en-US Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:58:41 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 55867897
Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try (a little too hard) to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beach-side paradise, threatening to erupt.ĚýAs small disturbances escalate into outright horror, Remy and Alicia tumble into an uncanny alternate reality, one shaped by their most unspeakable, deviant, and intoxicating fantasies.ĚýIs this what “self-actualizationâ€� looks like?

Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, A Touch of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.]]> 320 Beth Morgan 0316704261 val 0 to-read 3.26 2021
author: Beth Morgan
name: val
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
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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 val 0 currently-reading 3.89 2024
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: val
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 val 5 3.69 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: val
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/10
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]]> 35137915
I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.]]> 304 Maggie O'Farrell 0525520228 val 0 currently-reading 3.96 2017
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: val
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 218671843 An unexpectedĚýroad trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.

Ever sinceĚýher dad left them twenty years ago,Ěýit’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings.ĚýAnd he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.

As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.]]> 256 Kevin Wilson 0063317516 val 0 to-read 4.08 2025
author: Kevin Wilson
name: val
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
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]]> 220341391 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525426051 val 5 4.61 2025
author: John Green
name: val
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 5
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]]> 50144 Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine of Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras. Kitchen and its companion story, "Moonlight Shadow," are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.]]> 160 Banana Yoshimoto 0802142443 val 0 to-read 3.91 1988
author: Banana Yoshimoto
name: val
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1988
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]]> 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 val 0 to-read 3.70 2006
author: Elena Ferrante
name: val
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
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]]> 54860610 One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the ever looming absence of her incarcerated father and the path we must take to both honor and overcome our origins.

For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who understands her. She thinks she understands him too. He's sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just as afraid of the dark. She's certain that one day they'll be reunited again, and she'll finally feel complete. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there.

Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where the story really begins.

Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.]]> 224 Ashley C. Ford 1250305977 val 5 4.02 2021
author: Ashley C. Ford
name: val
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/07
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]]> 44000543 128 Matthieu Simard 1552453936 val 0 to-read 3.60 2017
author: Matthieu Simard
name: val
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> 94486 The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.]]> 103 Adolfo Bioy Casares 1590170571 val 0 to-read 4.03 1940
author: Adolfo Bioy Casares
name: val
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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]]> 42086151
Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all.

Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back.

But you aren't worried about that.

After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss? ]]> 272 Luiza Sauma 0241363551 val 0 to-read 3.59 2019
author: Luiza Sauma
name: val
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
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]]> 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 val 3 4.08 2025
author: Emily R. Austin
name: val
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> 220687890 A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK � The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.]]> 336 Tommy Orange 0593311442 val 0 to-read 4.30 2024
author: Tommy Orange
name: val
average rating: 4.30
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]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore val 0 next-up 4.16 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: val
average rating: 4.16
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]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 val 0 next-up 4.12 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: val
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
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]]> 50042494
A new relationship couldn't have come at a better time - her thirties have not been the liberating, uncomplicated experience she was sold. Everywhere she turns, she is reminded of time passing and opportunities dwindling. Friendships are fading, ex-boyfriends are moving on and, worse, everyone's moving to the suburbs. There's no solace to be found in her family, with a mum who's caught in a baffling mid-life makeover and a beloved dad who is vanishing in slow-motion into dementia.

Dolly Alderton's debut novel is funny and tender, filled with whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.]]> 352 Dolly Alderton 0241434548 val 0 next-up 3.86 2020
author: Dolly Alderton
name: val
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
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]]> 52741293 Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good--her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.

Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.]]> 430 Douglas Stuart 0802148042 val 0 next-up 4.29 2020
author: Douglas Stuart
name: val
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
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]]> 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 val 0 next-up 4.28 2015
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: val
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
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]]> 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 val 0 next-up 4.24 2024
author: Chris Whitaker
name: val
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
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]]> 33253215 real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from � and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.]]> 582 John Boyne val 0 next-up 4.51 2017
author: John Boyne
name: val
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
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]]> 60194162 "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 0063251922 val 0 next-up 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: val
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
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]]> 208584952 From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,� says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign� wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular� style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron� (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender.]]> 224 Weike Wang 0593545540 val 4 3.31 2024
author: Weike Wang
name: val
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> 204906164 A touching and deeply funny debut about starting over sober only to discover life’s biggest messes are still waiting right where you left them.

The very last person anyone should worry about is Emma. Yes, hi, she’s an alcoholic. But she’s officially been sober for one entire year. That’s twelve months of better health. Fifty-two whole weeks of focusing on nothing but her nine-to-five office job, group meetings, and avoiding the kind of bad decisions that previously left her awash in shame and regret. It’s also been 365 days of not dating. And with her new dating profile, Emma, 26, of New York is ready to put herself back out there.

Except—was dating always this complicated? And did Emma’s mother really have to choose now to move in with her new boyfriend? Being assigned to plan her office’s holiday party feels like icing on the suddenly very overwhelming cake until her estranged father reappears with devastating news. Icing, meet cherry on top. But then there’s Ben, the charming IT guy who, despite Emma’s awkwardness and shortcomings, seems to maybe actually get her? Sobriety is turning out to be far from the flawless future Emma had once envisioned for herself, but as she allows herself to open up to Ben and confront difficult past relationships, she’s beginning to realize that taking things one day at a time might just be the perfectly imperfect path she’s meant to be on.

Bittersweet and darkly hilarious, Ava Robinson’s debut novel about navigating sobriety and complicated family dynamics is witty, heartbreaking, and profoundly relatable.]]> 352 Ava Robinson 0778310590 val 0 to-read 3.84 2024
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name: val
average rating: 3.84
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]]> 60243188 A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built mirages

What happens when fantasy tears through the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?

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. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.]]> 228 Ling Ma 0374293511 val 0 to-read 3.91 2022
author: Ling Ma
name: val
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
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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—led 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—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are 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 val 0 to-read 4.05 2024
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: val
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 59836981
Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy "book" way of saying "the first one.")

I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day.

I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don’t enjoy it, I’m sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I’ll do my best to make it up to you.]]> Seth Rogan val 4 4.17 2021
author: Seth Rogan
name: val
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
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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 val 0 to-read 3.92 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: val
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 199597622
Memory is Copeland-Stark’s business. Yet after months of reconsolidation treatments at their sleek new flagship facility, Hope Nakano still has no idea what happened to her lost year, or the life she was just beginning to build with her one great love. Each procedure surfaces fragmented clues that erode Hope’s trust in her own memories, especially the ones of Luke. As inconsistencies mount, her search for answers reveals a much larger secret Copeland-Stark is determined to protect.

But everyone has secrets, including Hope.]]> 384 Audrey Lee 0744310393 val 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Audrey Lee
name: val
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 176443453
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole M�ori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings� misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.]]> 352 Rebecca K. Reilly 1668028042 val 5 3.90 2021
author: Rebecca K. Reilly
name: val
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 val 3 3.95 2023
author: Emily Henry
name: val
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/30
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]]> 123942 A Very Easy Death has long been considered one of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpieces. The profoundly moving, day-by-day recounting of her mother’s death “shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence� (The Sunday Telegraph).
Ěý
Powerful, touching, and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is ever likely to forget.]]> 112 Simone de Beauvoir 0394728998 val 0 to-read 4.08 1964
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: val
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 590563
A found cigarette package (contents: some unsmoked cigarettes, three $20 bills, and a lottery ticket) changes the fortune of this struggling set. The ragged company discovers they have won $13.5 million, but none of them can claim the money for lack proper identification. Enlisting the help of Granite, their lives, and fortunes, become forever changed.

Ragged Company is a journey into both the future and the past. Richard Wagamese deftly explores the nature of the comforts these friends find in their ideas of “home,� as he reconnects them to their histories.]]> 376 Richard Wagamese 0385661568 val 0 to-read 4.33 2008
author: Richard Wagamese
name: val
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 61340225 “A love affair so richly and attentively imagined it carries the grace and gravity of memory itself.� ―Leslie Jamison It’s hard to remember now that I was once that girl, lying in the sand in my red swimsuit and swimming late into the day. Sharkbait , he called me.

It’s in the water where she first sees him: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing college, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life. As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters―a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude’s past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn’t fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything―about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants. A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss, and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel, Thirst for Salt , reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who we are and what we love.]]> 272 Madelaine Lucas 1953534651 val 0 to-read 3.82 2023
author: Madelaine Lucas
name: val
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 59808037
Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.]]> 195 Angie Cruz 1250208459 val 0 to-read 3.87 2022
author: Angie Cruz
name: val
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 59721793 A magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles

Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.

Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life--literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle's aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James' world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.

Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.]]> 288 Meg Howrey 038554877X val 0 to-read 4.07 2022
author: Meg Howrey
name: val
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 58090794 304 Karl Geary 1646221133 val 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Karl Geary
name: val
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 32191748 The Unseen World’s heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.]]> 451 Liz Moore 0393354415 val 0 to-read 4.08 2016
author: Liz Moore
name: val
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 41880044
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'.

As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt--given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before--we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.]]> 532 Claire Lombardo 0385544251 val 0 to-read 3.88 2019
author: Claire Lombardo
name: val
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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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—the 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—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."]]> 251 George Saunders 0812993802 val 0 to-read 3.98 2013
author: George Saunders
name: val
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazineĚýeditor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 val 4 4.07 2020
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: val
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
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]]> 150778765 In Help Wanted, Adelle Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and knack for social observation to the world of work.

At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every morning at 3:55. Under the eye of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement―among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her “cool kid� status from high school, a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together and set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot into motion. A darkly comic workplace caper that explores the aches and uses of solidarity, Help Wanted is a deeply human portrait of people trying, against increasingly long odds, to make a living.]]> 288 Adelle Waldman 132402044X val 0 to-read 3.56 2024
author: Adelle Waldman
name: val
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 58065398
Allison Brody is thirty and newly arrived on the east coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, and so she spends it, buying a house on the beach. But then a Category Three hurricane makes landfall and scatters her home up and down the shore, leaving Allison adrift. Should she follow the strange camera man home from the bar and stay in his guest room? Is that a glass vase he smashed on her skull? Can she wipe the blood from her eyes, get in her car and drive to her mother’s? Does she really love the brain surgeon who saved her, or is she just using him for his swimming pool? And is it possible to ever truly heal emotionally without seeking some measure of revenge? A gripping, provocative novel that walks a knife’s edge of comedy and horror, Hurricane Girl is the work of singular talent, a novelist unafraid to explore the intersection of love, sex, violence, and freedom--while celebrating the true joy that can be found in a great swim and a good turkey sandwich.]]> 240 Marcy Dermansky 0593320883 val 0 to-read 3.63 2022
author: Marcy Dermansky
name: val
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 58999184
For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad, this fearless debut chronicles one woman’s escape into a world of obsessive imagination. Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the ghosts of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three’s Company . When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision―to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity―takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three’s Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.]]> 272 Ashley Hutson 0393866645 val 0 to-read 3.76 2022
author: Ashley Hutson
name: val
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 227863236 Glyph follows Ali Smith's 2024 novel Gliff and tells a story hidden in the first novel. Gliff is set in a near future rife with surveillance, where people can be labelled 'unverifiable' by the state. It follows siblings Briar and Rose as they attempt to survive in a world that strives to crush curiosity and meaning.]]> 240 Ali Smith 0241665590 val 0 to-read 0.0 2025
author: Ali Smith
name: val
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 25065629
Before Carrie Brownstein codeveloped and starred in the wildly popular TV comedy Portlandia, she was already an icon to young women for her role as a musician in the feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney. The band was a key part of the early riot- grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest, known for their prodigious guitar shredding and their leftist lyrics against war, traditionalism, and gender roles.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is the deeply personal and revealing narrative of Brownstein's life in music, from ardent fan to pioneering female guitarist to comedic performer and luminary in the independent rock world. Though Brownstein struggled against the music industry's sexist double standards, by 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot on Rolling Stone readers' list of the "25 Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time." This book intimately captures what it feels like to be a young woman in a rock-and-roll band, from her days at the dawn of the underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s through today.]]> 244 Carrie Brownstein 1594486638 val 5 3.83 2015
author: Carrie Brownstein
name: val
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> 44587970
Laura may be burned out. Her hands have been raw from washing as long as she can remember. When she sleeps, she dreams of water; when she wakes, she finds herself lying next to a man who doesn't love her any more. And there is a strange figure dancing in the corner of her vision, always just beyond her reach.

Dark yet luminous, sensual yet chilling, ringing with strange music and laced with dread, Rest and Be Thankful is an unforgettable novel that confirms Emma Glass as a visionary new voice.]]> 144 Emma Glass 1526601079 val 0 to-read 3.51 2020
author: Emma Glass
name: val
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195790706 A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery.

It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites� dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.

Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.]]> 288 Thomas Grattan 0374608180 val 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Thomas Grattan
name: val
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 35716417 They hang up.
“Hello. My name is Joan. I am calling on behalf of—�
They hang up.
“Hello. My name’s Doreen.�

Jane is a telemarketer. She uses a different name each time, and soon it becomes clear that she is calling the same man again and again. Each call is a new battle between them, with him becoming angrier and more threatening. But Jane isn’t calling him at random; Jane has a purpose; Jane has a past which seems to change each time she tells it. The story is revealed through exchanges like ritual incantations.

As the story twists and turns in unexpected ways, it moves from amusing to terrifying—a transition that Austin also handles expertly. A well-crafted and engaging novel, even when the protagonist’s actions are hard to take. –Kirkus Reviews]]> 140 Emily R. Austin val 4 3.90 2017
author: Emily R. Austin
name: val
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 50743767
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.]]> 352 Suleika Jaouad 0399588582 val 0 to-read 4.40 2021
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: val
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 222175384
Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—can be a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.

As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his “unique perspective.� But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gio’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down?

A satirical sendup of tear-jerking trauma plots with a tender portrait of friendship at its core, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.]]> 288 Andrew Boryga 0593471261 val 0 to-read 3.60 2024
author: Andrew Boryga
name: val
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 8303977 Neohelix albolabris —a common woodland snail.

While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world.

Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal.Ěý

Told with wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.]]> 208 Elisabeth Tova Bailey 1565126068 val 0 to-read 4.15 2010
author: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
name: val
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57846320 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781982156121 can be found here.

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents� sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough.

Until Frida has a horrible day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida � ones who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will 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 she can live up to the standards set for mothers � that she can learn to be good.

This propulsive, witty page-turner explores the perils of “perfect� upper-middle-class parenting, the violence enacted upon women by the state and each other, and the boundless love a mother has for her daughter.]]> 336 Jessamine Chan val 0 to-read 3.51 2022
author: Jessamine Chan
name: val
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> 63017297 In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?

At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together?

Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him--setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.

Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .

The winner of France's First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies--how well can you really know your spouse?--and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read--compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable.

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan]]> 272 Maud Ventura 0063274825 val 5 3.67 2021
author: Maud Ventura
name: val
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 val 4 4.27 2024
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: val
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever�

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 val 4 3.78 2024
author: OisĂ­n McKenna
name: val
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band � and meeting the man who would become her husband � her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 val 5 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: val
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> 214868013 A terrible heatwave. A very tense baby shower. It will all end in tears...

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited.

Under a sweltering hot summer day, tensions rise - and by the end of the evening, nothing will ever be the same. Someone started a fire at the house - and everyone's a suspect... Is it Steffi, happily child-free but feeling judged by her friends? Is it Charlotte, desperate to conceive and jealous of those who have? Is it Lauren, who is finding motherhood far, far worse than she imagined? Or is it Nicki herself, who never wanted a baby shower anyway?

In the aftermath, the police put together the facts - but the truth will shock everyone. Even you.

BIG LITTLE LIES meets REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY in the incredible new novel from Holly Bourne - it's the book you'll want to read three times, then give to every woman in your life.]]> 423 Holly Bourne 1529301645 val 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Holly Bourne
name: val
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23492661
From the acclaimed author of Forever, Interrupted and After I Do comes a breathtaking new novel about a young woman whose fate hinges on the choice she makes after bumping into an old flame; in alternating chapters, we see two possible scenarios unfold—with stunningly different results.

At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?

In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Life raises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?

Hannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.]]> 342 Taylor Jenkins Reid val 0 to-read 3.77 2015
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: val
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 122758113
Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing. Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother’s love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood. As time passes, Marianne struggles to adjust, fixated on her mother’s disappearance and the secrets she’s sure her father is keeping from her. Discovering a medieval poem called Pearl and trusting in its promise of consolation, Marianne sets out to make a visual illustration of it, a task that she returns to over and over but somehow never manages to complete. Tormented by an unmarked gravestone in an abandoned chapel and the tidal pull of the river, her childhood home begins to crumble as the past leads her down a path of self-destruction. But can art heal Marianne? And will her own future as a mother help her find peace?]]> 220 Siân Hughes 1911648527 val 0 to-read 3.79 2023
author: Siân Hughes
name: val
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 45835970 An audacious marvel of a novel about baseball and a future America, from the always inventive and exciting author of The Love Wife and Who's Irish

The a not-so-distant future. The AutoAmerica. The half under water. The Internet--the new face of government--is "Aunt Nettie": a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair "Netted" still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on the water if they're not.
The To a Surplus couple--he was a professor, she's still a lawyer--is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten she can hit whatever target she likes with a baseball; her teens find her playing happily in an underground Surplus league. When AutoAmerica re-enters the Olympics--with a special eye on beating ChinRussia--Gwen attracts interest. Soon she's at Net U, falling in love with her coach and considering "crossing over," even as her mother is challenging the AutoAmerican Way with lawsuits that will prove very dangerous.
An astonishing story of an America that seems only too possible, and of a family struggling to maintain its humanity in circumstances that threaten their every value--even their very existence.]]> 301 Gish Jen 1984898221 val 0 to-read 3.59 2020
author: Gish Jen
name: val
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 167582092
'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?' A girl and her mother are on the lam. They've been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River � just two of the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough every night. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. Visions in black ink and living colour. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who's waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person's name is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can sometimes ever do. She must look in the mirror. A big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror. All of the past, all of the present, and all of our possible futures. 'Mirror, mirror, please don't lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me who am I.']]> 512 Trent Dalton 146071332X val 5 4.38 2023
author: Trent Dalton
name: val
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/17
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phew, what a wild ride and i loved every minute of it. a tragically beautiful story. i read the last 200ish pages in practically one sitting. one i'll be thinking about for a while.
]]> 57693639 Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.

In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.]]> 224 Sheila Heti 0374603944 val 0 to-read 3.46 2022
author: Sheila Heti
name: val
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

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

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

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 val 0 to-read 3.72 2024
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: val
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 41880602
But Toby's new life � liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night � is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know � she won't answer his texts or calls.

Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.]]> 373 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0525510877 val 0 to-read 3.61 2019
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: val
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200196202 A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.

’Pemi Aguda opens her collection of twelve stories with the chilling tale of a woman who uncannily resembles her sinister, deceased grandmother. When the woman shows a capacity for deadly violence, she wonders—can evil be genetic, passed from generation to generation?

Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Aguda’s stories unfold against a spectral cityscape where the everyday business of living—the birth of a baby, a market visit, a conversation between mothers and daughters—is charged with an air of supernatural menace. In “Breastmilk� a new mother’s inability to lactate takes on preternatural overtones. In �24, Alhaji Williams Street� a mysterious disease wreaks havoc with frightening precision. In “The Hollow,� an architect stumbles on a vengeful house.

Evocative, strange, and yet familiar, “the speculative conceits of these stories are elegantly balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human in the world� (Lauren Groff).]]> 224 Pemi Aguda 1324065850 val 0 to-read 4.05 2024
author: Pemi Aguda
name: val
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> 220160351 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 368 Kaliane Bradley 166804515X val 0 to-read 3.65 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: val
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 215149232
For the first few months all Yeongju does is cry, but the long hours in the shop also give her time to mull over what makes a good bookseller and store. As she starts to read hungrily, host author events, and develop her own bookselling philosophy, she eases into her new setting. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that connect them all, she finds her new story as the Hyunam-dong Bookshop transforms into an inviting space for lost souls to rest, heal, and remember it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again.]]> 320 Hwang Bo-Reum 1639736379 val 0 to-read 3.74 2022
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: val
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214151232 A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.]]> 391 Silvia Park 1668021668 val 0 to-read 3.97 2025
author: Silvia Park
name: val
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 59336625
As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko’s past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.]]> 224 Mieko Kawakami 1609456998 val 0 to-read 3.70 2011
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: val
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53223710
These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.

Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.]]> 192 Mieko Kawakami 1609456211 val 0 to-read 3.80 2009
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: val
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 51544112
But Ārama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there’s aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters.

Here is a novel that is both raw and sublime, a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction. Haere mai, Becky Manawatu.]]> 328 Becky Manawatu val 0 to-read 4.52 2019
author: Becky Manawatu
name: val
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60302358
His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.

Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water.

As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

The third novel by the award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, Limberlost is an extraordinary chronicle of life and land: of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.]]> 240 Robbie Arnott 1922458767 val 0 to-read 4.20 2022
author: Robbie Arnott
name: val
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 207982483
Emma watched her mother's kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea. Six years later, her brother, who had not spoken since their mother was lost, warns Emma of the curse of death that she brought to anyone who looked on her face-before tragedy befalls him too.

Emma consigns herself to a solitary life at sea, where she can do no more harm. After years alone, she is mysteriously drawn to land. And she docks at an island, afraid of what her arrival might mean for the welcoming man and his daughter waving from the jetty.

But who knows where our stories begin and end or how they are entwined? Who knows whether now, on the island, she begins a new tale-or takes a role in a story that began generations ago with a feast in the forest, or a chest of gold coins plunged into the sea, or an orphan in a bookshop beguiled by an elusive and troubled woman?

Finegan Kruckemeyer's astonishing debut, The End and Everything Before It, is a sweeping, joyous novel about love, loss and the power of stories-an uplifting journey into our deepest humanity.]]> 272 Finegan Kruckemeyer 1922790737 val 0 to-read 4.25 2024
author: Finegan Kruckemeyer
name: val
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 175729372
When Yael Silver’s world comes crashing down, she looks to the past for answers and finds solace in surprising places. An unconventional new friendship, a seaside safe space and an unsettling amount of dairy help her to heal, as she wrestles with her demons � and some truly terrible erotic literature.

Funny and tender, Everyone and Everything is about friendship, grief and the deep, frustrating bond between sisters. It asks what makes us who we are and what leads us onto ledges. Perfect for fans of Sorrow and Bliss, Nora Ephron and Victoria Hannan, this is an intimate, wry and wise exploration of one woman’s journey to the brink and back.]]> 308 Nadine J. Cohen 0645757802 val 0 to-read 4.27 2023
author: Nadine J. Cohen
name: val
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 59682682 349 Kirsten Cram 0578979853 val 0 to-read 4.39 2021
author: Kirsten Cram
name: val
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
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]]> 215359186
Jeanne learns from an early age to dodge her father’s abuse, but her mother and sister resign themselves to his brutality. One day when she is eight he attacks her viciously, angered by her self-assurance. Convinced that the village doctor will put an end to their nightmare, she is shocked by his silence.

From then on, Jeanne’s hatred of her father and her disgust at the doctor’s cowardice drive her on. At boarding school she experiences five years of respite, but is then triggered by an unbearable replica of the violence that started it all. Moving to Lausanne, unable to come to terms with her past and to engage fully with life, she nevertheless finds solace in the arms of lovers and in the waters of Lake Geneva, while further tragedy fuels her rage.

My Favourite is a powerful novel about departure and return, of love, guilt and shame, and the paralysing effects of trauma. Sarah JollienFardel forcefully describes the price to be paid for Jeanne’s hard-won emancipation, as history inexorably repeats itself.]]> 205 Sarah Jollien-Fardel 1911648705 val 0 to-read 3.85
author: Sarah Jollien-Fardel
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average rating: 3.85
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]]> 205973370
“How rare, this delicacy—this calm, sweet, desolated wisdom.”—Helen Garner

The Burrow follows members of the Lee family as they navigate grief and hope in their quiet Australian Jin, an emergency physician and father; Amy, a published author and mother; Lucie, their bookish and introverted ten-year-old; and Pauline, Amy’s mother who’s trying to make amends. Racked with grief for Ruby—Lucie’s baby sister who died in a shocking accident—the family adopts a rabbit in the hopes of bringing much-needed cheer to their home. At first, each family member benefits from the distraction of a new and needy creature, but when a violent home invasion breaks their fragile sense of peace, the family is forced to confront the terrible circumstances surrounding Ruby’s death.Atmospheric and tautly lyrical, Melanie Cheng’s slim novel brings together four distinct perspectives—and one wide-eyed rabbit—to reveal the enormity of loss, long-buried family secrets, and how to survive in a newfound world after the ultimate tragedy.]]> 200 Melanie Cheng 1959030868 val 0 to-read 4.00 2024
author: Melanie Cheng
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average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
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]]> 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]> 216 Toni Morrison val 0 to-read 4.13 1970
author: Toni Morrison
name: val
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
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]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante val 0 to-read 4.08 2011
author: Elena Ferrante
name: val
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
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]]> 199344873
She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.]]> 498 Claire Lombardo 0385549555 val 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Claire Lombardo
name: val
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 15811545
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.Ěý

Full of Ozeki's signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.]]> 432 Ruth Ozeki 0670026638 val 0 to-read 4.06 2013
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: val
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
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]]> 58537371
One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.]]> 277 Leila Mottley 0593318935 val 0 to-read 3.95 2022
author: Leila Mottley
name: val
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
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]]> 26883528 Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness and her doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.]]> 218 Deborah Levy 1620406691 val 0 to-read 3.49 2015
author: Deborah Levy
name: val
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2015
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]]> 53341634 What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.

But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.

This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.
_]]> 289 Claire Fuller 0241457440 val 0 to-read 3.74 2021
author: Claire Fuller
name: val
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2021
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]]> 63903384
In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic and sludgy with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over and over again, the stun operator at Mr. Milo’s slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever that may take him. It’s important to calm the cows, especially now that they seem so unsettled. One runs headlong into the side of a barn, 22 more hurl themselves off the side of a cliff. Bronco Gil, their foreman, thinks it’s a jaguar or a wild boar, Edgar Wilson does not. But what is certain is that there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and animals, to murder and madness.]]> 99 Ana Paula Maia 1913867498 val 0 to-read 3.91 2013
author: Ana Paula Maia
name: val
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
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]]> 51541232
After a field trip to the desert yields nothing more than a colleague with a tenure problem and a student with an unwelcome crush on him, Wells returns home to find his world crumbling. His daughter has lost her edge at chess, she has developed mysterious eye problems, and her memory has lost its grasp. Powerless in the face of his daughter’s slow deterioration, he finds a mysterious note asking for help tucked into the pocket of a jacket he’s ordered off eBay. Desperate for someone to save, he sets off to New Mexico in secret on a quixotic rescue mission.

A deeply affecting story about the lengths to which loss and grief will drive us, Telephone is a Percival Everett novel we should have seen coming all along, one that will shake you to the core as it asks questions about the power of narrative to save.]]> 216 Percival Everett 1644450224 val 0 to-read 3.97 2020
author: Percival Everett
name: val
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
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]]> 195790838
We are born, and life breaks us. We spend the rest of our lives trying to put ourselves back together. “To return, to be made whole again. This is another word for love,� writes Carvell Wallace. In Another Word for Love , Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America. What follows could be another narrow story of pain and survival, recounting hurt and centering suffering. But this is not that kind of memoir.

Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it―making sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.

With courage, vulnerability, and a remarkable expansiveness of spirit―not to mention an unrivaled, thrilling, and stylistic storytelling verve―in a world that can feel stacked against it, Another Word for Love makes an irresistible case for life, for healing, for the fullness of our humanity, and, of course, for love itself. This extraordinary, one-of-a-kind book is a radical meditation on healing, told through the lenses of justice, sex, family, and death. It could be called a theory of life itself―a theory of being that will leave you open to the expansive wonder of the world.]]> 272 Carvell Wallace 0374237824 val 5 4.29 2024
author: Carvell Wallace
name: val
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> 57677144
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.

Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.

Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.]]> 240 Weike Wang 0525654844 val 0 to-read 3.86 2022
author: Weike Wang
name: val
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
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]]> 171793386
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Murder Rule comes an emotional novel of suspense about two families at war.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?

Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.

HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?

Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive "fans."

HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?

Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters—finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon’s wealthy, powerful family, Nina’s parents recognize that if playing by the rules won’t get them anywhere, it’s time to break them.]]> 328 Dervla McTiernan val 0 to-read 4.06 2024
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name: val
average rating: 4.06
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]]> 221897664 All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe's world. All Ettie wants is to escape it.

The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows . . .

Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.

The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.]]> 304 Lucy Steeds 1399819569 val 0 to-read 4.34 2025
author: Lucy Steeds
name: val
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
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]]> 211953309 A dazzling debut novel set in 1980s New York, when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility—and looming danger.

It was the summer of 1986, when the girl was found dead in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum—half-naked, legs splayed, arms flung over her head. Larynx crushed.

There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible—when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents� medicine cabinet.

Flanagan’s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?

Freud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement,� but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.]]> 368 Cynthia Weiner 0593798848 val 3 3.72
author: Cynthia Weiner
name: val
average rating: 3.72
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rating: 3
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]]> 182095845 272 Amy Lin 195850632X val 5 4.23 2024
author: Amy Lin
name: val
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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]]> 199531966
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.]]> 400 Clare Chambers 0063258226 val 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Clare Chambers
name: val
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
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]]> 49110165
Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.]]> 352 Meg Mason val 0 to-read 4.08 2020
author: Meg Mason
name: val
average rating: 4.08
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]]> 48570454 Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.]]> 264 Yaa Gyasi val 0 to-read 4.11 2020
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: val
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
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]]> 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X val 4 3.74 2024
author: Patric Gagne
name: val
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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]]> 51394 In this memoir of perceptions and ideas, renowned feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a stirringly intimate account of growing up in the South. Stitching together the gossamer threads of her girlhood memories, hooks shows us one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. Along the way, hooks sheds light on the vulnerability of children, the special unfurling of female creativity, and the imbalance of a society that confers marriage’s joys upon men and its silences on women. In a world where daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about, hooks uncovers the solace to be found in solitude, the comfort to be had in the good company of books.
Bone Black allows us to bear witness to the awakening of a legendary author’s awareness that writing is her most vital breath.
“With the emotion of poetry, the narrative of a novel, and the truth of experience, bell hooks weaves a girlhood memoir you won’t be able to put down―or forget. Bone Black takes us into the cave of self-creation.� ―Gloria Steinem]]> 208 bell hooks 0805055126 val 0 to-read 4.26 1996
author: bell hooks
name: val
average rating: 4.26
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]]> 6149 Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.]]> 325 Toni Morrison val 0 to-read 3.96 1987
author: Toni Morrison
name: val
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1987
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]]> 52196685
At eighteen, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.

Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson’s death shifted the public consciousness of the epidemic and brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, it is a novel that speaks to the question of what home and family means when we try to forge a life for ourselves in a world that can be harsh and unpredictable. It is written at the far reaches of love and understanding, and zeroes in on the moments where those two forces reach for each other, and sometimes touch.]]> 288 Carter Sickels 1938235622 val 0 to-read 4.42 2020
author: Carter Sickels
name: val
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/09
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]]>