Zeke's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 24 Apr 2025 21:44:53 -0700 60 Zeke's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Matilda 39988 ¡°The Trunchbull¡± is no match for Matilda!

Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world...

For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Miss ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will, and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter-pilot, chocolate historian, and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World's No. 1 Storyteller.]]> 240 Roald Dahl 043512398X Zeke 4 2025 4.33 1988 Matilda
author: Roald Dahl
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: 2025
review:
What a strange premise that is at turns delightful and funny but also heartbreaking. Guess that¡¯s probably every Roald Dahl book?
]]> Faith, Hope and Carnage 59851730
Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Se¨¢n O¡¯Hagan, this is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave¡¯s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.

The book examines questions of belief, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave¡¯s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.

Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true visionary.]]> 294 Nick Cave 0374607370 Zeke 3 2025 4.41 2022 Faith, Hope and Carnage
author: Nick Cave
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God's Presence]]> 216388897 A biblical response to living in a platform society.

A mentality, a way of approaching life, which promises to reinforce our uniqueness, deliver on our desires, and offer validation and visibility.

A platform society emphasizes individualism and performance. It¡¯s rooted in the belief that self and personal desires are preeminent. In Platforms to Pillars, cultural expert Mark Sayers explores how platform mentality is misshaping our contemporary world and contrasts this to the biblical call of Christians to live as pillars.

By looking at the ancient world¡ªa world remarkably similar to our own¡ªSayers explores the flaws of a platform society. Sayers takes a deep dive into the influence and allure of digital platforms on individuals and society, and he invites readers to envision a legacy that lives beyond themselves. Like columns in buildings, human pillars provide support and strength. They work together to create space for others, partnering with God as He advances His kingdom in the world. Human pillars fortify and protect community through virtue and character and pass these values to others.

Sayers shows us how to delight in God¡¯s presence, enjoying the freedom that flows from belonging to Him. A much-needed corrective, Platforms to Pillars models a biblical and better way for Christians to live.]]> 240 Mark Sayers 080243472X Zeke 0 to-read 4.36 Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God's Presence
author: Mark Sayers
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy]]> 42973186 This thrilling critique of the forces vying for our attention re-defines what we think of as productivity, shows us a new way to connect with our environment, and reveals all that we've been too distracted to see about our selves and our world.

When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as . . . doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.]]> 225 Jenny Odell 1612197507 Zeke 0 currently-reading 3.64 2019 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
author: Jenny Odell
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 53108625 Alternate cover edition can be found here

The international bestseller, reissued with a striking new illustrated cover. Part of The Bloomsbury Phantastic series - three books tracing the tradition of fantasy from Edgar Allan Poe to Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke. Susanna Clarke¡¯s novel is an epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who emerge to change its history.

In the year 1806, in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England -- until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers and becomes a celebrity overnight. Another practising magician emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell¡¯s pupil and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic and soon he risks sacrificing not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything else he holds dear.]]> 865 Susanna Clarke Zeke 0 currently-reading 4.06 2004 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1) 62030429 Now experience where the hit movie from Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho, starring Robert Pattinson, started in Mickey7 (the inspiration for the film Mickey 17).

Dying isn¡¯t any fun¡­but at least it¡¯s a living.

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there¡¯s a mission that¡¯s too dangerous¡ªeven suicidal¡ªthe crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal¡­and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7¡¯s fate has been sealed. There¡¯s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.

Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.

That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.]]> 369 Edward Ashton 3641280540 Zeke 0 to-read 3.71 2022 Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1)
author: Edward Ashton
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting]]> 214458226 From the most visible woman writing about weightlifting today, a memoir and manifesto about how lifting helped dissolve her allegiance to diet culture; taught her to be at home in her body; and led her to grow every kind of strength.

In?A Physical Education,?Casey Johnston recounts how she ventured into the brave new world of weightlifting, leaving behind years of?restrictive eating and endless cardio.?Woven through the trajectory of how she rebuilt her strength and confidence is a staggering expos¨¦ of the damaging doctrine spread by diet and fitness culture.?

Johnston's story dives deep into her own past relationships with calorie restriction, cardio, and codependency. As she progresses on her weightlifting journey, carrying groceries and closing heavy doors become easier. She eats to fuel her growing strength, and her cravings vanish. Her physical progress fuels a growing how mainstream messaging she received about women¡¯s bodies was always less about transformation and more about preserving the status quo. Having previously been convinced that physical improvement was a matter of suffering, now she learns it requires self-regard, and patience. Ultimately, she is dazzled by what a little pushing at a time adds up the reawakening of parts of herself she didn¡¯t even know were there.

A Physical Education asks why so many of us spend our lives trying to ¡°get healthy¡± by actively making our bodies weaker. Casey Johnston is a voice for those of us who feel underdeveloped and unfulfilled in our bodies, for all of us looking to come home to ourselves.?]]> 272 Casey Johnston 1538773252 Zeke 0 to-read 4.37 2025 A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting
author: Casey Johnston
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family¡ªbut especially love¡ªfrom the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude¡ªa period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Zeke 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Theo of Golden 196693307 Who is he, and why is he here?
He arrives early one spring and by chance - or is it? - he visits a coffee shop where 92 framed pencil portraits are on display. Inspired, Theo sets out on a mission of purchasing all the portraits one at a time and quietly bestowing them on their 'rightful owners.'
Stories are told; friendships are born; and lives are changed.
Theo of Golden is a beautifully crafted story about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the far-reaching possibilities of anonymous kindness.]]> 399 Allen Levi Zeke 0 to-read 4.65 Theo of Golden
author: Allen Levi
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.65
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Zeke 0 currently-reading 4.13 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Mercy 3009435 This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.]]> 167 Toni Morrison 0307264238 Zeke 0 to-read 3.76 2008 A Mercy
author: Toni Morrison
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Piranesi 52702097
There is one other person in the house¡ªa man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 246 Susanna Clarke Zeke 5 2025 4.24 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2025
review:
Had some initial hesitation when I started reading because the story unfolds rather slowly, but absolutely crackles with electricity through the second 2/3rds of the novel. Can¡¯t say I¡¯ve read anything quite like it - a mystery unfolding from the inside and still woven with warmth and heartache. And that¡¯s putting aside the Manchester references (Whalley Range! Town Hall!) that were so delightful because I could conjure up my own images from having lived there. I¡¯m in awe of the construction and execution of this little story.
]]> Deacon King Kong 51045613 The funny, sharp, and surprising story of the shooting of a Brooklyn drug dealer and the people who witnessed it¡ªfrom James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known in the neighborhood as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Causeway Housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local NYPD cops assigned to investigate what happened, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters¡ªcaught in the tumultuous swirl of New York in the late 1960s¡ªoverlap in unexpected ways. When the truth finally emerges, McBride shows us that not all secrets can be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in compassion and hope.]]> 370 James McBride 073521672X Zeke 0 to-read 4.11 2020 Deacon King Kong
author: James McBride
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Nickel Boys 42270835 Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead Zeke 4 2025 4.25 2019 The Nickel Boys
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: 2025
review:
I love Whitehead¡¯s ability to give such a strong sense of interior richness to all of his characters without needing to use overly flowery language or stretch passages (the book is only 200 pages). There is incredible depth and realness to the world created here, probably because it hews so closely to real life events and whitehead even mentions in the acknowledgements several times where lines were taken directly from boys who lived through these experiences. Deeply heartbreaking, I dreamed about the book last night and woke up almost tearing up.
]]> <![CDATA[Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect]]> 60018618
Essential lessons in hospitality for every business, from the former co-owner of legendary restaurant Eleven Madison Park.

Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.
?
How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room¡ªand memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality. Guidara¡¯s team surprised a family who had never seen snow with a magical sledding trip to Central Park after their dinner; they filled a private dining room with sand, complete with mai-tais and beach chairs, to console a couple with a cancelled vacation. And his hospitality extended beyond those dining at the restaurant to his own team, who learned to deliver praise and criticism with intention; why the answer to some of the most pernicious business dilemmas is to give more¡ªnot less; and the magic that can happen when a busser starts thinking like an owner.
?
Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business¡ªand we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry¡¯s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do¡ªfor ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.]]> 288 Will Guidara 0593418573 Zeke 0 to-read 4.42 Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
author: Will Guidara
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wild Robot (The Wild Robot, #1)]]> 26030734
When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is¡ªbut she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants.

As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home¡ªuntil, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her.

From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide.]]> 282 Peter Brown 0316381993 Zeke 3 2025 4.19 2016 The Wild Robot (The Wild Robot, #1)
author: Peter Brown
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: 2025
review:
Endearing, super quick read that I was surprised was so different from the movie (which was my first exposure to the story) and really just gave me an appreciation for the deft ways the screenwriting team took a pre-teen allegory for ¡°otherness¡± and wove it into the ways that parenthood is a profound process of otherness, too. It¡¯ll be fun for my girls to read but the movie is the work I think will be worth returning to again and again in the future.
]]> <![CDATA[The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle]]> 36337550
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.

We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.

Understood? Then let's begin . . .

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others . . .

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave listeners guessing until the very last second.]]> 432 Stuart Turton Zeke 2 2025 3.78 2018 The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
author: Stuart Turton
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: 2025
review:
One of the more annoying reading experiences I¡¯ve had in some time. Yes there are elements of an Agatha-Christie-esque setup and reveal here but there¡¯s so little actually put into the ¡°why is this happening¡± that there¡¯s no emotional heft to the story. Everything is overwrought and written in a Dan Brown style of describing most simply what is happening. Bleah.
]]> King: A Life 62039291
The first full biography in decades, Eig mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig¡¯s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.¨Dand the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family¡¯s origins as well as MLK¡¯s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father¨Das well as the nation¡¯s most mourned martyr.

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history¡¯s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs]]> 688 Jonathan Eig 0374279292 Zeke 0 to-read 4.65 2023 King: A Life
author: Jonathan Eig
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren¡¯t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They¡¯re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur¡¯s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They¡¯re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin¡¯s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur¡¯s death has revealed Britain¡¯s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur¡¯s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they¡¯ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain¡¯s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Zeke 5 2025 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: 2025
review:
Really enjoyable reimagining of Arthurian legends, full of their own idiosyncratic and contradictory elements. Really grapples with how the stories of Arthur are somehow filled with both Druidic magic and Christian imagery and how those worlds might be intertwined and at war. Some more modern elements that feel the slightest bit shoehorned in at times, but I do love the idea of both telling the stories of Arthur from the perspective of ¡°lesser¡± knights and characters, and also to frame the story as the period immediately after Arthur¡¯s death. I was engrossed pretty much the entire time, this was super fun world building and I¡¯d gladly revisit it again.
]]> <![CDATA[Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times]]> 165053041 'This remarkable book points not to some unreachable ideal of life but to a deeper, more soulful and meaningful experience of the lives we're actually living.'
Oliver Burkeman

'A rich and soul-searching exploration of what it means to believe in a shifting age. This is a rare thing - an open, human and vulnerable profession of faith. I learned a lot. '
Katherine May

'This is deep stuff, personal yet learned, funny and vulnerable ... the book I didn't know I needed.'
Sally Phillips

'Luminous in a manner that a medieval anchorite might have appreciated, while simultaneously wise in the ways of coping with a pram on a crowded bus.'
Tom Holland

'A great gift to all in search of a deeper life.'
Krista Tippett

What does it mean to live a good, whole and fulfilling life? And if the world really is ending, or at least expecting turbulent change, what kind of people will we need when it happens?

In FULLY ALIVE Elizabeth Oldfield explores how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age.
Drawing on the ancient wisdom of faith and stories from her own life, Oldfield writes about her quest to live a meaningful, fulfilling life, and the niggling questions that bother all of us below the surface, such

How can I focus on what really matters and stop getting so distracted by trivialities?
How do I become a depolarising person in a culture of outrage, tribalism, and division?
Can I find my highs in expansive, life-giving ways, rather than in a bottle of wine or a tub of ice cream?
And what kind of world am I leaving for the next generation?

FULLY ALIVE is for readers looking for an honest conversation about the deepest questions in our ordinary lives, and practical, meaningful ideas to help us pay attention to the people we are becoming. For ourselves, our communities and the world.

'When I was writing UNAPOLOGETIC more than a decade ago, I knew the job would soon need doing again. And again. Because the bridge between faith and contemporary experience constantly needs to be rebuilt as times change. So here it is, the bridge for the present moment, across which seekers for more meaning in their lives can travel in the knowledge that they won't be bullied, browbeaten or talked down to. This book. This one. In your hand. Right now.'
Francis Spufford

'Plainspoken, fearless, disarmingly tender. Oldfield is a leader by example, and her book is a glowing argument for faith - one that speaks urgently to our fractured world.'
Rhik Samadder]]> 273 Elizabeth Oldfield 1399810782 Zeke 0 to-read 4.20 Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times
author: Elizabeth Oldfield
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 ¡°Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?¡±

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it¡¯s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband¡¯s emotional health. Their three grown children aren¡¯t doing much better: Nathan¡¯s chronic fear won¡¯t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything¡ªsubstance, foodstuff, women¡ªin order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she¡¯s not a product of her family¡¯s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives¡¯ successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family¡¯s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives¡¯ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Zeke 4 2025 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025
review:
I¡¯m kind of baffled reading some of the overly negative reviews here - isn¡¯t the point of the whole book to paint a vision of people who are largely unlikeable and yet find ways for you to enter into their story with a mix of compassion and disgust? I enjoyed lots of the book (though can¡¯t recommend if you¡¯re squeamish about sex, drug use or language) and think TBA really draws these characters well - satire that doesn¡¯t dip too far into the absurd, these are people that I feel like I¡¯ve met. There¡¯s a lot to chew on here about how money amplifies the worst impulses of all of us, and how unspoken generational trauma will mutate in ways tragic and hilarious. There are individual passages I really, REALLY wish she had left out that seemed bizarre and out of keeping with the book (particularly in how many elements of the final act resolve) that I think would have made it a 5-star for me, but still really sucked me in.
]]> <![CDATA[To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.]]> 36738619
In To Shape a New World , Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King¡¯s ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative¨Dan effort not at radical reform but at ¡°living up to¡± enduring ideals laid down by the nation¡¯s founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King¡¯s writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of ¡°color blindness¡± that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome.

Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King¡¯s understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King¡¯s exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.]]> 464 Tommie Shelby 0674980751 Zeke 0 to-read 4.34 2018 To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
author: Tommie Shelby
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

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

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

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

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Zeke 3 2024, 2025 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: 2024, 2025
review:
Really unique premise that doesn¡¯t quite deliver for me in the end. Funny that the most gripping parts of the book to me were the middle third which is largely comprised of lectures about language and translation, but feels like there¡¯s SO much other translation stuff shoehorned at every opportunity throughout the book. The allegory about empire and colonialism gets especially heavy handed and tedious in the last act of the book and could have used some compressing and more of a ¡°show don¡¯t tell¡± approach to character motivation for me to bump it up more. But the idea alone kept me moving through it and has already had me talking to several other folks about it
]]> The Nix 28251002
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye¡¯s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]> 625 Nathan Hill 110194661X Zeke 5 2025 4.08 2016 The Nix
author: Nathan Hill
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: 2025
review:
Absolutely love Nathan Hill¡¯s unique voice as a writer. There is biting satire, but there is also softness and depth scattered all over both of his books, I have loved my experience reading both this and Wellness, though I think I liked the latter just a little more. He clearly brings everything to a crescendo in the latter quarter of the book and ties things up just a little too nearly in some cases, but the rest is so incredibly skillfully done that I¡¯ll forgive small sections I didn¡¯t enjoy as much. I¡¯m signing up for a lifetime pass of whatever Hill wants to publish!
]]> <![CDATA[The Mini ADHD Coach: How to (finally) Understand Yourself]]> 62897731 204 Alice Gendron 1785044451 Zeke 3 2024 4.31 The Mini ADHD Coach: How to (finally) Understand Yourself
author: Alice Gendron
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: 2024
review:
If you've seen that I start a lot of books and don't finish them, you'll understand why when this was given to someone else in my extended family, I sneakily read it in like 2 sittings while they were occupied. I... may have some more reading to do in this area in the future
]]> Rejection 199635125
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In ¡°The Feminist,¡± a young man¡¯s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn¡¯t getting him laid. A young woman¡¯s unrequited crush in ¡°Pics¡± spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in ¡°Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,¡± a shy late bloomer¡¯s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other¡¯s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337878 Zeke 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Rejection
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience]]> 202102091 For anyone who feels the weight of injustice, trauma, and suffering, the founder of the Jude 3 Project invites you to discover how to find hope when you can¡¯t make sense of the pain.

¡°Lisa Fields brilliantly offers hope for all who seek to practice their faith without the cruel dogma nurtured by Western culture.¡±¡ªOtis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago

Living as a Black woman in America, Lisa Victoria Fields understands the tension of relying on God in a broken world. While pursuing her calling in full-time Christian ministry¡ªan often white, male-dominated vocation¡ªshe saw the contentions many people have with Christianity. She heard the theological questions, but instead of arguing for her faith, she listened to the barriers and heard the pain in their hearts: Why doesn¡¯t God protect me from suffering and injustice? Others don¡¯t seem to think I have value¡ªdoes God?

Now, in her debut book, Fields shows us how emotional pain¡ªoften more than theological concerns¡ªis at the root of our doubt. She invites us to bring our deepest soul questions to this journey as she explores:

? Seven pain points that might be keeping us from faith: a lack of personhood, peace, provision, pleasure, purpose, protection, and power
? Honest talk about how Christianity doesn¡¯t seem to meet our very valid needs
? Why wrestling with God doesn¡¯t negate our faith but instead deepens it
? What it looks like to allow God to bring healing to our pain so we can see Him and others more clearly

Through vulnerable storytelling and thoughtful use of Scripture, Fields tends to our hurting hearts and offers hope and resolve. She helps us move forward as we cling to a faith that brings us back to the truth of Christianity¡ªnot despite the pain of this world but in light of it.]]> 192 Lisa Victoria Fields 0593601181 Zeke 0 to-read 4.19 When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience
author: Lisa Victoria Fields
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating]]> 11419951 264 Norman Wirzba 0521195500 Zeke 0 to-read 4.25 2007 Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
author: Norman Wirzba
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bolivar 34466681
Going extinct isn't for everyone.

Sybil knows that there is something off about her next door neighbor, but she can't seem to get anyone to believe her. Everyone is so busy going about their days in the busy streets of New York City that they don't notice Bolivar. They don't notice his odd height, his tiny arms, or his long tail. No one but Sybil sees that Bolivar is a dinosaur.

When an unlikely parking ticket pulls Bolivar into an adventure from City Hall to New York¡¯s Natural History Museum, he must finally make a choice: continue to live unnoticed, or let the city see who he really is.]]> 224 Sean Rubin 1684150698 Zeke 5 4.28 2017 Bolivar
author: Sean Rubin
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Lifeform 208209822
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal¡ªbut was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal? Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases¡ªSingle, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing¡ªthrough luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.]]> 240 Jenny Slate 0316263931 Zeke 0 to-read 3.72 2024 Lifeform
author: Jenny Slate
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Interior Chinatown 44436221 A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn¡¯t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he¡¯s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He¡¯s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy¡ªthe most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he¡¯s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration¡ªInterior Chinatown is Charles Yu¡¯s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.]]> 288 Charles Yu Zeke 0 to-read 3.95 2020 Interior Chinatown
author: Charles Yu
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Two-Step Devil 197239494
It's 2014 in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, where the Prophet¡ªa 70-year-old man who paints his visions¡ªlives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local dump, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael and the Prophet feels certain that she is his Big Fish, a messenger sent by God to take his apocalyptic warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet¡¯s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past¡ªand perhaps change her future.

Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.]]> 269 Jamie Quatro 0802163130 Zeke 0 to-read 3.76 2024 Two-Step Devil
author: Jamie Quatro
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book¡¯s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the ¡°steampunk¡± city of ¡°old traditions and new machinery,¡± but everywhere he goes he feels as if he¡¯s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates¡¯s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the ¡°racial reckoning¡± of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community¡ªa capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we¡¯ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians¡ªthe old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him¡ªand makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country¡¯s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world¡ªand our own souls¡ªand embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Zeke 0 to-read 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi]]> 204316858 A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long. Wright Thompson¡¯s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.?In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi.?After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved.?In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least nine people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation. Even in the context of the brutal caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till¡¯s mother Mamie Till-Mobley¡¯s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story¡ªthe world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map.?As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power.?It implicates all of us.?In The Barn, Thompson befriends the few people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light, people like Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till¡¯s friend, who came down from Chicago with him that summer, and is the last person alive to know him well.?Wheeler Parker¡¯s journey to put the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a journey we all need to go on if this country is to heal from its oldest, deepest wound.]]> 448 Wright Thompson 0593299825 Zeke 0 to-read 4.37 2024 The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
author: Wright Thompson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture¨Dand the Magic That Makes It Work]]> 65215002
" Comedy Book changes the way we talk about an art form that is more diverse and exciting than ever before.¡± ¨DSeth Meyers "A sharp, loving, well written exploration and analysis of the art form that makes us smile, helps us relate, and is perpetually mysterious." ¨DJenny Slate

From a beloved comedy critic, a wisecracking, heartfelt, and overdue chronicle of comedy¡¯s boom¨Dand its magic.

Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture¨Das trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities¨Dyet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force.

In Comedy Book , Jesse David Fox¨Dthe country¡¯s most definitive voice in comedy criticism and someone who, in his own words, ¡°enjoys comedy maybe more than anyone on this planet"¨Dtackles everything you need to know about comedy. Weaving together history and analysis, Fox unravels the genre¡¯s political legacy through an ode to Jon Stewart, interrogates the divide between highbrow and lowbrow via Adam Sandler, and unpacks how marginalized comics create spaces for their communities. Along the way, Fox covers everything from comedy in the age of political correctness and Will Smith¡¯s slap to the right wing¡¯s relationship with comedy and, for Fox, comedy¡¯s ability to heal personal tragedy.

With memorable cameos from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Ali Wong, Kate Berlant, and countless others, Comedy Book is an eye-opening education in how to engage with our most omnipresent art form, a riotous history of American pop culture, and a love letter to laughter.]]> 368 Jesse David Fox 0374604711 Zeke 3 2024
First half of the book was total catnip, felt more fully formed and I thought some of the points about taking standup more seriously as an art form were pretty salient. Last third of the book felt so pedantic as to nearly make me doze off a few times, and maybe born out of a lot of what was happening during the pandemic - as uneven as it felt I still really enjoyed the read. Maybe more like 3.5 stars? I¡¯d probably still say listen to Jesse¡¯s podcast Good Ones before reading the book to find out if you¡¯re the target audience here.]]> 4.15 2023 Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture¨Dand the Magic That Makes It Work
author: Jesse David Fox
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: 2024
review:
¡°Comedy¡ªbroadly, historically¡ªis the art of taking serious things not seriously. In the classroom of our culture, for a very long time, comedians have been placed in the back, cracking jokes at everything in front of them. Comedians were our society¡¯s ombudsmen, our official bullshit callers. And, as time has gone on, comedians have done such a good job at this that it¡¯s become clearer and clearer that a lot of our assumptions about our society are bullshit.¡±

First half of the book was total catnip, felt more fully formed and I thought some of the points about taking standup more seriously as an art form were pretty salient. Last third of the book felt so pedantic as to nearly make me doze off a few times, and maybe born out of a lot of what was happening during the pandemic - as uneven as it felt I still really enjoyed the read. Maybe more like 3.5 stars? I¡¯d probably still say listen to Jesse¡¯s podcast Good Ones before reading the book to find out if you¡¯re the target audience here.
]]> Chain-Gang All-Stars 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Zeke 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Chain-Gang All-Stars
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Beauty 3679 On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.]]> 445 Zadie Smith 0143037749 Zeke 0 to-read 3.79 2005 On Beauty
author: Zadie Smith
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn¡ªboth harrowing and satirical¡ªtold from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1) 6443834 ¤½¤·¤Æ2009Äê¡¢¡º1²Ï84¡»¤ÏÄæ¤Î·½Ïò¤«¤é1984Äê¤òÃ褤¤¿½ü¹ýȥСÕh¤Ç¤¢¤ë¡£
¤½¤³¤ËÃ褫¤ì¤Æ¤¤¤ë¤Î¤Ï¡¸¤³¤¦¤Ç¤¢¤Ã¤¿¤«¤â¤·¤ì¤Ê¤¤¡¹ÊÀ½ç¤Ê¤Î¤À¡£
˽¤¿¤Á¤¬Éú¤­¤Æ¤¤¤ëÏÖÔÚ¤¬¡¢¡¸¤½¤¦¤Ç¤Ï¤Ê¤«¤Ã¤¿¤«¤â¤·¤ì¤Ê¤¤¡¹ÊÀ½ç¤Ç¤¢¤ë¤Î¤È¡¢¤Á¤ç¤¦¤Éͬ¤¸¤è¤¦¤Ë¡£±Õ±Õ> 554 Haruki Murakami 4103534222 Zeke 0 to-read 4.02 2009 1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.?Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.?]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Zeke 5 2024 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2024
review:
Wow. One of my favorite books I¡¯ve read in years. Tremendously entertaining but woven through with a deep thread of melancholy, it¡¯s satire that feels sharp enough to cut - and there were plenty of parts of the book that cut deep, unfortunately. So much richness in here about the stories we tell ourselves, the ways that all of us are still acting out of our childhood wounds even in our 40s, and even sociologically how we all got to this ontological nightmare of optimization and wellness where it¡¯s hard to determine what¡¯s true and helpful and what is just a result of being taken advantage of by an algorithm. Hill also plays with time in such interesting ways and at multiple points in the book goes backwards to show the story you yourself are absorbing about these characters is flawed. I loved this book!
]]> <![CDATA[Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art]]> 48890486
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.]]> 280 James Nestor 0735213615 Zeke 3 2024 4.13 2020 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
author: James Nestor
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2024
review:
Yet another popular book in this space that feels like the basis for a really fun longform article got stretched into a book by stuffing in one-off anecdotes and references to extraordinary people/circumstances/results as proof of the main thesis, without much in the way of hard data or sourcing to back it up. Broadly, I think it¡¯s interesting and a good reminder to be mindful of the way you breathe. But I¡¯m also skeptical of the presentation as cure-all and feels like there¡¯s a lot of pseudoscience woven into the book.
]]> The Safekeep 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother¡¯s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be¡ªled by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel¡¯s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel¡¯s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn¡¯t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house¡ªa spoon, a knife, a bowl¡ªIsabel¡¯s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel¡¯s paranoia gives way to infatuation¡ªleading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva¡ªnor the house in which they live¡ªare what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won¡¯t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Zeke 0 to-read 4.05 2024 The Safekeep
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls]]> 199929002 A compelling call to embrace the countercultural values of Jesus, which lead to a life of love, peace, and fulfillment, from the bestselling author of The Deeply Formed Life, winner of the Christianity Today Book Award.

¡°In The Narrow Path, Rich unpacks what living our best life truly looks like. This book is a much-needed heart checkup for every Jesus follower.¡±¡ªChristine Caine, founder of A21 and Propel Women

We live in a culture that wants it all. More is seen as better¡ªwhether it¡¯s more money, social media fame, choices, or power. For those chasing this way of life, ¡°narrow¡± seems negative. Who wants to narrow their options . . . or be seen as narrow-minded?

Which is why the most well-known talk in the history of the world¡ªthe Sermon on the Mount¡ªis also the most paradoxical one. In it, Jesus holds up the narrow path as the most spacious . . . and the broader path as the more confining one.

Rich Villodas, bestselling author of The Deeply Formed Life, explores what today¡¯s broad and narrow paths look like so you can discern which one you¡¯re on. The answer may surprise you¡ªand will help you pursue the way of Jesus more deeply when it comes to loving God and others, prayer, sexual desire, conflict, money, anxiety, and more.

The Narrow Path reintroduces the counterintuitive wonder of Jesus¡¯s timeless wisdom for this age, one fraught with anxiety, depression, polarizing politics, and online vitriol. The path of Jesus is most certainly narrow, but it is the only one filled with the ever-expanding life of God . . . and it is available now for all who want it!]]> 225 Rich Villodas 0593444280 Zeke 0 to-read 4.42 The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls
author: Rich Villodas
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.42
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date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> Bird by Bird 12543 A newer edition of this title can be found here.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said. 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"

With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer's life. From "Getting Started,' with "Short Assignments," through "Shitty First Drafts," "Character," "Plot," "Dialogue." all the way from "False Starts" to "How Do You Know When You're Done?" Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses "Writers Block," "Writing Groups," and "Publication." Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.

If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

]]> 238 Anne Lamott Zeke 0 currently-reading 4.24 1994 Bird by Bird
author: Anne Lamott
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Bee Sting 195790771
From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting , an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie¡¯s once-lucrative car business is going under¨Dbut Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he¡¯s on the brink of running away.

If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda¡¯s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?

The Bee Sting , Paul Murray¡¯s exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.]]> 656 Paul Murray 1250338255 Zeke 0 to-read 3.89 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family]]> 194803883 The riveting story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations.

¡°SHED MY DNA¡±: three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they¡¯ve exploded in popularity. What¡¯s often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level¡ªthe family.

In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control. Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty¡ªone to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fianc¨¦, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.

Charting the arc of each believer¡¯s path from their first intersection with conspiracy theories to the depths of their cultish conviction, to¡ªin some cases¡ªtheir rejection of disinformation and the mending of fractured relationships, Cook offers a rare, intimate look into the psychology of how and why ordinary people come to believe the unbelievable. Profound, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, The Quiet Damage lays bare how we have been taken hostage by grifters peddling lies built on false hope¡ªand how we might release our loved ones, and ourselves, from their grasp.]]> 250 Jesselyn Cook 059344325X Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2024 The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
author: Jesselyn Cook
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/19
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review:

]]> Exhalation 55710304 An alternate cover edition for this book can be found here.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE WASHINGTON POST ? TIME MAGAZINE ? NPR ? ESQUIRE ? VOX ? THE A.V. CLUB ? THE GUARDIAN ? FINANCIAL TIMES ? THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AS AN ENORMOUS BREATH BEING HELD."

In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity¡¯s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic¡ªrevelatory.]]> 362 Ted Chiang Zeke 4 2024 4.36 2019 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: 2024
review:
A few gems in here, but also a few that were a real chore to get through, particularly the longest short story in the book which fell totally flat for me. Chiang always brings some unique perspective in his stories and makes the collections worth reading, even if it doesn¡¯t quite reach the highs of Stories of Your Life.
]]> <![CDATA[Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon]]> 207567737 The life and legacy of pioneering international basketball superstar Hakeem Olajuwon, a two?time NBA champion whose Hall of Fame career forever changed the game, both in the United States and around the globe¡ªfrom the New York Times bestselling author of Giannis, Mirin Fader. It¡¯s now the norm for NBA and collegiate teams to have international players dotting their rosters. The Olympics are no longer a gimme for Team USA. Both via fans streaming from all over the globe and leagues starting in countries throughout the world, the international presence of the game of basketball is a force to be reckoned with. That all started with Hakeem ¡°the Dream¡± Olajuwon. ¡°Dream,¡± for short. He was the first international player to win the MVP, which is hard to believe now considering the last time an American?born player won it was four years ago. Award-winning hoops journalist Mirin Fader explores this phenomenal shift through the lens of what Olajuwon accomplished throughout the 1980s and 90s. Dream ignites nostalgia for Phi Slamma Jamma and ¡°the Dream Shake,¡± while also exploring the profound influence of Olajuwon¡¯s Muslim faith on his approach to life and basketball, and how his devotion to his faith inspired generations of Muslim people around the world. Olajuwon¡¯s ongoing work with NBA Africa, his status as an international ambassador for the game, and his consultations with today¡¯s brightest stars, from LeBron James to Giannis Antetokounmpo, brings the story right up to the present moment, and beyond. Synthesizing hundreds of interviews and in-depth research, Fader provides the definitive biography of Olajuwon as well as a crucial understanding of his pivotal impact on the ever-shifting game.]]> 400 Mirin Fader 030683118X Zeke 0 to-read 4.30 Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon
author: Mirin Fader
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock]]> 61358639 How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the ¡°attention economy¡± to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don¡¯t have time to spend?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism.

This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time¡ªinspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales¡ªthat can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.

Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it¡ªthe way we experience time itself¡ªand rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can ¡°save¡± time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.]]> 400 Jenny Odell 059324270X Zeke 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
author: Jenny Odell
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska]]> 61913599
¡°Brilliant reading . . . For fans of American music, Deliver Me from Nowhere makes a great ghost story.¡±¡ª The Boston Globe

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen¡¯s hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen¡¯s most important record¡ªthe lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself.
?
Nebraska is rough and unfinished, recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective of the mood of the country, but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist¡¯s life, the beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after the album¡¯s release.
?
Warren Zanes spoke to many people involved with making Nebraska, including Bruce Springsteen himself. He also interviewed more than a dozen celebrated artists and musical insiders, from Rosanne Cash to Steven Van Zandt, about their reactions to the album. Zanes interweaves these conversations with inquiries into the myriad cultural touchpoints, including Terrence Malick¡¯s Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O¡¯Conner, that influenced Springsteen as he was writing the album¡¯s haunting songs. The result is a textured and revelatory account of not only a crucial moment in the career of an icon but also a record that upended all expectations and predicted a home-recording revolution.]]> 320 Warren Zanes 0593237412 Zeke 0 to-read 4.36 2023 Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
author: Warren Zanes
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment]]> 198394650
The Language Animal , Charles Taylor¡¯s 2016 account of human linguistic capacity, was a revelation, toppling scholarly conventions and illuminating our most fundamental selves. But, as Taylor noted in that work, there was much more to be said. Cosmic Connections continues Taylor¡¯s exploration of Romantic and post-Romantic responses to disenchantment and innovations in language.

Reacting to the fall of cosmic orders that were at once metaphysical and moral, the Romantics used the symbols and music of poetry to recover contact with reality beyond fragmented existence. They sought to overcome disenchantment and groped toward a new meaning of life. Their accomplishments have been extended by post-Romantic generations into the present day. Taylor¡¯s magisterial work takes us from H?lderlin, Novalis, Keats, and Shelley to Hopkins, Rilke, Baudelaire, and Mallarm¨¦, and on to Eliot, Mi?osz, and beyond.

In seeking deeper understanding and a different orientation to life, the language of poetry is not merely a pleasurable presentation of doctrines already elaborated elsewhere. Rather, Taylor insists, poetry persuades us through the experience of connection. The resulting conviction is very different from that gained through the force of argument. By its very nature, poetry¡¯s reasoning will often be incomplete, tentative, and enigmatic. But at the same time, its insight is too moving¨Dtoo obviously true¨Dto be ignored.]]> 640 Charles Margrave Taylor 0674296087 Zeke 0 to-read 4.11 Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment
author: Charles Margrave Taylor
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> <![CDATA[How Magicians Think: Misdirection, Deception, and Why Magic Matters]]> 57818790
This is not a how-to book, nor a how-do-they-do-it expose. Written as a series of short, lively essays, How Magicians Think describes the making of illusions, the psychology behind them, and the characters who create them. He writes about how technology influences the world of magic; the aesthetics of performance; his contemporaries, including David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine; and how magicians hone their craft (Jay spends countless hours in absolute darkness to perfect his sleights of hand). And answers questions like, Can a magic trick be too good? And how do you saw a person in half? (It depends¡­)

Compelling, thoughtful, and written by an insider, How Magicians Think is a rare excursion into a truly secret world.]]> 320 Joshua Jay Zeke 0 to-read 4.09 2020 How Magicians Think: Misdirection, Deception, and Why Magic Matters
author: Joshua Jay
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son]]> 1254588
Sullivan didn't know, not the track had always been a place his father disappeared to once a year on business, a source of souvenir glasses and inscrutable passions in his Kentucky relatives. But in 2000, Sullivan, an editor and essayist for Harper's, decided to educate himself. He spent two years following the horse-both across the country, as he watched one season's juvenile crop prepare for the Triple Crown, and through time, as he tracked the animal's constant evolution in literature and art, from the ponies that appeared on the walls of European caves 30,000 years ago, to the mounts that carried the Indo-European language to the edges of the Old World, to the finely tuned but fragile yearlings that are auctioned off for millions of dollars apiece every spring and fall.

The result is a witty, encyclopedic, and in the end profound meditation on what Edwin Muir called our "long-lost archaic companionship" with the horse. Incorporating elements of memoir and reportage, the Wunderkammer and the picture gallery, Blood Horses lets us see--as we have never seen before--the animal that, more than any other, made us who we are.]]> 272 John Jeremiah Sullivan 0374172811 Zeke 0 to-read 4.10 2004 Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son
author: John Jeremiah Sullivan
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pulphead 10851868 Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us¡ªwith a laidback, erudite Southern charm that¡¯s all his own¡ªhow we really (no, really) live now.

In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV¡¯s Real World, who¡¯ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina¡ªand back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill.

Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we¡¯ve never heard told this way. It¡¯s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we¡¯ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don¡¯t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection¡ªit¡¯s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan¡¯s work.]]> 365 John Jeremiah Sullivan 0374532907 Zeke 0 to-read 4.01 2011 Pulphead
author: John Jeremiah Sullivan
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers Zeke 3 2024 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves: 2024
review:
Quick read, some interesting elements but the world building was kind of inconsistent in a way that took me out of the story a little too much. Probably best as a teen/ya-ish cozypunk recommendation.
]]> <![CDATA[Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking]]> 48983247
What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. But what was meant to be six months in a new and very foreign city turns into a wild five-year digression from normal life, as Buford apprentices at Lyon¡¯s best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school, and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, where he discovers the exacting (and incomprehensibly punishing) rigueur of the professional kitchen.

With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to bring an exotic and unknown world to life, Buford has written the definitive insider story of a city and its great culinary culture.]]> 432 Bill Buford 0307271013 Zeke 4 2024 3.55 2020 Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
author: Bill Buford
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves: 2024
review:
Really enjoyable, especially as someone who loves peeking behind the curtain of elite kitchens. Sometimes the depth of historicity gets to be too much for my interest, and there are people I wish we had spent more time with, but overall I loved being in this world. Highly recommend listening to Buford read it on audiobook.
]]> Enjoying the Bible 54232811
Many Christians view the Bible as an instruction manual. While the Bible does provide instruction, it can also captivate, comfort, delight, shock, and inspire. In short, it elicits emotion--just like poetry. By learning to read and love poetry, says literature professor Matthew Mullins, readers can increase their understanding of the biblical text and learn to love God's Word more. Each chapter includes exercises and questions designed to help readers put the book's principles and practices into action.]]> 224 Matthew Mullins 1540961664 Zeke 0 currently-reading 4.15 Enjoying the Bible
author: Matthew Mullins
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> Julia and the Shark 57951862 The shark was beneath my bed, growing large as the room, large as the lighthouse, rising from unfathomable depths until it ripped the whole island from its roots. The bed was a boat, the shark a tide, and it pulled me so far out to sea I was only a speck, a spot, a mote, a dying star in an unending sky¡­

Julia has followed her mum and dad to live on a remote island for the summer ¨C her dad, for work; her mother, on a determined mission to find the elusive Greenland shark. But when her mother¡¯s obsession threatens to submerge them all, Julia finds herself on an adventure with dark depths and a lighthouse full of hope¡­

A beautiful, lyrical, uplifting story about a mother, a daughter, and love ¨C with timely themes of the importance of science and the environment.]]> 204 Kiran Millwood Hargrave 1510107789 Zeke 0 to-read 4.33 2021 Julia and the Shark
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth¡¯s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Zeke 2 2024 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth¡¯s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves: 2024
review:
Sorry, just not for me. I stuck it out but felt like this suffered from the same problems as lots of other bad sci-fi: a great premise that isn¡¯t executed as well as the promise of its plot. Characters feel very wooden, some even pathological or psychotic in their actions, or just wildly unrealistic - and don¡¯t seem to wrestle with their thoughts or change at all even though the book spans many decades. It gets bogged down in heavy science at the expense of helping you actually connect with any of the protagonists in a meaningful way. It¡¯s like if Ken Follet wrote Pillars of the Earth with all the painstaking detail of building a cathedral but minus any of the character arcs. I know this one is high on some people¡¯s lists, but I will probably just peep the Wikipedia summaries for book 2 and 3 and call it a day.
]]> Erasure 355862 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 280 Percival Everett 0786888156 Zeke 4 2024 4.17 2001 Erasure
author: Percival Everett
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/07
shelves: 2024
review:
Really fascinating to read this after watching American Fiction and being conscious of the changes Cord Jefferson made in the script - probably should have read it first so that wasn¡¯t running through my head the whole time, but I think this may be a rare case where I liked the movie more than the book. The premise is obviously hilariously dark satire, but the book is pretty acerbic and tragic throughout - the predominant flavor is bitter, where the movie sometimes substitutes notes of sweetness (it¡¯s all relative, since it¡¯s certainly not saccharine, but treats all the characters with a wholeness that the book tends to keep at a distance - the novel is Monk as the invisible man, increasingly alienated from people around him even as his acclaim rises). It¡¯s definitely memorable and I don¡¯t think I would have picked it up but for the movie - so thank you Cord Jefferson!
]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech¡ªand a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

¡°With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.¡± ¡ªShannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the ¡°play-based childhood¡± began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the ¡°phone-based childhood¡± in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this ¡°great rewiring of childhood¡± has interfered with children¡¯s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the ¡°collective action problems¡± that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes¡ªcommunities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children¡ªand ourselves¡ªfrom the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Zeke 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension]]> 181346634
There¡¯s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus¡ªwhether it's basketball, or music, or performance¡ªHanif Abdurraqib¡¯s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.]]> 334 Hanif Abdurraqib 0593448790 Zeke 0 to-read 4.32 2024 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Cheerfully Refuse 198331551 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy¡¯s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 322 Leif Enger 0802162959 Zeke 0 to-read 4.19 2024 I Cheerfully Refuse
author: Leif Enger
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany]]> 139220
In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo¡¯s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.

Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy¡¯s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England¡¯s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford¡¯s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman¡¯s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.

Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford¡¯s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali¡¯s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters.

It is a book to delight in¡ªand to savor.]]> 336 Bill Buford 1400041201 Zeke 0 to-read 3.90 2006 Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
author: Bill Buford
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt]]> 180352109 256 Charlie Peacock 140033764X Zeke 0 to-read 4.07 Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt
author: Charlie Peacock
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen]]> 112974860 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ? A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives¡ªfrom the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

As David Brooks observes, ¡°There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen¡ªto accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.¡±

And yet we humans don¡¯t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person¡¯s story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.]]> 304 David Brooks 059323006X Zeke 0 currently-reading 4.09 2023 How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
author: David Brooks
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 61161251 Alternate cover editions for this ASIN can be found here, here and here.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility, a novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel¡ªa beautifully transporting novel.

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.]]> 465 Amor Towles Zeke 4 2024 4.46 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: 2024
review:
Lagged for me in the middle but very strong last 50 pages. I didn¡¯t always love the writing stylistically but a lot of strong plot elements and particularly enjoyed the ambivalent but satisfying ending.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game]]> 63251904
This fascinating book chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back¨Dtold partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran.?

In baseball there are superstars and stars and everyday players and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players and specialists and journeymen and then there are the backup catchers. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport¨Cand a society¨Cincreasingly driven by cold, hard analytics.

The Tao of the Backup Catcher is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they?were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders.

Backup catchers survive in part because every team needs one. They are necessary, once or twice a week. They prosper because the game, like the world around the game, still needs good souls, honest efforts, open eyes and ears, closed mouths, compassion for the sad parts, a laugh for the silly parts, and a heart that knows the difference. Backup catchers are sports¡¯ big brothers, psychologists, priests, witch doctors, player coaches, father figures and drinking buddies, all wrapped in a suit of today¡¯s polycarbonate armor and yesterday¡¯s dirt. They come with a singular goal¨Cto win baseball games. They play for the greater good. After that, they play for themselves. A reverie on loving the grind and the little things baseball can teach us,? The Tao of the Backup Catcher profiles?Erik Kratz,?Josh Paul,?AJ Ellis,?Bobby Wilson,?Drew Butera,?Matt Treanor, and?John Flaherty to name a few.?

¡°This isn¡¯t just a story about baseball. It¡¯s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.¡± ¨DJeff Passan ?]]> 304 Tim Brown 1538726556 Zeke 0 to-read 4.04 The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
author: Tim Brown
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians]]> 62874273
In a technologically-saturated era where nearly everything can be effortlessly and digitally reproduced, we're all hungry to carve out our own unique personalities, our own bespoke personae, to stand out and be seen. As the forces of social media and capitalism collide, and individualism becomes more important than ever across a wide array of industries,? "branding ourselves" or actively defining our selves for others has become the norm. Yet, this phenomenon is not new. In Self-Made , Tara Isabella Burton shows us how we arrived at this moment of fervent personal-branding.

As attitudes towards religion, politics and society evolved, our sense of self did as well, moving from a collective to individual mindset.?Through a series of chronological biographical essays on famous (and infamous) "self-creators" in the modern Western world, from the Renassiance to the Enlightenment to modern capitalism and finally to our present moment of mass media, Burton examines the theories and forces behind our never-ending need to curate ourselves. Through a vivid cast of characters and an engaging mix of cultural and historical commentary, we learn how the personal brand has come to be.?
?]]> 288 Tara Isabella Burton 1541789016 Zeke 0 to-read 3.82 Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians
author: Tara Isabella Burton
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hell Is a World Without You 202087804 Superbad-meets-Siddhartha playfulness of USA Today best-seller Hell Is a World Without You. During the time of Pizza Hut buffets, 9/11, and all-night Mario Kart parties, a grieving teenager faces a mortal crossroads: fire-and-brimstone certainty vs. forbidden love. And whether or not you¡¯ve ever begged God to delay the Rapture (so you could have time to lose your virginity), that kid¡¯s story is about you.]]> 314 Jason Kirk 1735492647 Zeke 0 to-read 4.50 2024 Hell Is a World Without You
author: Jason Kirk
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging]]> 177177976 A provocative, virtuosic inquiry that reveals how the valorization of migrations past is intimately linked to the exclusion and demonization of migrants today

When and how did migration become a crime? Why have ¡°Greek ideals¡± remained foundational to the West¡¯s idea of itself? How have our personal migration myths¡ªand nostalgia for times past¡ªshaped today¡¯s troubling realities of nationalism and fortified borders?

In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece to cover the aftermath of a fire that had burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp¡ªnot humanitarian activists, not the country¡¯s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government, which resented the disproportionate responsibility it bore for an overwhelming international human rights problem. But almost immediately, in spite of scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime.
As she immersed herself in the story, Markham saw that it was part of a larger tapestry, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in the myths we tell ourselves about who we are.

A mesmerizing, trailblazing synthesis of reporting, history, memoir, and essay, A Map of Future Ruins helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don¡¯t just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future.]]> 263 Lauren Markham 0593545591 Zeke 0 to-read 4.03 2024 A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
author: Lauren Markham
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America]]> 55643287 Poet and contributor to The Atlantic Clint Smith¡¯s revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation?

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods¡ªlike downtown Manhattan¡ªon which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith¡¯s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.]]> 336 Clint Smith 0316492930 Zeke 0 to-read 4.71 2021 How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
author: Clint Smith
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rules of Civility 13339004 Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.]]> 335 Amor Towles 0143121162 Zeke 0 to-read 4.10 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found]]> 193780130 168 Mike Cosper 0830847340 Zeke 0 to-read 4.23 Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found
author: Mike Cosper
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]> 331 David Grann 0385534264 Zeke 3 2024 4.14 2023 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
author: David Grann
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves: 2024
review:
Probably deserves a better rating but didn¡¯t grab me like Killers of the Flower Moon. It¡¯s clearly deeply researched, full of interesting details, but I think I expected more focus on the homecoming and trials than so much on the Wager crewmen¡¯s shipwrecked experience.
]]> The Caine Mutiny 368772 The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.]]> 537 Herman Wouk 0316955108 Zeke 0 to-read 4.26 1951 The Caine Mutiny
author: Herman Wouk
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Father Elijah: An Apocalypse (Children of the Last Days, #4)]]> 550996
Father Elijah is a convert from Judaism, a survivor of the Holocaust, a man once powerful in Israel. For twenty years he has been "buried in the dark night of Carmel" on the mountain of the prophet Elijah. The Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State call him out of obscurity and give him a task of the highest sensitivity: to penetrate into the inner circles of a man whom they believe may be the Antichrist. Their purpose: to call the Man of Sin to repentance, and thus to postpone the great tribulation long enough to preach the Gospel to the whole world.

In this richly textured tale, Father Elijah crosses Europe and the Middle East, moves through the echelons of world power, meets saints and sinners, presidents, judges, mystics, embattled Catholic journalists, faithful priests and a conspiracy of traitors within the very House of God. This is an apocalypse in the old literary sense, but one that was written in the light of Christian revelation.]]> 597 Michael D. O'Brien 0898706904 Zeke 0 to-read 4.43 1996 Father Elijah: An Apocalypse (Children of the Last Days, #4)
author: Michael D. O'Brien
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends¡ªoften in love, but never lovers¡ªcome together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Zeke 3 2024 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves: 2024
review:
Confused about all the hype over this one - so many characters felt two dimensional, situations felt extremely contrived, it operated like a soap opera a lot of the time, and the writing felt very juvenile to me. Feels like teen lit that found this huge popular fiction adult audience instead? I probably sound like I¡¯m hating because it¡¯s so popular but that¡¯s precisely why I felt disappointed.
]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America¡¯s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara¡¯s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Zeke 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith]]> 58429156 Rembrandt is in the Wind, by Russ Ramsey, is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works, through which we can witness the gospel of Christ in a way that speaks to the struggles and longings common to the human experience.

This book is part art history, part biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience¡ªbut it's all story. The lives of the artists in this book illustrate the struggle of living in this world and point to the beauty of the redemption available to us in Christ. Each story is different. Some conclude with resounding triumph, while others end in struggle. But all of them raise important questions about humanity's hunger and capacity for glory, and they all teach us to see and love beauty.]]> 256 Russ Ramsey 0310129729 Zeke 0 to-read 4.51 2022 Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith
author: Russ Ramsey
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/19
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]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don¡¯t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food¡ªand each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, ¡°each the other¡¯s world entire,¡± are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Zeke 5 2024
¡°He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.¡±

¡°The man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin."

¡°Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.¡±]]> 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves: 2024
review:
Despite my love of McCarthy I had never brought myself to read this one. Certainly hits hard as a father. As with his other books, there are scenes that will stay with me but the poetic, meditative interludes are what really give me the feeling of having the top of my head lifted off. I cried at the closing pages.

¡°He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.¡±

¡°The man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin."

¡°Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.¡±
]]> <![CDATA[A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life]]> 53487237 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it¡¯s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, ¡°We¡¯re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn¡¯t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art¡ªnamely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?¡± He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.]]> 403 George Saunders 1984856049 Zeke 0 to-read 4.55 2021 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
author: George Saunders
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness]]> 29332912
Good and Angry, a groundbreaking new book from David Powlison, contends that anger is more than a problem to solve. Anger is our complex human response to things we perceive as wrong in a complex world, thus we must learn how to fruitfully and honestly deal with it. Powlison undertakes an in-depth exploration of the roots of anger, moral judgment, and righteous response by looking in a surprising place: God¡¯s own anger.

Powlison reminds us that God gets angry too. He sees things in this world that aren¡¯t right and he wants justice too. But God¡¯s anger doesn¡¯t devolve into manipulation or trying to control others to get his own way. Instead his anger is good and redemptive. It causes him to step into our world to make wrongs right, sending his own Son to die so that we can be reconciled. He is both our model for change and our power to change.

Good and Angry sets readers on a path toward a faithful and fruitful expression of anger, in which we return good for evil and redeem wrongs. Powlison offers practical help for people who struggle with irritation, complaining, or bitterness and gives guidance for how to respond constructively when life goes wrong. You, your family, and your friends will all be glad that you read this book.]]> 256 David A. Powlison 1942572972 Zeke 0 to-read 4.42 2016 Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness
author: David A. Powlison
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Picture Show 50051 280 Larry McMurtry 0752837214 Zeke 0 to-read 3.98 1966 The Last Picture Show
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sweet Forever (D.C. Quartet #3)]]> 320247 298 George P. Pelecanos 1852427361 Zeke 0 to-read 3.97 1998 The Sweet Forever (D.C. Quartet #3)
author: George P. Pelecanos
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tenth of December 13641208 Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill¡ªthe unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December¡ªthrough their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit¡ªnot only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."]]> 251 George Saunders 0812993802 Zeke 0 to-read 3.98 2013 Tenth of December
author: George Saunders
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Memory Police 38058832 The Housekeeper and the Professor.

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, things are disappearing. First, animals and flowers. Then objects¡ªribbons, bells, photographs. Then, body parts. Most of the island¡¯s inhabitants fail to notice these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the mysterious ¡°memory police,¡± who are committed to ensuring that the disappeared remain forgotten. When a young novelist realizes that more than her career is in danger, she hides her editor beneath her floorboards, and together, as fear and loss close in around them, they cling to literature as the last way of preserving the past. Part allegory, part literary thriller, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 226 Y¨­ko Ogawa 1101870613 Zeke 5 2024 3.74 1994 The Memory Police
author: Y¨­ko Ogawa
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: 2024
review:
Truly, truly unique. This is a dystopian novel built around a premise of a society who are able to make people forget; objects, occupations, eventually parts of themselves. Some are unable to forget and are harbored in secret by other families. In a typical work of fiction, you¡¯d think they would be building to some kind of underground resistance, or a moment where the forgetting ends, but every time I was waiting for that to happen and it never comes. The book is slow, almost simple at times (befitting the narrator¡¯s gradual erosion of memory), but haunting in its meditation on loss, grief, and anxiety about the ultimate end of all things. I left confused but can¡¯t stop thinking about it.
]]> A Tale of Love and Darkness 27574
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and its community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children. The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.
(back cover)]]> 560 Amos Oz 015603252X Zeke 0 to-read 4.26 2002 A Tale of Love and Darkness
author: Amos Oz
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Place of Thunder: Trading Our Need to Be Noticed for a Hidden Life with Christ]]> 61349218 192 John Starke 0310139848 Zeke 4 2024
¡°Our world doesn¡¯t distinguish well between a productive life and a meaningful one, between efficiency and significance. The New Testament¡¯s vision of life is unique in that it resists the language of productivity and efficiency, not because it is wrong or evil, but because it¡¯s inadequate to contain the significance and substance our desires are reaching for.
¡­

The result of abiding is fruitfulness. But the substance behind it all dwells in unseen places where seeds are hidden in dirt and a branch is connected to a vine. It is the hidden nature of our life with God that animates us, not the demonstration of our achievements. Even deeper than that, Jesus is pointing out that the substance of our spiritual life is that we are with him rather than what we are doing for him.¡±]]> 4.41 2023 The Secret Place of Thunder: Trading Our Need to Be Noticed for a Hidden Life with Christ
author: John Starke
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/05
date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: 2024
review:
A lot of good in here, especially for someone like me who tends to seek approval through performance.

¡°Our world doesn¡¯t distinguish well between a productive life and a meaningful one, between efficiency and significance. The New Testament¡¯s vision of life is unique in that it resists the language of productivity and efficiency, not because it is wrong or evil, but because it¡¯s inadequate to contain the significance and substance our desires are reaching for.
¡­

The result of abiding is fruitfulness. But the substance behind it all dwells in unseen places where seeds are hidden in dirt and a branch is connected to a vine. It is the hidden nature of our life with God that animates us, not the demonstration of our achievements. Even deeper than that, Jesus is pointing out that the substance of our spiritual life is that we are with him rather than what we are doing for him.¡±
]]> <![CDATA[Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age]]> 83822692 208 Samuel James Zeke 4 2023
My only quibble is one that James probably doesn¡¯t deserve but is a broader complaint I¡¯m feeling with the evangelical publishing world: why do so many Christian books sound so similar these days? This is a critique mainly leveled at white male authors, but I¡¯ve picked up a number of books this year that I just wasn¡¯t able to push through because there is no unique voice, no style, nothing to surprise me or delight me, just a systematic laying out of argument and facts that uses so many of the same sources: can we PLEASE stop leaning so heavily on CS Lewis, Neil Postman, Tolkien, the Puritans, et all as our only resources on cultural interpretation? Can publishers seek out writers with distinct voices? Where is the Christian Chuck Klosterman, the Christian Atul Gawande, Tom Junod, I can go on and on but I¡¯m just really noticing that so much writing (and preaching) sounds the same. Makes me all the more grateful for voices I¡¯ve leaned into in the past few years (D Zahl, E McCaulley, TH Warren, C Atcho) that actually have something to say and a distinct way of saying it.]]> 4.40 2023 Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age
author: Samuel James
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/30
date added: 2024/01/01
shelves: 2023
review:
This is a very good addition to the genre of Christian thought literature around the ways that the internet age is changing us. It¡¯s probably the first thing I¡¯d give on the subject to a college student or particularly mature hs student.

My only quibble is one that James probably doesn¡¯t deserve but is a broader complaint I¡¯m feeling with the evangelical publishing world: why do so many Christian books sound so similar these days? This is a critique mainly leveled at white male authors, but I¡¯ve picked up a number of books this year that I just wasn¡¯t able to push through because there is no unique voice, no style, nothing to surprise me or delight me, just a systematic laying out of argument and facts that uses so many of the same sources: can we PLEASE stop leaning so heavily on CS Lewis, Neil Postman, Tolkien, the Puritans, et all as our only resources on cultural interpretation? Can publishers seek out writers with distinct voices? Where is the Christian Chuck Klosterman, the Christian Atul Gawande, Tom Junod, I can go on and on but I¡¯m just really noticing that so much writing (and preaching) sounds the same. Makes me all the more grateful for voices I¡¯ve leaned into in the past few years (D Zahl, E McCaulley, TH Warren, C Atcho) that actually have something to say and a distinct way of saying it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Intentional Year: Simple Rhythms for Finding Freedom, Peace, and Purpose]]> 60510873 Are you ready to stop living reactively, feeling emotionally exhausted, and being pulled in multiple directions?

We struggle to keep up with the demands of life--but God invites us into freedom.
We feel anxious and overwhelmed--but God promises peace.
We're stretched and empty--but God offers purpose.

The Intentional Year is an invitation to stop right now, right where you are, and choose to live on purpose. This isn't just about aspirations or self-improvement--a flourishing life is tangible and possible. With stories, practices, and a road map into intentionality, Holly and Glenn Packiam will guide you into simple ways to grow personally. Experience freedom to invest time and energy into the people you value most and into the purpose you were made for.

As you step into your intentional year, you'll . . .

reflect on the lessons and celebrations of the past season;
identify themes and a sense of calling for the season ahead; and
implement new rhythms of prayer, rest, renewal, relationships, and work.

Life doesn't have to be something that just happens to us. It's time to start practicing the life-giving rhythms of an intentional life--starting today.]]> 224 Glenn Packiam 1641583975 Zeke 0 to-read 4.03 The Intentional Year: Simple Rhythms for Finding Freedom, Peace, and Purpose
author: Glenn Packiam
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting]]> 459744 Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, "You'll be fascinated.]]> 608 William Goldman 0446391174 Zeke 5 2023 4.11 1983 Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
author: William Goldman
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: 2023
review:
Loved reading this one - always enjoyed Bill Goldman when I heard him interviewed and had heard about this one but it¡¯s a really fun walk through Hollywood in the 70s and early 80s through his eyes. Favorite part of the book may have been the readings of his short story script by other craftspeople at the end - you get such a deep appreciation for what all of them bring to the table.
]]> Reading Genesis 127282468
For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents, by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.

Both of these approaches preclude an appreciation of its greatness as literature, its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture. Marilynne Robinson¡¯s Reading Genesis , which includes the original text, is a powerful consideration of the profound meanings and promise of God¡¯s enduring covenant with humanity. This magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God¡¯s abiding faith in Creation.]]> 344 Marilynne Robinson 0374299404 Zeke 0 to-read 4.03 2024 Reading Genesis
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/11
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]]> The Right Stuff 8146619 Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review), The Right Stuff is the basis for the 1983 Oscar Award-winning film of the same name and the 8-part Disney+ TV mini-series.From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.]]> 369 Tom Wolfe Zeke 0 to-read 4.25 1979 The Right Stuff
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/07
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]]> The Book of Longings 48739558 "I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus." So begins the new novel from the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings, an extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny in a time of great despair and great hope.

In her fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. She yearns for a pursuit worthy of her life, but finds no outlet for her considerable talents. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other's spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart.

Their marriage unfolds with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, James and Simon, and their mother, Mary. Here, Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to the Roman occupation of Israel, partially led by her charismatic adopted brother, Judas. She is sustained by her indomitable aunt Yaltha, who is searching for her long-lost daughter, as well as by other women, including her friend Tabitha, who is sold into slavery after she was raped, and Phasaelis, the shrewd wife of Herod Antipas. Ana's impetuous streak occasionally invites danger. When one such foray forces her to flee Nazareth for her safety shortly before Jesus's public ministry begins, she makes her way with Yaltha to Alexandria, where she eventually finds refuge and purpose in unexpected surroundings.

Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place, and culture devised to silence her.]]> 432 Sue Monk Kidd Zeke 0 to-read 4.34 2020 The Book of Longings
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> North Woods 75569082
This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we¡¯re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we¡¯re gone?]]> 320 Daniel Mason Zeke 0 to-read 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Severance 41556003 Maybe it's the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma's offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she's had her fill of uncertainty. She's content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won't be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They're traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma's Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it's a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.]]> 291 Ling Ma 1250214998 Zeke 0 to-read 3.96 2018 Severance
author: Ling Ma
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are]]> 125076660 ?
From one of our generation¡¯s most powerful artists and incisive storytellers comes a brilliantly crafted work about the art¡ªand war¡ªof becoming who we are.

upcycle verb
up¡¤cy¡¤cle ??p-?s¨©-k?l
: to recycle (something) in such a way that the resulting product is of a higher value than the original item
: to create an object of greater value from (a discarded object of lesser value)

Today Tariq Trotter¡ªbetter known as Black Thought¡ªis the platinum-selling, Grammy-winning co-founder of The Roots and one of the most exhilaratingly skillful and profound rappers our culture has ever produced. But his story begins with a as a child, Trotter burned down his family¡¯s home. The years that follow are the story of a life snatched from the flames, forged in fire.

In The Upcycled Self, Trotter doesn¡¯t only narrate a riveting and moving portrait of the artist as a young man, he gives readers a courageous model of what it means to live an examined life. In vivid vignettes, he tells the dramatic stories of the four powerful relationships that shaped him¡ªwith community, friends, art, and family¡ªeach a complex weave of love, discovery, trauma, and loss.

And beyond offering the compellingly poetic account of one artist¡¯s creative and emotional origins, Trotter explores the vital questions we all have to confront about our formative How can we see the story of our own young lives clearly? How do we use that story to understand who we¡¯ve become? How do we forgive the people who loved and hurt us? How do we rediscover and honor our first dreams? And, finally, what do we take forward, what do we pass on, what do we leave behind? This is the beautifully bluesy story of a boy genius¡¯s coming-of-age that illuminates the redemptive power of the upcycle.]]> 163 Tariq Trotter 0593446933 Zeke 0 to-read 4.20 2023 The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are
author: Tariq Trotter
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West]]> 83822676
With dizzying social transformations in everything from gender to social justice, it may seem like there¡¯s never been a more tumultuous period in history. But a single year in the late 18th century saw a number of influential transformations¡ªor even?revolutions¡ªthat changed the social trajectory of the Western world. By understanding how those events influenced today¡¯s cultural landscape, Christians can more effectively bear witness to God¡¯s truth in a post-Christian age.

In?Remaking the World, Andrew Wilson highlights 7 major developments from the year 1776¡ªglobalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, the American Revolution, the rise of post-Christianity, and the dawn of Romanticism¡ªand explains their relevance to social changes happening today. Carefully examining key documents and historical figures, Wilson demonstrates how a monumental number of political, philosophical, economical, and industrial changes in the year of America¡¯s founding shaped the modern West into a ¡°WEIRDER¡± Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic. This thoroughly researched yet accessible book offers a unique historical perspective on modern views of family, government, religion, and morality¡ªgiving Christians the historical lens they need to understand today¡¯s post-Christian trends and respond accordingly.

Relevant Cultural and Historical ?Skillfully connects key ideas and events from the past to the present? ?Examines important developments from 1776, including the American Revolution, Thomas Paine¡¯s?Common Sense, Edward Gibbon¡¯s?The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; James Watt¡¯s steam engine; Adam Smith¡¯s?Wealth of Nations; and Immanuel Kant¡¯s?Critique of Pure Reason ?Covers key historical figures, including John Adams, Edmund Burke, and David Hume Equips and encourages readers to share the gospel in a post-Christian world A Great Resource for Pastors, Scholars, and Readers of Carl Trueman¡¯s?The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self]]> 473 Andrew Wilson 143358056X Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2023 Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West
author: Andrew Wilson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever]]> 65650231
You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given it ¡°two thumbs up.¡±

On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they¡¯d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune . Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize¡ªthe first ever awarded to a film critic¡ªfor his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.

When they reluctantly agreed to collaborate on a new movie review show with PBS, there was at least as much sparring off-camera as on. No decision¡ªfrom which films to cover to who would read the lead review to how to pronounce foreign titles¡ªwas made without conflict, but their often-antagonistic partnership (which later transformed into genuine friendship) made for great television. In the years that followed, their signature ¡°Two thumbs up!¡± would become the most trusted critical brand in Hollywood.

In Opposable Thumbs , award-winning editor and film critic Matt Singer eavesdrops on their iconic balcony set, detailing their rise from making a few hundred dollars a week on local Chicago PBS to securing multimillion-dollar contracts for a syndicated series (a move that convinced a young local host named Oprah Winfrey to do the same). Their partnership was cut short when Gene Siskel passed away in February of 1999 after a battle with brain cancer that he¡¯d kept secret from everyone outside his immediate family¡ªincluding Roger Ebert, who never got to say goodbye to his longtime partner. But their influence on in the way we talk about (and think about) movies continues to this day.]]> 352 Matt Singer 0593540158 Zeke 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
author: Matt Singer
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
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date added: 2023/10/24
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