Arian's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 14 Apr 2025 22:48:12 -0700 60 Arian's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg I Want to Eat Your Pancreas 39863194 A Bittersweet Romance

In this deeply moving first-person story, an introverted high school boy finds his classmate’s diary―and learns her biggest secret. Yamauchi Sakura is dying from a pancreatic disease and now he is the only one person outside her family to know the truth. The last thing the boy wants is to be her friend, but Sakura’s cheerful demeanor and their shared secret draw them together in this heartrending tale of friendship and mortality.]]> 442 Yoru Sumino 1642750328 Arian 5 currently-reading 4.39 2014 I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
author: Yoru Sumino
name: Arian
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Night Road 51851280 For a mother, life comes down to a series of choices.
To hold on...
To let go...
To forget...
To forgive...
Which road will you take?

For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children’s needs above her own, and it shows—her twins, Mia and Zach—are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude. Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia’s best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable.

Jude does everything to keep her kids on track for college and out of harm’s way.It has always been easy until senior year of high school.Suddenly she is at a loss.Nothing feels safe anymore; every time her kids leave the house, she worries about them.

On a hot summer’s night her worst fears come true.One decision will change the course of their lives.In the blink of an eye, the Farraday family will be torn apart and Lexi will lose everything.In the years that follow, each must face the consequences of that single night and find a way to forget... or the courage to forgive.

Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, NIGHT ROAD raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness.It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope.This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love.]]> 396 Kristin Hannah Arian 0 to-read 4.47 2011 Night Road
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Arian
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> The Shawshank Redemption 9836767
Suspenseful, mysterious, and heart-wrenching, Stephen King’s extraordinary novella, populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, tells a powerful tale of crushing despair and liberating hope through the eyes of Ellis “Red� Redding. Red’s a guy who can get you whatever you want here in Maine’s corrupt and hard-edged Shawshank State Penitentiary (for a price, of course), but the one thing he doesn’t count on is an unexpected friendship forged with fellow inmate Andy Dufresne—an inscrutable one-time banker perhaps falsely convicted of brutal, calculated murder who will go on to transform everyone’s lives within these prison walls.

Originally published in the 1982 collection Different Seasons, it was adapted into the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, this modern classic has become one of the most beloved films of all time. A mesmerizing work of unjust imprisonment and strangely satisfying revenge, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption remains one of Stephen King’s most beloved and iconic stories.]]> 4 Stephen King 1101010991 Arian 5 4.38 1982 The Shawshank Redemption
author: Stephen King
name: Arian
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1982
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/04/11
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One of my all-time favorites and the book is just as good as the movie
]]> Shuna's Journey 60384799
Shuna, the prince of a poor land, watches in despair as his people work themselves to death harvesting the little grain that grows there. And so, when a traveler presents him with a sample of seeds from a mysterious western land, he sets out to find the source of the golden grain, dreaming of a better life for his subjects.

It is not long before he meets a proud girl named Thea. After freeing her from captivity, he is pursued by her enemies, and while Thea escapes north, Shuna continues toward the west, finally reaching the Land of the God-Folk.

Will Shuna ever see Thea again? And will he make it back home from his quest for the golden grain?]]> 160 Hayao Miyazaki 1250846528 Arian 5 4.35 1983 Shuna's Journey
author: Hayao Miyazaki
name: Arian
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/04/07
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It's Miyazaki after all!!! Ofc I had to love it. Reading this graphic novel feels like watching a Miyazaki masterpiece again. I'd deffo recommend reading it
]]> <![CDATA[If Cats Disappeared from the World]]> 40740914
Because how do you decide what makes life worth living? How do you separate out what you can do without from what you hold dear? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself � and his beloved cat � to the brink. Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World is a story of loss and reconciliation, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life.

This beautiful tale is translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, who also translated The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. Fans of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles will also surely love If Cats Disappeared from the World.]]> 202 Genki Kawamura 1509889175 Arian 0 currently-reading 3.77 2012 If Cats Disappeared from the World
author: Genki Kawamura
name: Arian
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> Lonely Castle in the Mirror 54633167
Delving into their emotional lives with sympathy and a generous warmth, Lonely Castle in the Mirror shows the unexpected rewards of reaching out to others. Exploring vivid human stories with a twisty and puzzle-like plot, this heart-warming novel is full of joy and hope for anyone touched by sadness and vulnerability.]]> 355 Mizuki Tsujimura 0857527274 Arian 0 to-read 4.25 2017 Lonely Castle in the Mirror
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: Arian
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (The Go-Between, #1)]]> 200117093 Is there anyone you wish to see?

When Hirase, a young woman from Tokyo, arranges an appointment with the Go-Between, she doesn't expect a teenager to show up. Dressed preppily in a duffel coat and carrying a scuffed notebook, he arranges for the dead to meet the living. At least, this is what Hirase has been told.

He ushers his clients into a chilly hospital courtyard where he lays down the rules: the reunion is at full moon; the deceased can be summoned only once; they can refuse; the service is entirely free.

- Hirase asks to see the TV star who once helped her;
- A stubborn family man asks his deceased mother where the deeds are to some land;
- A young woman gets a horrible shock when she receives a message from the best friend whose death she caused;
- A weary salary man explores why his girlfriend went missing days after he proposed.

With each heartbreaking reunion, clues are scattered for readers to piece together the mindblowing truth behind the boy in the duffel coat, as Tsujimura shows with astonishing empathy and insight how the power of memory can give our lives meaning.]]> 320 Mizuki Tsujimura 1529911427 Arian 0 to-read 3.88 2010 Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (The Go-Between, #1)
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: Arian
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath]]> 48721389 The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES*

Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.

Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.]]> 1154 Heather Clark 1473579236 Arian 0 to-read 4.56 2020 Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
author: Heather Clark
name: Arian
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> Zodiac 105760 356 Robert Graysmith 0425098087 Arian 0 currently-reading 3.92 1986 Zodiac
author: Robert Graysmith
name: Arian
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #3)]]> 56269187 A promise to stay together.
An unbreakable bond.
A fierce will to survive.

From international bestselling author Heather Morris comes the breathtaking conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy.

When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what.

Years later, at just 15 years old, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister, or die with her.

In their hometown in Slovakia, 17-year-old Magda hides, desperate to evade the barbaric Nazi forces. But it is not long before she is captured and condemned to Auschwitz.

In the horror of the death camp, these three beautiful sisters are reunited. Though traumatised by their experiences, they are together.

They make another promise: that they will live. Their fight for survival takes them from the hell of Auschwitz, to a death march across war-torn Europe and eventually home to Slovakia, now under iron Communist rule. Determined to begin again, they embark on a voyage of renewal, to the new Jewish homeland, Israel.

Rich in vivid detail, and beautifully told, Three Sisters will break your heart, but leave you amazed and uplifted by the courage and fierce love of three sisters, whose promise to each other kept them alive. Two of the sisters are in Israel today, surrounded by family and friends. They have chosen Heather Morris to reimagine their story in her astonishing new novel, Three Sisters.]]> 416 Heather Morris 1250276896 Arian 0 to-read 4.34 2021 Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #3)
author: Heather Morris
name: Arian
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> The One 40670312 How far would you go to find The One?

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner the one you are genetically made for.

That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.

Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.� They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after� isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others�

A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.]]> 418 John Marrs Arian 0 to-read 4.09 2016 The One
author: John Marrs
name: Arian
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> Stars At Last 218070677 "the price I paid to exist
was a mother who couldn't love me.
my karma was a daughter
made from stars."

Stars At Last compassionately and candidly carries each reader's heart through a healing journey of breaking generational trauma while traversing the tumultuous waters of the mother wound.

With deeply vulnerable and visceral lines, Jessica Jocelyn reclaims her personal power the closer she gets to freeing herself from a maternal trauma bond. She learns to not only be a loving mother towards herself, but she also further rewrites her lineage's history by becoming the parent her mother could never be to her own daughter.

Ultimately, this poignant poetry book is for the cycle-breakers; the ones who had to mother themselves along the path to self-empowerment and transformation.

trigger warnings include references abuseself harmdomestic violence]]> 139 Jessica Jocelyn Arian 5
''do you think we're together in every universe?"
one quietly asked the other.

after thinking for a bit, the other sister said:

"if we come back as flowers,
we will grow in the same garden
and laugh when butterflies tickle us.

if we come back as nature,
I will be the clouds in your storm.

and if we come back as fruit,
we will grow on the same vine.

it could never be possible that we aren't together."]]> 4.62 Stars At Last
author: Jessica Jocelyn
name: Arian
average rating: 4.62
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/03/21
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two sisters were sitting in the grass.

''do you think we're together in every universe?"
one quietly asked the other.

after thinking for a bit, the other sister said:

"if we come back as flowers,
we will grow in the same garden
and laugh when butterflies tickle us.

if we come back as nature,
I will be the clouds in your storm.

and if we come back as fruit,
we will grow on the same vine.

it could never be possible that we aren't together."
]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214333691 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 400 Suzanne Collins 1546171479 Arian 0 to-read 4.70 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Arian
average rating: 4.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> The Boy from the Sea 216971202 'Compulsive reading. Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland’s west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan Bonnar by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts him, Brendan will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.

Ambrose, a man more comfortable at sea than on land, brings Brendan into his home out of love. But it’s a decision that will fracture his family and force him to try to understand himself and those he cares for.

Bookended by the arrival and departure of a single mesmerizing boy, Garrett Carr's The Boy From the Sea is an exploration of the ties that make us and bind us, as a family and community move irresistibly towards the future.]]> 336 Garrett Carr 0593802888 Arian 0 to-read 4.02 2025 The Boy from the Sea
author: Garrett Carr
name: Arian
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who..., #1)]]> 56755560 The Cat Who Saved Books is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others � and the tremendous power of books.

Grandpa used to say it all the time: 'books have tremendous power'. But what is that power really?

Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse.

After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone . . .

Sosuke Natsukawa's international bestseller, translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper.]]> 198 Sōsuke Natsukawa 0063095726 Arian 0 to-read 3.74 2017 The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who..., #1)
author: Sōsuke Natsukawa
name: Arian
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> Winter Garden 39318083
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard: the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time - and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN13 9780312663155 here.]]> 448 Kristin Hannah 0312663153 Arian 0 to-read 4.33 2010 Winter Garden
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Arian
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Something in the Woods Loves You]]> 204593663 An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature’s crucial role in our emotional and mental health. Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps.When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The Cryptonaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature.Something in the Woods Loves Youtells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of a single mushroom, Anderson has written a lyrical love letter to the natural world and given us the tools to see it all anew.]]> 368 Jarod K. Anderson 1643262297 Arian 0 to-read 4.34 2024 Something in the Woods Loves You
author: Jarod K. Anderson
name: Arian
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> The Lantern of Lost Memories 216310698 One photograph, one treasured memory, one chance to go back . . .

In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task.

There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world.

But, like our most thumbed-over photographs, our favourite memories become faded with age, so each visitor to the studio has the chance to choose one day to return to and photograph afresh. Each has a treasured story to tell, from the old woman rebuilding a community in Tokyo after a disaster, to the flawed Yakuza man who remembers a time when he was kind, and a strong child who is fighting to survive.

Extraordinarily moving and wise, The Lantern of Lost Memories is a beautiful Japanese tale about the people that make us and the moments that change us.]]> 208 Sanaka Hiiragi 1035023644 Arian 4 3.75 stars � 4.16 2019 The Lantern of Lost Memories
author: Sanaka Hiiragi
name: Arian
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
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3.75 stars �
]]> Love and Other Poems 51009761 Love and Other Poems, is full of praise for the world we live in. Taking time, and specifically the months of the year as an overarching structure, Dimitrov elevates the every day and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, NASA’s golden record to the Ouija board, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.� While he navigates darkness and fear, loneliness and guilt, Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy even in despair. There is a determined curiosity about who we are as people and a shameless interest in the idea of hope. These poems are obsessed with everything around us, even the terrible and fraught.]]> 116 Alex Dimitrov 1556595999 Arian 0 to-read 4.09 2021 Love and Other Poems
author: Alex Dimitrov
name: Arian
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> A Room of One’s Own 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf Arian 4 4.21 1929 A Room of One’s Own
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Arian
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Monet: Or the Triumph of Impressionism]]> 2202869 The definitive Monet biography by Daniel Wildenstein, a leading authority on Impressionist painting and author of the catalogue raisonné of Monet's works, is lavishly illustrated with 572 reproductions and complementary photographic documents. A visual representation of an extraordinary artistic career, that simultaenously brings to life the spirit of a whole era.

The author: Daniel Wildenstein (1917-2001) was an art historian and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Paris). From 1939 onwards, he was Director of the Wildenstein Galleries of New York, London, and Tokyo. He edited several international journals, e.g. the magazine Arts from 1956-1962 and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts after 1963. He co-founded the Fondation Wildenstein in 1970 (it was renamed the Wildenstein Institute in 1984), and was a prime mover in many exhibitions of international repute. Daniel Wildenstein also edited the catalogues raisonnés of various 18th, 19th, and 20th century artists. He was a world authority on Impressionism, and published catalogues of the works of Gauguin, Manet, and Monet.

]]> 480 Daniel Wildenstein 0681567945 Arian 0 to-read 4.40 1996 Monet: Or the Triumph of Impressionism
author: Daniel Wildenstein
name: Arian
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> Requiem for a Dream 46945
Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.

"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review]]> 279 Hubert Selby Jr. 1560252480 Arian 0 to-read 4.11 1978 Requiem for a Dream
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Arian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> Room to Dream 35224286 Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced - sometimes successful, sometimes not - to bring his projects to fruition.

Part-memoir, part-biography, Room to Dream interweaves Lynch's own reflections on his life with the story of those times, as told by Kristine McKenna, drawing from extensive and explosive interviews with ninety of Lynch's friends, family members, actors, agents, musicians and collaborators. Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.]]> 496 David Lynch 1782118381 Arian 0 to-read 4.37 2018 Room to Dream
author: David Lynch
name: Arian
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
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]]> The Great Alone 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Arian 4 4.44 2018 The Great Alone
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Arian
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 Arian 0 favorites 4.21 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Arian
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> The Hymn to Dionysus 211004841 A timely and timeless reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra.

Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he’s never seen and to follow his commander’s orders at all costs. But when he rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes’s palace, his commander’s orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby’s existence a secret.

Years later, after a strange encounter that led to the death of his battalion, Phaidros has become a training master for young soldiers. He struggles with panic attacks and flashbacks, and he is not the only one: all around him, his fellow veterans are losing their minds.

Phaidros’s risk of madness is not his only problem: his life has become entangled with Thebes’s young crown prince, who wishes to escape the marriage his mother, the Queen, has chosen for him. When the prince vanishes, Phaidros is drawn into the search for him—a search that leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus’s company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired by Zeus but lost in a fire.

In The Hymn to Dionysus, bestselling author Natasha Pulley transports us to an ancient empire on the edge of ruin to tell an utterly captivating story about a man needing a god to remind him how to be a human.]]> 416 Natasha Pulley 1639732365 Arian 0 to-read 4.19 2025 The Hymn to Dionysus
author: Natasha Pulley
name: Arian
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/07
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]]> Cold Nights of Childhood 61157636 Cold Nights of Childhood grows up in a rapidly changing Turkey, where the atmosphere is nationalist, patriarchal, technocratic. As a misfit in search of freedom, love and happiness, she escapes to Berlin, is overcome by depression on her return, and trapped in a psychiatry clinic for five years. After electroshock therapy and inhumane treatment, she is released into the care of friends and family, making tentative steps in a halting journey towards recovery.

In her unique, unstructured style, Tezer Özlü explores the extremity of her inner life and the painful pleasures of memory. Translated into English for the first time by Maureen Freely, this novel is a classic akin to The Bell Jar and Good Morning, Midnight.]]> 96 Tezer Ozlu 1788168712 Arian 0 to-read 3.70 1980 Cold Nights of Childhood
author: Tezer Ozlu
name: Arian
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays]]> 51210 A Streetcar Named Desire fading southern belle Blanche Dubois finds her romantic illusions brutally shattered; The Glass Menagerie portrays an introverted girl trapped in a fantasy world; and Sweet Bird of Youth shows how we are unable to escape ‘the enemy, time�.]]> 313 Tennessee Williams 0141182563 Arian 4 4.11 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Arian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1947
rating: 4
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]]> Breakfast at Tiffany's 22925739 Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's most beloved work of fiction, introduced an independent and complex character who challenged audiences, revived Audrey Hepburn's flagging career in the 1961 film version, and whose name and style has remained in the national idiom since publication. Hall uses his diligent attention to character to bring our unnamed narrator’s emotional vulnerability to the forefront of this American classic.]]> 3 Truman Capote Arian 0 to-read 3.76 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's
author: Truman Capote
name: Arian
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho]]> 150253 416 Sappho 1844080811 Arian 0 to-read 4.44 -550 If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
author: Sappho
name: Arian
average rating: 4.44
book published: -550
rating: 0
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]]> A Thousand Mornings: Poems 13588404 A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments.

Our most precious chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet. With startling clarity, humor, and kindness, AThousand Mornings explores the mysteries of our daily experience.]]> 82 Mary Oliver 1594204772 Arian 0 to-read 4.20 2012 A Thousand Mornings: Poems
author: Mary Oliver
name: Arian
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
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]]> Felicity 24611522 Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, celebrates love in her new collection of poems

“If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger,� Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in her stunning new collection, Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver’s love poems. Here, great happiness abounds.

Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these poems, she describes—with joy—the strangeness and wonder of human connection.

As in Blue Horses, Dog Songs, and A Thousand Mornings, with Felicity Oliver honors love, life, and beauty.]]> 85 Mary Oliver 1594206767 Arian 0 to-read 4.28 2015 Felicity
author: Mary Oliver
name: Arian
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> The Magic Mountain 88077
The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.]]> 706 Thomas Mann Arian 0 to-read 4.12 1924 The Magic Mountain
author: Thomas Mann
name: Arian
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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]]> Death in Venice 53061
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."]]> 142 Thomas Mann 0060576170 Arian 4 3.77 1911 Death in Venice
author: Thomas Mann
name: Arian
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1911
rating: 4
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]]> Photograph 51 14361276
Also includes and interview with Dr Pamela Bj rkman, the Max Delbruck Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:

Miriam Margolyes as Rosalind

Matthew Arkin as Caspar

Maxwell Caulfield as Wilkins

Jon Matthews as Watson

Darren Richardson as Gosling

Nick Toren as Crick

Directed by Michael Hackett. Recorded at the Invisible Studios, West Hollywood.]]> 0 Anna Ziegler 1580818528 Arian 0 to-read 3.60 2011 Photograph 51
author: Anna Ziegler
name: Arian
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 166261463
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late...

Shelby Van Pelt's wry and warm novel is a reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 1526649675 Arian 0 to-read 4.07 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Arian
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Abroad in Japan: Ten Years In The Land Of The Rising Sun]]> 64645770
Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures.

Spanning ten years and all forty-seven prefectures, Chris takes us from the lush rice fields of the countryside to the frenetic neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a terrifying North Korean missile incident, a mortifying experience at a love hotel and a week spent with Japan's biggest movie star, Abroad in Japan is an extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the Rising Sun.]]> 320 Chris Broad 1787637077 Arian 4 4.11 2023 Abroad in Japan: Ten Years In The Land Of The Rising Sun
author: Chris Broad
name: Arian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> The Collected Poems 2078076 384 Sylvia Plath Arian 0 to-read 4.45 1981 The Collected Poems
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Arian
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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]]> Ariel 395090 Sylvia Plath's celebrated collection.

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. Her husband, Ted Hughes, brought the collection to life in 1966, and its publication garnered worldwide acclaim. This collection showcases the beloved poet’s brilliant, provoking, and always moving poems, including "Ariel" and once again shows why readers have fallen in love with her work throughout the generations.]]> 128 Sylvia Plath 0060931728 Arian 0 to-read 4.22 1965 Ariel
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Arian
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson]]> 112204 THE ONLY ONE-VOLUME EDITION CONTAINING ALL 1,775 OF EMILY DICKINSON’S POEMS

Only eleven of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally “edited� versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.

This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.]]> 716 Emily Dickinson Arian 5 And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,�
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!"]]> 4.28 1890 The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
author: Emily Dickinson
name: Arian
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1890
rating: 5
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"If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,�
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!"
]]> The Garden of Words 20890583 190 Midori Motohashi 1939130832 Arian 3 3.74 2013 The Garden of Words
author: Midori Motohashi
name: Arian
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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3.5� Just cuz I loved the animation....
]]> Napoleon: A Life 20821092 The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and theGrand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.]]> 976 Andrew Roberts 0670025321 Arian 0 to-read 4.19 2014 Napoleon: A Life
author: Andrew Roberts
name: Arian
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
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]]> <![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 Arian 0 to-read 4.36 1967 The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)
author: Tove Ditlevsen
name: Arian
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> Pedro Páramo 38787
As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.]]> 124 Juan Rulfo 0802133908 Arian 4 4.06 1955 Pedro Páramo
author: Juan Rulfo
name: Arian
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1955
rating: 4
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]]> The Lamb 216867498
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 336 Lucy Rose 1399619713 Arian 0 to-read 3.94 2025 The Lamb
author: Lucy Rose
name: Arian
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/02
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]]> <![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 Arian 0 to-read 4.48 2022 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
author: Zoulfa Katouh
name: Arian
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry]]> 23604559 A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.]]> 372 Fredrik Backman 1501115065 Arian 0 to-read 4.04 2013 My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Arian
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> The Silmarillion 7332 386 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618391118 Arian 0 to-read 3.99 1977 The Silmarillion
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Arian
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Arian 4 currently-reading 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Arian
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)]]> 52381770
It worries about the fragile human crew who've grown to trust it, but only where no one can see.

It tells itself that they're only a professional obligation, but when they're captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

]]> 350 Martha Wells 1250229863 Arian 0 to-read 4.44 2020 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
author: Martha Wells
name: Arian
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> Seed 16060814
When Jack, his wife Aimee, and their two small children survive a violent car crash, it seems like a miracle. But Jack knows what he saw on the road that night, and it wasn’t divine intervention. The profound evil from his past won’t let them die…at least not quickly. It’s back, and it’s hungry; ready to make Jack pay for running, to work its malignant magic on his angelic youngest daughter, and to whisper a chilling promise: I’ve always been here, and I’ll never leave.

Country comfort is no match for spine-tingling Southern gothic suspense in Ania Ahlborn’s tale of an ordinary man with a demon on his back. Seed plants its page-turning terror deep in your soul, and lets it grow wild.]]> 246 Ania Ahlborn 1612187684 Arian 0 to-read 3.87 2011 Seed
author: Ania Ahlborn
name: Arian
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Arian 0 to-read 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Arian
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> The Ice Palace 138110 176 Tarjei Vesaas 0720611229 Arian 0 to-read 3.89 1963 The Ice Palace
author: Tarjei Vesaas
name: Arian
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[A Night to Remember (The Titanic Chronicles, #1)]]> 44107395
On April 15th, 1912, Titanic, the world's largest passenger ship, sank after colliding with an iceberg, claiming more than 1,500 lives. Walter Lord's classic bestselling history of the voyage, the wreck and the aftermath is a tour de force of detailed investigation and the upstairs/downstairs divide. "A Night to Remember" provides a vivid, gripping and deeply personal account of the 'unsinkable' Titanic's descent.

It comes with a new foreword by Julian Fellowes and the cover is annotated 'The Classic Bestselling Account of the Sinking of the Titanic'.]]> 209 Walter Lord Arian 0 to-read 4.24 1955 A Night to Remember (The Titanic Chronicles, #1)
author: Walter Lord
name: Arian
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the ”Unsinkable� Ship � TITANIC!]]> 419476 Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on the night of April 14, 1912, carrying more than 1500 souls—and uncountable secrets—to the icy bottom of the mid-Atlantic. Why did the crew steam full speed ahead into dangerous waters despite six wireless warnings? How able was the doomed behemoths superb seaman Captain Smith? Why did the nearby ship Californian ignore Titanic's distress signals? How could such a disaster ever have occurred?

Author Walter Lord's acclaimed classic A Night to Remember is considered the definitive written work on the Titanic tragedy. And now he returns to the scene of chaos and horror to explore—and answer—the untold mysteries behind the twentieth century's greatest catastrophe at sea.]]> 244 Walter Lord 0380732033 Arian 0 to-read 4.08 1986 The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the ”Unsinkable” Ship — TITANIC!
author: Walter Lord
name: Arian
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror]]> 51497 'He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp... his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter'

Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with 'damnable young man' Edward hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil. The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic tradition: 'Olalla', a tale of vampirism and tainted family blood, and 'The Body Snatcher', a gruesome fictionalization of the exploits of the notorious Burke and Hare.

This edition contains a critical introduction by Robert Mighall, which discusses class, criminality and the significance of the story's London setting. It also includes an essay on the scientific contexts of the novel and the development of the idea of the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality.]]> 224 Robert Louis Stevenson 0141439734 Arian 4 3.92 1886 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
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average rating: 3.92
book published: 1886
rating: 4
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]]> Selected Poems 119239 864 Lord Byron 0140424504 Arian 4 In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—�
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me�
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well�
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met�
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?�
With silence and tears."]]> 4.07 1848 Selected Poems
author: Lord Byron
name: Arian
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1848
rating: 4
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"When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—�
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me�
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well�
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met�
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?�
With silence and tears."
]]> Upstream: Selected Essays 29358559 Upstream finds beloved poet Mary Oliver reflecting on her astonishment and admiration for the natural world and the craft of writing.

As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world.

This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.]]> 178 Mary Oliver 1594206708 Arian 4 4.17 2016 Upstream: Selected Essays
author: Mary Oliver
name: Arian
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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Incredibly beautiful! 4.5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
]]> <![CDATA[You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World]]> 192723639 176 Ada Limon 1571315683 Arian 0 to-read 4.03 2024 You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
author: Ada Limon
name: Arian
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> American Psycho 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Arian 0 to-read 3.82 1991 American Psycho
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Arian
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Arian 0 to-read 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Arian
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Arian 0 to-read 3.94 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: Arian
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Exorcist (The Exorcist, #1)]]> 179780 385 William Peter Blatty Arian 0 to-read 4.20 1971 The Exorcist (The Exorcist, #1)
author: William Peter Blatty
name: Arian
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1)]]> 35074096
This stunning book features classical artwork inspired by the myths, as well as learned notes from the author. Each adventure is infused with Fry's distinctive wit, voice, and writing style. Connoisseurs of the Greek myths will appreciate this fresh-yet-reverential interpretation, while newcomers will feel welcome. Retellings brim with humor and emotion and offer rich cultural context

Celebrating the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths, Mythos breathes life into ancient tales—from Pandora's box to Prometheus's fire.

This gorgeous volume invites you to explore a captivating world with the brilliant storyteller Stephen Fry as your guide.]]> 416 Stephen Fry 0718188721 Arian 0 to-read 4.27 2017 Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1)
author: Stephen Fry
name: Arian
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> A Hero of Our Time 226378 A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and '30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories and passion of Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.]]> 185 Mikhail Lermontov 014044176X Arian 0 to-read 4.12 1839 A Hero of Our Time
author: Mikhail Lermontov
name: Arian
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1839
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)]]> 58613224
Series Information: Eleven-year-old Harry Potter is an orphan living with his cruel aunt and uncle when he makes a discovery that will change his life forever: he is a wizard. He is whisked away to the mystical Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn magical skills, from potions to spells to flying on broomsticks. But an evil power is rising, the same one that threatened to destroy the entire world when Harry was only a baby. As Harry learns the truth about his family, his childhood, and his mysterious lightning-bolt-shaped scar, he finds unforgettable friendship, a loving surrogate family, and the courage to face the darkest force ever to menace the wizarding world. These charming and engrossing books bring an intensely detailed and captivating world to life and are perfect for enjoying individually or reading aloud.]]> 784 J.K. Rowling 0545010225 Arian 0 favorites 4.63 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 58613345
As in all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate, and lose a few eyebrows in the process. The Weasley twins expand their business. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, though Harry receives some extraordinary help from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.

So it's the home front that takes center stage in the multilayered sixth installment of the story of Harry Potter. Harry struggles to uncover the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, the past owner of a potions textbook he now possesses that is filled with ingenious, potentially deadly, spells. But Harry's life is suddenly changed forever when someone close to him is heinously murdered right before his eyes.

With Dumbledore's guidance, he seeks out the full, complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort, and thereby attempts to find what may be his only vulnerability.]]> 672 J.K. Rowling Arian 5 favorites 4.58 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]> 912 J.K. Rowling Arian 5 favorites 4.50 2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)]]> 58613424 752 J.K. Rowling Arian 0 favorites 4.56 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Arian 0 favorites 4.57 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling Arian 5 favorites 4.42 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1)]]> 42844155 An alternative cover for this ASIN can be found here

"Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter 'H'."

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!]]> 333 J.K. Rowling Arian 5 favorites 4.47 1997 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Arian
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 Arian 0 to-read 4.18 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Arian
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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review:

]]> Jaws (Jaws, #1) 126232 368 Peter Benchley Arian 0 to-read 3.97 1974 Jaws (Jaws, #1)
author: Peter Benchley
name: Arian
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Arian 0 to-read 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Arian
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/13
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]]> The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills � and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit � he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Arian 5 4.41 2011 The Martian
author: Andy Weir
name: Arian
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Arian 5 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Arian
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster]]> 40538681
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]> 538 Adam Higginbotham 1501134612 Arian 0 to-read 4.35 2019 Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Arian
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom]]> 6596 The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.]]> 152 Miguel Ruiz 1878424505 Arian 0 to-read 4.20 1997 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
author: Miguel Ruiz
name: Arian
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
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]]> The Painted Veil 99664 The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 246 W. Somerset Maugham 0307277771 Arian 5 3.95 1925 The Painted Veil
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Arian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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]]> আলোর গন্ধ 17672828 470 Smaranjit Chakraborty 9350402785 Arian 0 4.04 আলোর গন্ধ
author: Smaranjit Chakraborty
name: Arian
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Arian 0 to-read 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Arian
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2)]]> 205063868 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them...

Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers� most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives� untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.

From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect�

A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.]]> 214 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717805 Arian 0 to-read 3.86 2014 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Arian
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Poem for Every Day of the Year]]> 35659678
Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it is bursting at the seams with familiar favourites and exciting new discoveries. T.S.Eliot, John Betjeman, Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, and Kate Tempest.This soul-enhancing book will keep you company for every day of your life."]]> 576 Allie Esiri 1509860541 Arian 0 to-read 4.03 A Poem for Every Day of the Year
author: Allie Esiri
name: Arian
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
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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 Arian 0 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Arian
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Just Kids 206318521 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 262 Patti Smith 006621131X Arian 0 to-read 4.27 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: Arian
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

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

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

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

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Arian 4 3.67 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Arian
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> The Midnight Library 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559477 Arian 4 3.96 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Arian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Arian 0 to-read 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Arian
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> Normal People 41086877 Librarian note: See an alternate cover edition here.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation � awkward but electrifying � something life-changing begins.

Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can’t.]]> 266 Sally Rooney Arian 3 3.84 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Arian
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing]]> 59641216
So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell—and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it—Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening—as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.]]> 250 Matthew Perry 1250866448 Arian 0 to-read 3.89 2022 Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
author: Matthew Perry
name: Arian
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Tales from the Café (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #2)]]> 54373691 In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time...

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer.

Among some faces that will be familiar to readers of Kawaguchi's previous novel, we will be introduced to:

The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
The son who was unable to attend his own mother’s funeral
The man who travelled to see the girl who he could not marry
The old detective who never gave his wife that gift...

This beautiful, simple tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?]]> 192 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529050863 Arian 4 3.98 2017 Tales from the Café (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #2)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Arian
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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]]> Norse Mythology 37903770 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780393356182

Neil Gaiman, long inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction, presents a bravura rendition of the Norse gods and their world from their origin though their upheaval in Ragnarok.

In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin’s son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki—son of a giant—blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.

Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Through Gaiman’s deft and witty prose, these gods emerge with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again.]]> 301 Neil Gaiman Arian 4 4.11 2017 Norse Mythology
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Arian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Arian 0 to-read 3.73 2023 The City and Its Uncertain Walls
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Arian
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> How Do You Live? 54110592 Anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite childhood book, in English for the first time.

First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in Japan as a crossover classic for young readers. Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle) has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of a final film.

How Do You Live? is narrated in two voices. The first belongs to Copper, fifteen, who after the death of his father must confront inevitable and enormous change, including his own betrayal of his best friend. In between episodes of Copper’s emerging story, his uncle writes to him in a journal, sharing knowledge and offering advice on life’s big questions as Copper begins to encounter them. Over the course of the story, Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, looks to the stars, and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth, and human nature to answer the question of how he will live.

This first-ever English-language translation of a Japanese classic about finding one’s place in a world both infinitely large and unimaginably small is perfect for readers of philosophical fiction like The Alchemist and The Little Prince, as well as Miyazaki fans eager to understand one of his most important influences.]]> 288 Genzaburo Yoshino 1616209771 Arian 0 to-read 4.00 1937 How Do You Live?
author: Genzaburo Yoshino
name: Arian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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]]> The Girl Who Drank the Moon 28110852
One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, ayoung man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known.]]> 388 Kelly Barnhill 1616205679 Arian 0 to-read 4.11 2016 The Girl Who Drank the Moon
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: Arian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> The Lost Bookshop 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

‘The thing about books,� she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.�

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found�

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder� where nothing is as it seems.]]> 432 Evie Woods 0008609209 Arian 0 to-read 4.04 2023 The Lost Bookshop
author: Evie Woods
name: Arian
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> Children of Dune (Dune #3) 44492286
The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, disappeared in the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities--making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of House Atreides.

Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia's rule is not absolute. The displaced House Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins' prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty.

But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions--and their destinies....

Includes an introduction by Brian Herbert]]> 609 Frank Herbert 0593098242 Arian 4 3.96 1976 Children of Dune (Dune #3)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Arian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1976
rating: 4
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]]> If It Bleeds 46015758 If it Bleeds is a collection of four new novellas �Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds� each pulling readers into intriguing and frightening places.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider.

News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.

Dancing alongside are three more long stories - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat' .

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.]]> 438 Stephen King Arian 0 to-read 3.99 2020 If It Bleeds
author: Stephen King
name: Arian
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Arian 5 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Arian
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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