958 In Love
author: Alfred Hayes
name: Em
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1958
rating: 3
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]]> House of Incest 11043 72 Anaïs Nin 0804001480 Em 0 to-read 3.95 1915 House of Incest
author: Anaïs Nin
name: Em
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Em 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Em
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Women 38500 291 Charles Bukowski 0061177598 Em 1 (Bukowski fuck someone over the age of 22 challenge)]]> 3.85 1978 Women
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Em
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1978
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/16
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My misogynist ❤️
(Bukowski fuck someone over the age of 22 challenge)
]]> Kink: Stories 54304256 Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.

Kink is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. The collection includes works by renowned fiction writers such as Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.

The stories within explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists� offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers.]]> 288 R.O. Kwon 198211021X Em 4 3.11 2021 Kink: Stories
author: R.O. Kwon
name: Em
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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]]> Laughter in the Dark 8151 292 Vladimir Nabokov 0811216748 Em 2 My boss' favourite book... 4.02 1932 Laughter in the Dark
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Em
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1932
rating: 2
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My boss' favourite book...
]]> Mating 527513 480 Norman Rush 067973709X Em 0 to-read 3.85 1991 Mating
author: Norman Rush
name: Em
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> The Crucible 17250
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
(back cover)]]> 143 Arthur Miller 0142437336 Em 5 3.60 1953 The Crucible
author: Arthur Miller
name: Em
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1953
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[I cannot be good until you say it]]> 202971659 The much-anticipated debut collection by the winner of the Outspoken Performance Poetry a tender meditation on queerness and Islam

'Dissolving whatever boundaries would wall us off from love, Ahsan finds a way to let it all be holy' Victoria Adukwei-Bulley

'When I speak of the word "sacred", Sanah Ahsan's I cannot be good until you say it will forever instantly spring to mind ... A masterpiece - an honour to have read this book, I am forever changed after reading its beauty' Nikita Gill

'Innovative and deeply compassionate ... multilingual verse suffused with a vital musicality and a palpable tenderness, Ahsan calls poetry into prayer and evokes a faith safe enough to be mothered by' Mary Jean Chan

'Dexterous, varied, erotic, filled with rage, worships and wonder ... I am electrified' Pádraig Ó Tuama

'Tensions of psychological drama, together with an induced sense of yearning.. what an artful and inspired set of poems' Anthony Anaxagorou

'Liberation is at the nucleus of every page of Sanah Ahsan's rousing debut ... Ahsan is doing liberation work, offering readers a prayer, a song, a hand to hold amidst the amidst' Kaveh Akbar

'A remarkable and transformative collection' Keith Jarrett

'A daring debut collection, which guides us through the complexities of just being' Yomi Sode

'Alive with a want and restlessness that remakes the "You" of desire - and faith - again and again' Will Harris

'A heart punching debut collection' Raymond Antrobus
______________________________________________

Intricately weaving Quranic verse, psychology, and the hip-hop soundtrack of their childhood, Sanah's poems reach for divinity in the body; an archive that refuses erasure.

These poems traverse unruly emotional and physical landscapes, Whiteness, islamophobia, homophobia, intergenerational suffering, and the politics of therapeutic processes. In these pages, belief and unbelief, goodness and badness, the material and spiritual are intertwined, reclaiming queer love and desire as holy.

How are we incarcerated by others' gazes? Who gets to be good in a society built upon hierarchy? How might we embrace each other's madnesses? Sanah Ahsan asks questions that travel to the heart of our humanness, bending the lines between psychologist and client to show us the sacred nature of our wounds. These poems kneel to the messiness of being alive, building altars to complication and presence.

Refusing binaries of gender or religious doctrine, I cannot be good until you say it finds what is to be revered in the grey spaces of morality, advancing imagination and self-compassion as sites of communion.

This debut collection is a call to prayer, fearlessly complicating what is good, and what is god.]]> 104 Sanah Ahsan 1526665816 Em 3 4.28 I cannot be good until you say it
author: Sanah Ahsan
name: Em
average rating: 4.28
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]]> Deaf Republic 42447793
Deaf Republic opens in a time of political unrest in an occupied territory. It is uncertain where we are or when, in what country or during what conflict, but we come to recognise that these events are also happening here, right now. This astonishing parable in poems unfolds episodically like a play, its powerful narrative provoked by a tragic opening scene: when soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear - in that moment, all have gone deaf. Inside this silence, their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story then follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting their child; the daring Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theatre; and Galya's puppeteers, covertly teaching signs by day and by night heroically luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Deaf Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.]]> 96 Ilya Kaminsky 0571351417 Em 5 4.31 2019 Deaf Republic
author: Ilya Kaminsky
name: Em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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]]> Dancing in Odessa 57291264 Described as 'a rich, reverberative dance with memories of a haunted city' ( LA Times ), the poems of the prize-winning debut Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, draw on archetype, myth and Russian literary figures. Tightly realised domestic settings are invigorated with a contemporary relevance, humour and torment, and a distinctive, transcendent music.


'With his magical style in English, Kaminsky's poems in Dancing in Odessa seem like a literary counterpart to Chagall in which laws of gravity have been suspended and colors reassigned, but only to make everyday reality that much more indelible. His imagination is so transformative that we respond with equal measures of grief and exhilaration.' The American Academy of Arts and Letters

' Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky tops the list because he is one of those rarest of finds in this or any century, a writer who establishes what poetry can be.' The New York Times]]> 80 Ilya Kaminsky 0571369189 Em 3 3.97 2004 Dancing in Odessa
author: Ilya Kaminsky
name: Em
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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]]> Kairos 202576816
From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.]]> 294 Jenny Erpenbeck 1783786132 Em 5 3.25 2021 Kairos
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Em
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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]]> The Old Man and the Sea 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Em 5 Gentlest prose 3.81 1952 The Old Man and the Sea
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Em
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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Gentlest prose
]]> Sex and Rage 32332902
Sex and Rage delights in its sensuous, dreamlike narrative and spontaneous embrace of fate, work, and of certain meetings and chances. Jacaranda moves beyond the tango of sex and rage into the open challenge of a defined and more fulfilling expressive life. Sex and Rage further solidifies Eve Babitz's place as a singularly important voice in Los Angeles literature―haunting, alluring, and alive.]]> 256 Eve Babitz 1619029359 Em 1 Pretentious blonde fuck 3.56 1979 Sex and Rage
author: Eve Babitz
name: Em
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1979
rating: 1
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date added: 2024/06/28
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Pretentious blonde fuck
]]> <![CDATA[Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger]]> 26156389

Fiona Wright is a highly regarded poet and critic, and her account of her illness is informed by a keen sense of its contradictions and deceptions, and by an awareness of the empowering effects of hunger, which is unsparing in its consideration of the author’s own actions and motivations. The essays offer perspectives on the eating disorder at different stages in Wright’s life, at university, where she finds herself in a radically different social world to the one she grew up in, in Sri Lanka as a fledgling journalist, in Germany as a young writer, in her hospital treatments back in Sydney.


They combine research, travel writing, memoir, and literary discussions of how writers like Christina Stead, Carmel Bird, Tim Winton, John Berryman and Louise Glück deal with anorexia and addiction; together with accounts of family life, and detailed and humorous views of hunger-induced situations of the kind that are so compelling in Wright’s poetry.]]> 200 Fiona Wright 1922146935 Em 0 to-read 4.10 2015 Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger
author: Fiona Wright
name: Em
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> Mercies: Selected Poems 50353992
Sexton's name is legendary. Her poetry is read around the world, translated into over thirty languages, and in her own country remains a touchstone for poets and readers looking for a rawness of perception, a vitality of expression, and a confessional frankness. Yet, incredibly, there has been no new UK edition of her work for decades. In Mercies, readers are provided with a resonant new selection from the writings of this natural phenomenon of a poet.]]> 272 Anne Sexton 0241460395 Em 4 4.24 1988 Mercies: Selected Poems
author: Anne Sexton
name: Em
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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]]> The Pumpkin Eater 26021671 144 Penelope Mortimer 0241240107 Em 5 3.76 1962 The Pumpkin Eater
author: Penelope Mortimer
name: Em
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/06/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Tropic of Capricorn (Tropic, #2)]]> 250 Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods, and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.
]]> 348 Henry Miller 0802151825 Em 3 3.84 1939 Tropic of Capricorn (Tropic, #2)
author: Henry Miller
name: Em
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1939
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> Mural 6413281
Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last half century, his work evokes the loss of his homeland and is suffused with the pain of dispossession and exile. His poems display a brilliant acuity, a passion for and openness to the world and, above all, a deep and abiding humanity. Here, his close friends John Berger and Rema Hammami present a beautiful new translation of two of Darwish’s later works. Illustrated with original drawings by John Berger, Mural is a testimony to one of the most important and powerful poets of our age.]]> 69 Mahmoud Darwish 184467410X Em 4 4.31 2000 Mural
author: Mahmoud Darwish
name: Em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Em 4 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Em
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> Bad Behaviour 41081319 208 Mary Gaitskill 0241383102 Em 4 3.76 1988 Bad Behaviour
author: Mary Gaitskill
name: Em
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> Enter Ghost 59725231 A bold, evocative new novel from the Sue Kaufman, Betty Trask and Plimpton Prize Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia stayed in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.]]> 336 Isabella Hammad 080216238X Em 2 4.13 2023 Enter Ghost
author: Isabella Hammad
name: Em
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 2
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]]> Empty 52637788 An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still.

Growing up, Susan Burton had never heard of binge-eating. She just knew she felt her best when she was empty, "like a straw", as she says "something you could blow through."

For almost thirty years, Susan Burton has hidden her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.

When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success--she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse--she'd binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again--and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to "quit food."

Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of story; brings to life an indelible cast of characters; and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.]]> 283 Susan Burton 0812992849 Em 0 to-read 3.75 2020 Empty
author: Susan Burton
name: Em
average rating: 3.75
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]]> Disobedience 202677 Disobedience. The story begins with the death of the community's esteemed rabbi, which sets in motion plans for a memorial service and the search for a replacement. The rabbi's nephew and likely successor, Dovid, calls his cousin Ronit in New York to tell her that her father has died. Ronit, who left the community long ago to build a life for herself as a career woman, returns home when she hears the news, and her reappearance exposes tears in the fabric of the community.

Steeped in Jewish philosophy and teachings, Disobedience is a perceptive and thoughtful exploration of the laws and practices that have governed Judaism for centuries, and continue to hold sway today. Throughout the novel, Alderman retells stories from the Torah -- Judaism's fundamental source -- and the interplay between these tales and the struggles of the novel's unique characters wields enormous power and wisdom, and will surely move readers to tears.]]> 240 Naomi Alderman 0743291565 Em 5 3.66 2006 Disobedience
author: Naomi Alderman
name: Em
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> Book of Longing 158005 240 Leonard Cohen 0771022298 Em 4 4.03 2006 Book of Longing
author: Leonard Cohen
name: Em
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)]]> 36336078 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.]]> 248 André Aciman 1786495252 Em 4 4.08 2007 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)
author: André Aciman
name: Em
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Em 5 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Em
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
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]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]> 7588 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.]]> 329 James Joyce 0142437344 Em 5 3.64 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
author: James Joyce
name: Em
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1916
rating: 5
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