Jacqui's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:25:52 -0700 60 Jacqui's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Freshwater 35412372 Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.

Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves--now protective, now hedonistic--move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.

Narrated by the various selves within Ada and based in the author's realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.]]> 229 Akwaeke Emezi 0802127355 Jacqui 4 4.03 2018 Freshwater
author: Akwaeke Emezi
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:
Did I understand no, did I enjoy it yes
]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Jacqui 3 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
The people in this book felt like real people which I quite liked
]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Jacqui 4 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves:
review:
A surprisingly funny and entertaining book given the content of the first few chapters, the characters didn’t feel the most real but their stories were a joy to read
]]> Highway Thirteen: Stories 195791203
In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged for a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims� families, but its impact travels even into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway Thirteen , Fiona McFarlane’s newest collection, takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s childhood town to Texas, Rome, and tropical northern Australia, McFarlane presents an oblique, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without centering the killers? From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The High Places comes a captivating account of loss and its extended echoes in individual lives.]]> 272 Fiona McFarlane 0374606269 Jacqui 4 3.68 2024 Highway Thirteen: Stories
author: Fiona McFarlane
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> The Forester's Daughter 41713581 Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

The evening is fine. In the sky a few early stars are shining of their own accord. She watches the dog licking the bowl clean. This dog will break her daughter's heart, she's sure of it.

Claire Keegan's mesmeric story takes us into the heart of the Wicklow countryside, and of the farming family of Victor Deegan, with his 'three teenagers, the milking and the mortgage'.

When Deegan finds a gun dog and gives it as a present to his only daughter, his wife is filled with foreboding at this seeming act of kindness. As the seasons pass, long-buried family secrets threaten to emerge.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]> 68 Claire Keegan 0571351859 Jacqui 5 4.05 The Forester's Daughter
author: Claire Keegan
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
review:
Such a delightful little bite of a book, writing is so pretty
]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 528 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Jacqui 3 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:
This might just be cause I’m a horribly slow reader bit this got harder to read as time went on, so enjoyable for the first third and then got incredibly bored. Why do they keep saying god with an s ??
]]> Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens 58894458
Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home is nestled in the quiet suburb of Westgrove, Sydney � populated with residents with colourful histories, each with their own secrets, triumphs and failings. This is their safe place, an oasis of familiar delights � a beautiful garden, a busy kitchen and a bountiful recreation schedule.

But this ordinary neighbourhood is not without its prejudices. The serenity of Cinnamon Gardens is threatened by malignant forces more interested in what makes this refuge different rather than embracing the calm companionship that makes this place home to so many. As those who challenge the residents� existence make their stand against the nursing home with devastating consequences, our characters are forced to reckon with a country divided.

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to story-telling and how our stories shape who we are.]]> 384 Shankari Chandran 1761150316 Jacqui 5 4.15 2022 Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens
author: Shankari Chandran
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves:
review:
Interesting, engaging, no notes
]]> Convenience Store Woman 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 Jacqui 3 3.65 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control]]> 52665079 THE PILL

Changes your brain
Alters your stress response
Can increase your risk of depression
Affects your choice of mate selection

Hormonal birth control is taken by millions of women around the world every day. Yet until recently we knew very little about how the Pill affects the non-reproductive systems of the female body, because research on these other systems was conducted almost exclusively on men. In her trailblazing book, Dr Sarah Hill uses the latest science to reveal how the Pill is changing women and the world, for better and worse. She puts the power back in your hands to make smarter, more informed choices about your health and your hormones.


IT'S EVERYTHING YOUR DOCTOR NEVER TOLD YOU

]]> 320 Sarah E. Hill Jacqui 3 4.01 2019 How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control
author: Sarah E. Hill
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Piglet 127282554 A New York Times Book Review Editors� Choice
A Belletrist Book Club Pick

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

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

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

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X Jacqui 4 3.39 2024 Piglet
author: Lottie Hazell
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:
Enjoyable and quick to read, left me feeling confused and a little hungry
]]> <![CDATA[As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow]]> 57390604
Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.

But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.

Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are—not a war, but a revolution—and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom.]]> 417 Zoulfa Katouh 0316351377 Jacqui 4 4.48 2022 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
author: Zoulfa Katouh
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/09
shelves:
review:

]]> The Work 201628532
A stunning debut novel about art, power, love and money from the acclaimed and bestselling author of Eggshell Skull.'This novel isn't just good; it's superb. Assured, and powerful, and intelligent, and very, VERY hard to put down. I consumed it in a passion.' � Annabel Crabb'Smart, witty and super steamy, The Work oozes intelligence and pulses with energy. I devoured it!' � Emily Maguire'A completely exhilarating, powerful, mesmerising novel, filled with ALL my favourite sex, art and New York City.' � Jessie Tu'A glamorous and dirty capitalist fever dream � complex, opulent and horny.' � Ella Baxter'Caoilinn Hughes' The Orchid and the Wasp meets Andrew Lipstein's Last Resort. A smart, sexy page-turner.' � Madeleine Gray'Work, power, passion, intimacy and vulnerabilities collide, and best of all, SMUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' � Flex Mami'A brilliant meditation on the gap between the person we wish to be and who we actually are. I was completely gripped.' � Bridie Jabour'An ambitious and meticulously modern fable about art, sex, money, power and the perils of self-curation.' � Gina Rushton'Pacy, racy and high-octane, The Work delves into the volatile world of contemporary art, forcefully exposing it as a bedfellow to the world of high finance.' � Caoilinn Hughes]]> 386 Bri Lee 176106939X Jacqui 1 3.32 2024 The Work
author: Bri Lee
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/04
shelves:
review:
No joy was sparked reading this, the dialogue was so unrealistic it was uncomfortable
]]> Priestdaddy 31920820
When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.]]> 336 Patricia Lockwood 1594633738 Jacqui 4 Only a month late 3.84 2017 Priestdaddy
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:
Only a month late
]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Jacqui 3 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Good Material 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 Jacqui 3 3.85 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
Surprise to find Julian in this one
]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Jacqui 2 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
I really like trees but that didn’t save this one for me
]]> The Younger Wife 57693338 THE HUSBAND
A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself.

THE DAUGHTERS
Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money.

THE FORMER WIFE
With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is.

THE YOUNGER WIFE
Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?]]> 346 Sally Hepworth 1250229618 Jacqui 4 Fun easy vibess 3.72 2021 The Younger Wife
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
Fun easy vibess
]]> So Late in the Day 73936042
From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan's new story asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women.]]> 47 Claire Keegan 0571382010 Jacqui 0 to-read 3.97 2023 So Late in the Day
author: Claire Keegan
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> White Teeth 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Jacqui 0 to-read 3.80 2000 White Teeth
author: Zadie Smith
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Half of a Yellow Sun 18749 A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,� Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.]]> 435 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 1400044162 Jacqui 0 to-read 4.34 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Jacqui
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Jacqui 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fahrenheit 451 13079982 Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.� But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.]]> 194 Ray Bradbury Jacqui 0 to-read 3.97 1953 Fahrenheit 451
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Far From the Madding Crowd 31463 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439655

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.]]> 433 Thomas Hardy Jacqui 0 to-read 3.96 1874 Far From the Madding Crowd
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Jacqui
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1874
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>