en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:19:41 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 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 4.39
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]]> 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
author: Edward Ashton
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.71
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]]> 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 4.27 2025
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name: Zeke
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]]> 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 3.86 2024
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average rating: 3.86
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]]> 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
author: Allen Levi
name: Zeke
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]]> 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
author: Toni Morrison
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
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]]> 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
author: James McBride
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.11
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]]> 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
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name: Zeke
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]]> 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
author: Jonathan Eig
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.65
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]]> 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 4.22
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]]> 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
author: Tommie Shelby
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.34
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]]> 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
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]]> 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
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]]> 11419951 264 Norman Wirzba 0521195500 Zeke 0 to-read 4.25 2007
author: Norman Wirzba
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
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]]> 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 3.71 2024
author: Jenny Slate
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.71
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]]> 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
author: Charles Yu
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.95
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]]> 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
author: Jamie Quatro
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.76
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]]> 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
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name: Zeke
average rating: 4.51
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]]> 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 4.36 2024
author: Wright Thompson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
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]]> 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
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/24
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]]> 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
author: Zadie Smith
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2005
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]]> 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
author: Percival Everett
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
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]]> 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
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 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
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
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date added: 2024/07/31
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]]> 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
author: Rich Villodas
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.42
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]]> 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
author: Paul Murray
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 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
author: Jesselyn Cook
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
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date added: 2024/07/19
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]]> 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 4.29
author: Mirin Fader
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.29
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]]> 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
author: Jenny Odell
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> 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
author: Warren Zanes
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
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date added: 2024/07/06
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]]> 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 4.13
author: Charles Margrave Taylor
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
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date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> 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 4.10 2020
author: Joshua Jay
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
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]]> 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 4.11 2004
author: John Jeremiah Sullivan
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2004
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]]> 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
author: John Jeremiah Sullivan
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
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]]> 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
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/19
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]]> 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 4.35 2024
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 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
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/05
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]]> 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
author: Leif Enger
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/05
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]]> 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
author: Bill Buford
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 180352109 256 Charlie Peacock 140033764X Zeke 0 to-read 4.07
author: Charlie Peacock
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> 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
author: Tim Brown
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.04
book published:
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date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> 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
author: Tara Isabella Burton
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.82
book published:
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]]> 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
author: Jason Kirk
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.50
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]]> 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
author: Lauren Markham
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
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]]> 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
author: Clint Smith
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
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]]> 13339004 Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.]]> 335 Amor Towles 0143121162 Zeke 0 to-read 4.10 2011
author: Amor Towles
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 193780130 168 Mike Cosper 0830847340 Zeke 0 to-read 4.22
author: Mike Cosper
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.22
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date added: 2024/02/12
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]]> 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
author: Herman Wouk
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/07
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]]> 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 4.44 1996
author: Michael D. O'Brien
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/05
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]]> 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
author: Ann Patchett
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
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]]> 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
author: Russ Ramsey
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.51
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]]> 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
author: George Saunders
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
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]]> 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
author: David A. Powlison
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2016
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]]> 50051 280 Larry McMurtry 0752837214 Zeke 0 to-read 3.98 1966
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1966
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]]> 320247 298 George P. Pelecanos 1852427361 Zeke 0 to-read 3.97 1998
author: George P. Pelecanos
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> 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
author: George Saunders
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
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]]> 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
author: Amos Oz
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2002
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date added: 2024/01/06
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]]> 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
author: Glenn Packiam
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
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]]> 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
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
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]]> 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
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1979
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]]> 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
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
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]]> 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
author: Daniel Mason
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
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]]> 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
author: Ling Ma
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
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]]> 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 4.19 2023
author: Tariq Trotter
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.19
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date added: 2023/11/16
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]]> 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
author: Andrew Wilson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
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]]> 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
author: Matt Singer
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.03
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]]> 123165447 Data expert Walter Hickey explains the power of entertainment to change our biology, our beliefs, how we see ourselves, and how nations gain power through entertainment.

Anyone who has ever watched or read something profound and moving knows that entertainment can affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Walter Hickey, Pulitzer Prize¨Cwinner and former chief culture writer at acclaimed data site FiveThirtyEight, proves how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.]]> 240 Walter Hickey 1523515899 Zeke 0 to-read 3.68
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name: Zeke
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]]> 61368281 New York Times bestseller

One of the top ten books of the year at The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vulture/New York magazine
A best book of the year at Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus

The acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity.

Strangers to Ourselves poses fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Rachel Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman celebrated as a saint who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children¡¯s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn¡¯t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv¡¯s gripping exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel¡ªuntil it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives¡ªand our identities, too. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.]]> 275 Rachel Aviv 0374600856 Zeke 0 to-read 4.21 2022
author: Rachel Aviv
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.21
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]]> 62039166 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 rather than face the music, he¡¯s 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, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil¨Dcan a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written¨Dis there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Zeke 0 to-read 3.92 2023
author: Paul Murray
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/22
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]]> 63828159
In this book, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior examines evangelical history, both good and bad. By analyzing the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism, she unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices to consider what is Christian rather than merely cultural. The result is a clearer path forward for evangelicals amid their current identity crisis--and insight for others who want a deeper understanding of what the term "evangelical" means today.

Brought to life with color illustrations, images, and paintings, this book explores ideas including conversion, domesticity, empire, sentimentality, and more. In the end, it goes beyond evangelicalism to show us how we might be influenced by images, stories, and metaphors in ways we cannot always see.]]> 304 Karen Swallow Prior 1587435756 Zeke 0 to-read 4.23 2023
author: Karen Swallow Prior
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/21
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]]> 51184296 Insecure¡¯s Yvonne Orji uses a modern-day Biblical blueprint to candidly and humorously share the twists and turns that led her to success¡ªand to inspire and empower readers to live their best lives.

Yvonne Orji has never shied away from being unapologetically herself, and that includes being outspoken about her faith. Known for interpreting Biblical stories and metaphors to fit current times, her humorous and accessible approach to faith leaves even non-believers inspired and wanting more.

The way Yvonne sees it, God was the Sovereign Prankster long before Ashton Kutcher, running around getting folks punk¡¯d¡ªbut in the best way possible. When she meditates on her own life¡ªfull of unanticipated roadblocks and unforeseen blessings¡ªshe realizes it¡¯s one big testimony to how God tricked her into living out her wildest dreams.

In BAMBOOZLED BY JESUS, a frank and fresh advice book, Orji takes readers on a journey through twenty life lessons, gleaned from her own experiences and her favorite source of inspiration: the Bible. She infuses wit and heart along with practical pointers¡ªsuch as why being talented is not as sexy as being available, and how fear is similar to food poisoning¡ªwith the goal of helping others live the most fulfilling, audacious life possible.

With bold authenticity and practical relatability, Orji will inspire everyone to catapult themselves out of the mundane and into the magnificent. BAMBOOZLED BY JESUS paints a powerful picture of what it means to say ¡°yes¡± to your most rewarding life¡ªno matter your beliefs.]]> 320 Yvonne Orji 1250247039 Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2021
author: Yvonne Orji
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/19
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]]> 71872840
¡°A riveting book that invites you into the personal journey of one of the finest writers alive today.¡±¡ªBeth Moore, New York Times bestselling author of All My Knotted-Up Life

For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class.
?
But that narrative was called into question one night, when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father¡ªwhose absence defined his upbringing¡ªdied in a car crash.?McCaulley was being asked to deliver his father¡¯s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hardworking, perfect. ?
?
The resulting effort sent McCaulley back through his family history, seeking to understand the community that shaped him. In these pages, we meet his great-grandmother Sophia, a tenant farmer born with the gift of prophecy who scraped together a life in Jim Crow Alabama; his mother, Laurie, who raised four kids alone in an era when single Black mothers were demonized as ¡°welfare queens¡±; and a cast of family, friends, and neighbors who won small victories in a world built to swallow Black lives.?With profound honesty and compassion, he raises questions that implicate us What does each person¡¯s struggle to build a life teach us about what we owe each other? About what it means to be human??
?
How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America.?It¡¯s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.]]> 240 Esau McCaulley 0593241088 Zeke 0 to-read 4.58 2023
author: Esau McCaulley
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.58
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]]> 59900688 Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago¡ª¡°one day, you¡¯ll
take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.¡±

Javier Zamora¡¯s adventure is a 3,000-mile journey from his small town in
El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border.
He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a
mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling
alone amid a group of strangers and a ¡°coyote¡± hired to lead them to safety,
Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents¡¯ arms,
snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He
cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns,
arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two
weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants
who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and
intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey,
but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most
unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora¡¯s story, but it¡¯s also the story
of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.]]> 384 Javier Zamora 0593498062 Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Javier Zamora
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
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]]> 65215711
In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. A woman lives in a house with all her ex-boyfriends. A toxic friendship grows up around a drug that makes you invisible. An ancient ritual might heal you of anything¡ªif you bury yourself alive.

These and other scenarios investigate the ways that the outlandish and the ordinary are shockingly, deceptively, heart-breakingly alike.]]> 228 Ling Ma 1250893542 Zeke 0 to-read 3.80 2022
author: Ling Ma
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> 71872910 Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore calls for repentance and renewal in American evangelicalism

American evangelical Christianity has lost its way. While the witness of the church before a watching world is diminished beyond recognition, congregations are torn apart over Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, racial injustice, sexual predation, disgraced leaders, and covered-up scandals. Left behind are millions of believers who counted on the church to be a place of belonging and hope. As greater and greater numbers of younger Americans bleed out from the church, even the most rooted evangelicals are wondering, ¡°Can American Christianity survive?¡±

In Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore calls his fellow evangelical Christians to conversion over culture wars, to truth over tribalism, to the gospel over politics, to integrity over influence, and to renewal over nostalgia. With both prophetic honesty and pastoral love, Moore offers a word of counsel for how a new generation of disillusioned and exhausted believers can find a path forward after the crisis and confusion of the last several years. Believing the gospel is too important to leave it to hucksters and grifters, he shows how a Christian can avoid both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.

The altar call of the old evangelical revivals was both a call to repentance and the offer of a new start. In the same way, this book invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step out into an uncertain future, first by letting go of the kind of cultural, politicized, status quo Christianity that led us to this moment of reckoning. Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what¡¯s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.]]> 272 Russell D. Moore 0593541782 Zeke 0 to-read 4.31
author: Russell D. Moore
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.31
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]]> 63354357 256 Justin Whitmel Earley 0310363004 Zeke 0 to-read 4.47 2023
author: Justin Whitmel Earley
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Zeke 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/01
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]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn¡¯t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive¡¯s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life ¨C sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Zeke 0 to-read 3.85 2008
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/29
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]]> 35456277
A kaleidoscopic family saga told through the fractured lives of the three Moreau siblings alongside a faltering, recovering love story, The End of Loneliness is a stunning meditation on the power of our memories, of what can be lost and what can never be let go. With inimitable compassion and luminous, affecting prose, Benedict Wells contends with what it means to find a way through life, while never giving up hope you will find someone to go with you.]]> 274 Benedict Wells Zeke 0 to-read 4.17 2016
author: Benedict Wells
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/23
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]]> 60831912
?¡°Daniel Wallace has, once again, shown himself to be an exquisite storyteller. ?Like bourbon, this book goes down hot and strong but finishes with a salving sweetness which can only be called a blessing. ?A love story and a ghost story a once,? This Isn¡¯t Going to End Well ?straddles the line between present and past, truth and beauty.¡±¨DTayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

A profoundly moving, large-hearted, genre-bending memoir from the bestselling author of Big Fish .

If we¡¯re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For Daniel Wallace, that was his longtime friend and brother-in-law, William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook. William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate, and the person who gave him the courage to become a writer.

But when William took his own life at age forty eight, Daniel¡¯s heartbreak led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a path into the tortured recesses of William¡¯s past. Eventually a new picture emerged of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear.

With his first memoir, acclaimed writer Daniel Wallace delivers a stunning book that is as innovative and emotionally resonant as his novels. Part love story, part true crime, part a desperate search for the self, This Isn¡¯t Going to End Well tells an intimate and moving story of what happens when we realize our heroes are human.

?]]> 272 Daniel Wallace 1643752103 Zeke 0 to-read 3.73 2023
author: Daniel Wallace
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.73
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]]> 56622103 Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction

Winner of the Gotham Book Prize

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

Oprah's Book Club Pick

Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine

A Washington Post Notable Novel

From the author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses 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 funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, 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 cops assigned to investigate, 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--caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York--overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us. ]]> 370 James McBride 0735216738 Zeke 0 to-read 4.13 2020
author: James McBride
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 122764527 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal¡ªan experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She¡¯s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive¡¯s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 258 Emily St. John Mandel 059346673X Zeke 0 to-read 4.07 2022
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 13589149
¡°A touchstone of the [new evangelical] movement.¡± ¡ª The New York Times

Tim Keller, pastor of New York¡¯s Redeemer Presbyterian Church and the New York Times bestselling author of The Reason for God , has taught and counseled students, young professionals, and senior leaders on the subject of work and calling for more than twenty years. Now he pulls his insights into a thoughtful and practical book for readers everywhere.

With deep conviction and often surprising advice, Keller shows readers that biblical wisdom is immensely relevant to our questions about work today. In fact, the Christian view of work¡ªthat we work to serve others, not ourselves¡ªcan provide the foundation of a thriving professional and balanced personal life. Keller shows how excellence, integrity, discipline, creativity, and passion in the workplace can help others and even be considered acts of worship¡ªnot just of self-interest.]]> 288 Timothy J. Keller 0525952705 Zeke 0 to-read 4.28 2012
author: Timothy J. Keller
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2012
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]]> 123280211 You are the next step in human evolution.

At first, Logan Ramsay isn¡¯t sure if anything¡¯s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can¡¯t deny it: Something¡¯s happening to his brain. To his body. He¡¯s starting to see the world, and those around him¡ªeven those he loves most¡ªin whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan¡¯s genome has been hacked. And there¡¯s a reason he¡¯s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what¡¯s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large¡ªat a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan¡¯s the one person in the world capable of stopping what¡¯s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he¡¯ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he¡¯s fighting, he can¡¯t help wondering: what if humanity¡¯s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man¡¯s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity¡ªand our boundless potential.]]> 349 Blake Crouch 0593157524 Zeke 0 to-read 3.79 2022
author: Blake Crouch
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/21
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]]> 62192519
A challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches.

From the moment we ask children what they want to ¡°be¡± when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life¡¯s ultimate objective. Many entangle their identities with their jobs, with predictable damage to happiness, wellbeing, and even professional success.
?
In The Good Enough Job , journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans¡¯ lives¡ªand why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough?
?
Through provocative critique and deep reporting, Stolzoff punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs. By exposing the lies we--and our employers--tell about the value of our labor, The Good Enough Job makes the urgent case for reclaiming our lives in a world centered around work.]]> 272 Simone Stolzoff 059353896X Zeke 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Simone Stolzoff
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/17
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]]> 60012371 By the New York Times bestselling author of Showtime¡ªthe source for HBO¡¯s Winning Time¡ªthe definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character¡ªand they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America¡¯s most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth.

Then, almost overnight, he was gone.

He was Bo Jackson.

Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University¡¯s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous ¡°Bo Knows¡± Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or ¡­ maybe.)

Bo Jackson isn¡¯t Jim Thorpe.

He¡¯s not Deion Sanders, either.

No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan.

The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only ¡°master storyteller¡± (NPR) Jeff Pearlman could tell.]]> 496 Jeff Pearlman 0358437679 Zeke 0 to-read 4.18 2022
author: Jeff Pearlman
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/13
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]]> 60693323 224 K.J. Ramsey 0310461332 Zeke 0 to-read 4.68
author: K.J. Ramsey
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.68
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rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/17
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]]> 9284904
Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow¡¯s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty.

He began his search as a ¡°pre¨Cministerial student¡± at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with ¡°Old Grit,¡± his profound professor of New Testament Greek.

¡°You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out¡ªperhaps a little at a time.¡±

¡°And how long is that going to take?¡±

¡°I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.¡±

¡°That could be a long time.¡±

¡°I will tell you a further mystery,¡± he said. ¡°It may take longer.¡±

Wendell Berry¡¯s clear¨Csighted depiction of humanity¡¯s gifts¡ªlove and loss, joy and despair¡ªis seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.]]> 383 Wendell Berry 1582436894 Zeke 0 to-read 4.44 2000
author: Wendell Berry
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 20871950
If you are worried about your future¡­ or if your future doesn't seem to make any difference to your now¡­ or if you simply want to get more excited about where you will spend eternity¡­ read this book!]]> 128 Stephen Witmer 1909559911 Zeke 0 to-read 4.12 2014
author: Stephen Witmer
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> 52891090 224 Dane C. Ortlund 1433566133 Zeke 0 to-read 4.50 2020
author: Dane C. Ortlund
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> 22237161
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens¨Don the southern outskirts of Los Angeles¨Dthe narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident¨Dthe last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins¨Dhe initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.]]> 289 Paul Beatty 0374260508 Zeke 0 to-read 3.75 2015
author: Paul Beatty
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> 182278 224 Rick Telander 0803294530 Zeke 0 to-read 4.22 1976
author: Rick Telander
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1976
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]]> 74034 184 Neil Postman 014303653X Zeke 0 to-read 4.15 1985
author: Neil Postman
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
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]]> 24043208 Hearts Minds Bookstore's Best Books
Outreach Magazine's Resources of the Year We're all infected with a spiritual disease. Its name is shame. Whether we realize it or not, shame affects every aspect of our personal lives and vocational endeavors. It seeks to destroy our identity in Christ, replacing it with a damaged version of ourselves that results in unhealed pain and brokenness. But God is telling a different story for your life. Psychiatrist Curt Thompson unpacks the soul of shame, revealing its ubiquitous nature and neurobiological roots. He also provides the theological and practical tools necessary to dismantle shame, based on years of researching its damaging effects and counseling people to overcome those wounds. Thompson's expertise and compassion will help you identify your own pains and struggles and find freedom from the lifelong negative messages that bind you. Rewrite the story of your life and embrace healing and wholeness as you discover and defeat shame's insidious agenda.]]> 206 Curt Thompson 0830844333 Zeke 0 to-read 4.31 2015
author: Curt Thompson
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
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]]> 57179475 "You are your own, and you belong to yourself." This is the fundamental assumption of modern life. And if we are our own, then it's up to us to forge our own identities and to make our lives significant. But while that may sound empowering, it turns out to be a crushing responsibility--one that never actually delivers on its promise of a free and fulfilled life, but instead leaves us burned out, depressed, anxious, and alone. This phenomenon is mapped out onto the very structures of our society, and helps explain our society's underlying disorder. But the Christian gospel offers a strikingly different vision. As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, "I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ." In You Are Not Your Own, Alan Noble explores how this simple truth reframes the way we understand ourselves, our families, our society, and God. Contrasting these two visions of life, he invites us past the sickness of contemporary life into a better understanding of who we are and to whom we belong.]]> 232 Alan Noble 0830847820 Zeke 0 to-read 4.33 2021
author: Alan Noble
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
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]]> 58844848 A deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity in an age of unprecedented anxiety and loneliness--from the author of The Tech-Wise Family

"Andy Crouch shows the path to reclaiming a life that restores the heart of what it means to thrive."--Arthur C. Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of From Strength to Strength

Our greatest need is to be recognized--to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we've displaced that need with the ease of technology. We've dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.

In The Life We're Looking For, bestselling author Andy Crouch shows how we have been seduced by a false vision of human flourishing--and how each of us can fight back. From the social innovations of the early Christian movement to the efforts of entrepreneurs working to create more humane technology, Crouch shows how we can restore true community and put people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices.

There is a way out of our impersonal world, into a world where knowing and being known are the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but as the key to our becoming who we were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us--and helps us become more human, not less.]]> 240 Andy Crouch 059323734X Zeke 0 to-read 4.05 2022
author: Andy Crouch
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.05
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]]> 63024268
¡°This is the kind of book that makes you different when you¡¯re done.¡±¡ªAshley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody¡¯s Daughter

¡°Reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered to break them open in order for fresh light to break through.¡±¡ªMorgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Root, Library Journal

¡°From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning.¡±
?
So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself. Writing memorably of her own childhood and coming to self, Arthur Riley boldly explores some of the most urgent questions of life and faith: How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit? How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest? In this indelible work of contemplative storytelling, Arthur Riley invites us to descend into our own stories, examine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it.
?
At once a compelling spiritual meditation, a powerful intergenerational account, and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.]]> 224 Cole Arthur Riley 0593239792 Zeke 0 to-read 4.59 2022
author: Cole Arthur Riley
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.59
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]]> 59145039 Understanding Apathy and How to Combat It

For many Christians, apathy can feel inescapable. They experience a lack of motivation and a growing indifference to important things, with some even struggling to care about anything at all. This listlessness can spill over into our spiritual lives, making it difficult to pray, read the Bible, or engage in our communities. Have we resigned ourselves to apathy? Do we recognize it as a sin? How can we fight against it?

In?Overcoming Apathy, theology professor Uche Anizor explains?what apathy is and gives practical, biblical advice to break the cycle. Inspired by his conversations with young Christians as well as his own experiences with apathy, Anizor takes a fresh look at this widespread problem and its effect on spiritual maturity.?First, he highlights the prevalence of apathy in our culture, using examples from TV, movies, and social media. Next, he turns to theologians, philosophers, and psychologists to further define apathy. Finally, Anizor explores causes, cures, and healthy practices to boldly overcome apathy in daily life, taking believers from spiritual lethargy to Christian zeal. This short ebook is an excellent resource for those struggling with apathy as well as parents, mentors, and friends who want to support someone in need.

Examines the Individual and Cultural Experience of ?Analyzes the concept, experience, and healing from apathy; explores influences from philosophers to pop culture to understand its nature? Practical Steps for Dealing with ?Identifies 7 causes as well as healthy habits to fight against indifference Accessible for Students and ?A great guide for high school and college students and those who counsel them; youth and young adult pastors; teachers; and anyone struggling with apathy or who knows someone who is]]> 167 Uche Anizor 1433578824 Zeke 0 to-read 4.21 2022
author: Uche Anizor
name: Zeke
average rating: 4.21
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]]> 59039917 256 Charles Marsh 0062862731 Zeke 0 to-read 3.59
author: Charles Marsh
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.59
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]]> 61273720 In this New York Times bestseller and Today show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance, in this ¡°surreal¡± (People), ¡°remarkable¡± (Vogue), and ¡°infuriatingly timely¡± (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn¡¯t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents¡¯ sacrifices. She can¡¯t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgement, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother¡¯s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.

An ¡°intense¡± (Oprah Daily), ¡°captivating¡± (Today) page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of ¡°perfect¡± upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.]]> 336 Jessamine Chan 1982156139 Zeke 0 to-read 3.56 2022
author: Jessamine Chan
name: Zeke
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
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