en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 11:18:46 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 648073 'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman

With a lucid and clear narrative style William Chester Jordan has turned his considerable talents to composing a standard textbook of the opening centuries of the second millennium in Europe. He brings this period of dramatic social, political, economic, cultural, religious and military change, alive to the general reader. Jordan presents the early Medieval period as a lost world, far removed from our current age, which had risen from the smoking rubble of the Roman Empire, but from which we are cut off by the great plagues and famines that ended it. Broad in scope, punctuated with impressive detail, and highly accessible, Jordan's book is set to occupy a central place in university courses of the medieval period.]]> 400 William Chester Jordan 0140166645 Adam 0 currently-reading 3.70 2001
author: William Chester Jordan
name: Adam
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Adam 0 goblin mode bb 4.21 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/04
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goblin mode bb
]]> 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Adam 0 3.57 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Adam
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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Intentionally slow, but very pleasant read.
]]> 127282370
Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes, and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson’s passion for dialogue and dissent. The range of subjects is wide―from Prince to Carolee Schneemann to Matthew Barney to Lhasa de Sela to Kara Walker―but certain themes intergenerational exchange; love and friendship; feminist and queer issues, especially as they shift over time; subversion, transgression, and perversity; the roles of the critic and of language in relation to visual and performance arts; forces that feed or impede certain bodies and creators; and the fruits and follies of a life spent devoted to making.

Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking, and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts. As such, it is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.]]> 336 Maggie Nelson 1644452812 Adam 0 3.68 2024
author: Maggie Nelson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/30
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Lovely! and also intense and also intimidating
]]> 18490649 Blood and Bone is sure to delight Malazan fans.

Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern, and now countless adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. All these adventurers have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait -- hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword. And beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very beginnings.

Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers to mysteries that Shimmer, second in command, wonders should even be sought. Arriving also, part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. And with him is a Tiste Andii who was found washed ashore and cannot remember his past life, yet who commands far more power than he really should. Also venturing north is said to be a mighty champion, a man who once fought for the Malazans, the bearer of a sword that slays gods: Whiteblade.

And lastly, far to the south, a woman guards the shore awaiting both her allies and her enemies. Silverfox, newly incarnated Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire continent and beyond.

Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, "Assail" is the final chapter in the epic story of the Empire of Malaz.]]> 544 Ian C. Esslemont 0765329980 Adam 0 4.14 2013
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/22
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A solid ending, the rest is whatever
]]> 1945329 248 Euripides 0872208222 Adam 0 don't mess with Aphrodite 3.90 -438
author: Euripides
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: -438
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/11
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don't mess with Aphrodite
]]> 38598541
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.]]> 51 Audre Lorde 0241339723 Adam 0 yep 4.56 2018
author: Audre Lorde
name: Adam
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
yep
]]> 588234 ]]> 262 Leslie Marmon Silko 0140086838 Adam 0 Pretty tense! I enjoyed it 3.84 1977
author: Leslie Marmon Silko
name: Adam
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:
Pretty tense! I enjoyed it
]]> 40963358 Ìý
A young half–Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona—only something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound.
Ìý
So begins Dhalgren , Samuel R. Delany’s masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take . . .
Ìý
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.
Ìý]]> 836 Samuel R. Delany 1480461784 Adam 0 Hmmmmm, now I want to ball 3.79 1975
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Adam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:
Hmmmmm, now I want to ball
]]> 171686270 0 Fyodor Dostoevsky Adam 0 Zossima seems like a real one 3.33 1880
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Adam
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
Zossima seems like a real one
]]> 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Adam 0 4.22 2018
author: Madeline Miller
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves:
review:
Very witchy, as you may expect
]]> 43721059
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation� bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination� that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run�?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.]]> 464 Louise Erdrich 0062671200 Adam 0 extremely fantastic 4.05 2020
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Adam
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/27
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extremely fantastic
]]> 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]> 647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 Adam 0 3.98 1981
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:
I liked this a lot better than I liked the Satanic Verses (which wasn't very much)
]]> 11026 Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprenctices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. And, as London erupts into riot, Barnaby Rudge struggles to escape the curse of his own past. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.]]> 744 Charles Dickens 0140437282 Adam 0 3.81 1841
author: Charles Dickens
name: Adam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1841
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
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awfully pro-popery, all things considered
]]> 3055167 64 Doris Lessing 1857997638 Adam 0 it short 3.71 1996
author: Doris Lessing
name: Adam
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:
it short
]]> 249 Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."]]> 318 Henry Miller 0802131786 Adam 0 it horny 3.69 1934
author: Henry Miller
name: Adam
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:
it horny
]]> 13573402 Ìý
To the south, the desert tribes are united by the arrival of a foreign warleader, a veteran commander in battered ashen mail whom his men call, the Grey Ghost. This warleader takes the tribes on a raid like none other, deep into the heart of Thaumaturg lands. While word comes to K'azz, and mercenary company the Crimson Guard, of a contract in Jacuruku. And their employer... none other than Ardata herself.]]> 586 Ian C. Esslemont 0593064461 Adam 0 4.02 2012
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
Took me a long time for what was ostensibly a fun quick read
]]> 95186 357 Kiran Desai 0802142818 Adam 0 3.46 2005
author: Kiran Desai
name: Adam
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
More enjoyable than I was expecting!
]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Adam 0 SHE MARRIED HER COUSIN 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at: 2015/09/21
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
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SHE MARRIED HER COUSIN
]]> 143479 The larger divisions of the book concern the ancestry of Stradivari; his violins, viols, and violoncellos; his aims in relation to tone; his materials; his varnish; his construction; his labels; the number of instruments he made; the growth of their reputation. Some of the topics discussed under these main headings Stradivari's apprenticeship to Amati; comparison of his work with that of Amati; the tone of the pre-1684 Stradivari violin; changes between 1684 and 1690; distinguishing characteristics of many existing violins, violas, and cellos, their specific location, etc.; erroneous views concerning Stradivari's material; his preference for the wood of certain trees in given years; the mystery of the ingredients of Stradivari's varnish; the effect of varnish on tone; the measurements of Stradivari's instruments; the time spent by Stradivari in making a violin; the years of greatest production; the largest number dating from one year; estimate of the total number made; an estimate of the actual sum he charged for an instrument; the introduction of Stradivari instruments into France and England; the first revelation of their supreme merit; and many other interesting topics.
Musicologists, violinists, makers of instruments, historians of culture, and those who count themselves simply as music lovers will find this to be an extremely interesting and informative account.]]> 80 J.M. Synge 0486275620 Adam 0 isn't he just though 3.73 1907
author: J.M. Synge
name: Adam
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1907
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves:
review:
isn't he just though
]]> 281415 SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY 288 Ngaio Marsh 0006512402 Adam 0 3.64 1953
author: Ngaio Marsh
name: Adam
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:
They weren't in jeopardy very long tbh
]]> 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 Adam 0 4.11 2020
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:
well written, but mostly just ok
]]> 22929741
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.

Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.]]> 160 Maggie Nelson 1555977073 Adam 0 Extraordinarily beautiful 4.04 2015
author: Maggie Nelson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/10
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Extraordinarily beautiful
]]> 118734
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.]]> 530 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140440798 Adam 0
sorry, force of habit

Ivan, noooooooo!]]> 4.52 1879
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1879
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
Mitya, nooooooo!

sorry, force of habit

Ivan, noooooooo!
]]> 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Adam 0 4.15 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
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I have been Persuaded! Good time by the end
]]> 26854453 Homo sovieticus.� This ‘red man�: that’s whom Alexievich has been studying since her first book, published in 1985 � a people and a culture condemned to extinction by the implosion of the
Soviet Union. In this magnificent requiem to a civilization in ruins, the author of Voices from Chernobyl reinvents a singular, polyphonic literary form, bringing together the voices of dozens of witnesses to the collapse of the USSR in a formidable attempt to chart the disappearance of a culture and to surmise what new kind of man may emerge from the rubble.
Alexievich’s method is simple: ‘I don’t ask people about socialism, I ask about love, jealousy, childhood, old age. Music, dances, hairstyles. The myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life. This is the only way to chase the catastrophe into the framework of the mundane and attempt to tell a story. Try to figure things out. It never ceases to amaze me how interesting ordinary, everyday life is. There are an endless number of human truths... History’s sole concern is the facts; emotions are out of its realm of interest. It’s considered improper to admit feelings into history. I look at the world as a writer, not strictly an historian. I am fascinated by people...�
From this fascination emerges a brilliant, poignant and unique portrait of post-Soviet society, built on the traumatisms of its predecessors� collapse.]]> 695 Svetlana Alexievich 1910695114 Adam 0 holy shit 4.56 2013
author: Svetlana Alexievich
name: Adam
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves:
review:
holy shit
]]> 143465
]]> 144 Leo Tolstoy Adam 0 3.95 2014
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2014/06/04
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
Pretty easy to imagine an intense, bearded man staring at me while I read all of these.
]]> 53064 384 Thomas Mann 0141181737 Adam 0 3.92 1911
author: Thomas Mann
name: Adam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at: 2020/09/08
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
Hmmmm, well written, but a creep!
]]> 354620
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 272 Margaret Cavendish 0140433724 Adam 0 3.25
author: Margaret Cavendish
name: Adam
average rating: 3.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2016/05/11
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
re: Assaulted and Pursued Chastity - she's just not that into you, dude.
]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. �The Judgment,� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and �The Stoker,� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with �The Metamorphosis,� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are �In the Penal Colony,� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and �A Hunger Artist,� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Adam 0 4.08 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at: 2009/02/14
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
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]]> 11487809 Ìý
Darujhistan, city of dreams, city of blue flames, is peaceful at last; its citizens free to return to politicking, bickering, trading and, above all, enjoying the good things in life. Yet there are those who will not allow the past to remain buried. A scholar digging in the plains stumbles across an ancient sealed vault. The merchant Humble Measure schemes to drive out the remaining Malazan invaders. And the surviving agents of a long-lost power are stirring, for they sense change and so, opportunity. While, as ever at the centre of everything, a thief in a red waistcoat and of rotund proportions walks the streets, juggling in one hand custard pastries, and in the other the fate of the city itself.
Ìý
Far to the south, fragments of the titanic Moon's Spawn have crashed into the Rivan Sea creating a series of isles... and a fortune hunter's dream. A Malazan veteran calling himself 'Red' ventures out to try his luck -- and perhaps say goodbye to old friends. But there he finds far more than he'd bargained for as the rush to claim the Spawn's treasures descends into a mad scramble of chaos and bloodshed. For powers from across the world have gathered here, searching for the legendary Throne of Night. The impact of these events are far reaching, it seems. On an unremarkable island off the coast of Genabackis, a people who had turned their backs upon all such strivings now lift their masked faces towards the mainland and recall the ancient prophesy of a return.
Ìý
And what about the ex-Claw of the Malazan Empire who now walks the uttermost edge of creation? His mission -- the success or failure of which the Queen of Dreams saw long ago -- is destined to shape far more than anyone could have ever imagined.]]> 605 Ian C. Esslemont 059306450X Adam 0 hey, it does get better! 4.16
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
hey, it does get better!
]]> 77013 As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.]]> 288 William Faulkner Adam 0 A fish, indeed 3.71 1930
author: William Faulkner
name: Adam
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
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A fish, indeed
]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Adam 0 3.87 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 30689343
Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century--this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now--as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.]]> 647 Peter Frankopan 1101912375 Adam 0 4.17 2015
author: Peter Frankopan
name: Adam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:
It was good! Not entirely what I was hoping for but still good
]]> 10506
As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy.

In this fascinating, lyrical tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.]]> 528 Umberto Eco 0156030373 Adam 0 The island was fine, I guess 3.50 1994
author: Umberto Eco
name: Adam
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves:
review:
The island was fine, I guess
]]> 1376772 256 Anthony Powell 0006540414 Adam 0 4.23 1962
author: Anthony Powell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2014/01/16
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
Love is different things to different people indeed
]]> 1494 142 Euripides 0195061667 Adam 0 3.84 -438
author: Euripides
name: Adam
average rating: 3.84
book published: -438
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
review:
If only drunk hercules could solve all our problems
]]> 145307 278 Isaac Bashevis Singer 0374524807 Adam 0 3.98 1978
author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
more like shosho am I right? I'm not? Can't win em all
]]> 44776548 Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year.

Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs–including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.� For Smith–inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing–the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.

Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world.

Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.]]> 171 Patti Smith 0525657681 Adam 0 3.81 2019
author: Patti Smith
name: Adam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves:
review:
It would be very nice to have the time to float around like this. I still wouldn't be anywhere as good at thinking, but it's be nice!
]]> 56783258 When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.]]> 626 Anthony Doerr 1982168439 Adam 0 4.24 2021
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves:
review:
Wow this guy really likes that book
]]> 8447255
Her enemy, the Forkrul Assail, seek to cleanse the world, to annihilate everything. In the realm of Kurald Galain, home to the long lost city of Kharkanas, a refugees commanded by Yedan Derryg, the Watch, await the breaching of Lightfall, and the coming of the Tiste Liosan. In this war they cannot win, they will die in the name of an empty city and a queen with no subjects.

Elsewhere, the three Elder Gods, Kilmandaros, Errastas and Sechul Lath, work to shatter the chains binding Korabas, the Otataral Dragon. Against her force of utter devastation, no mortal can stand. At the Gates of Starvald Demelain, the Azath House sealing the portal is dying. Soon will come the Eleint, dragons, and a final cataclysm.]]> 921 Steven Erikson 0593046358 Adam 0 That was pretty fun! 4.50 2011
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves:
review:
That was pretty fun!
]]> 4703427
In Letherii, the exiled Malazan army commanded by Adjunct Tavore begins its march into the eastern Wastelands, to fight for an unknown cause against an enemy it has never seen.

And in these same Wastelands, others gather to confront their destinies. The warlike Barghast, thwarted in their vengeance against the Tiste Edur, seek new enemies beyond the border and Onos Toolan, once immortal T'lan Imass now mortal commander of the White Face clan, faces insurrection. To the south, the Perish Grey Helms parlay passage through the treacherous kingdom of Bolkando. Their intention is to rendezvous with the Bonehunters but their vow of allegiance to the Malazans will be sorely tested. And ancient enclaves of an Elder Race are in search of salvation--not among their own kind, but among humans--as an old enemy draws ever closer to the last surviving bastion of the K'Chain Che'Malle.

So this last great army of the Malazan Empire is resolved to make one final defiant, heroic stand in the name of redemption. But can deeds be heroic when there is no one to witness them? And can that which is not witnessed forever change the world? Destines are rarely simple, truths never clear but one certainty is that time is on no one's side. For the Deck of Dragons has been read, unleashing a dread power that none can comprehend�

In a faraway land and beneath indifferent skies, the final chapter of 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' has begun…]]> 1280 Steven Erikson 0765316552 Adam 0 Well, THAT got confusing fast 4.30 2009
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves:
review:
Well, THAT got confusing fast
]]> 1496 69 Euripides 1566631114 Adam 0 convenient in the end, huh 4.03 -405
author: Euripides
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: -405
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves:
review:
convenient in the end, huh
]]> 24965
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard wanted to understand the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when God commanded him to offer his son as a human sacrifice. Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to forget it. He resigned himself to the loss of his son, acting according to his faith. In other words, one must be willing to give up all his or her earthly possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever it is that he or she loves more than God. Abraham had passed the test -- his love for God proved greater than anything else in him. And because a good and just Creator would not want a father to kill his son, God intervened at the last moment to prevent the sacrifice.]]> 152 Søren Kierkegaard 0143037579 Adam 0 4.02 1843
author: Søren Kierkegaard
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1843
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves:
review:
y'know, I'd always wondered if there was a teleological suspension of the ethical so it is good to know there might be
]]> 59924
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.

The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity's self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. It is a classic of the science fiction genre.]]> 176 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060512741 Adam 0 Classic monkey's paw stuff 4.12 1971
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves:
review:
Classic monkey's paw stuff
]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Adam 0 3.98 1962
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2014/08/28
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:
Even for a good day, I can't even
]]> 102534 Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.]]> 782 Jane Smiley 0141000031 Adam 0 4.32 1997
author: Jane Smiley
name: Adam
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/13
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves:
review:
Took awhile to get through em all, but good fun. Shout out to Sarcastic Halli but the clear winner has to be the guy who met a demon while taking a shit
]]> 1052146
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ìýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theÌýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateÌýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 511 Anonymous 0140449450 Adam 0 3.81 2005
author: Anonymous
name: Adam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/11
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves:
review:
Lots of fun stories in here, and also some boring ones, and some peculiar ideas about anatomy
]]> 18490602 New York Times bestselling author Steven Erikson, set in the world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Wurms of Blearmouth.

Tyranny comes in many guises, and tyrants thrive in palaces and one-room hovels, in back alleys and playgrounds. Tyrants abound on the verges of civilization, where disorder frays the rule of civil conduct and propriety surrenders to brutal imposition. Millions are made to kneel and yet more millions die horrible deaths in a welter of suffering and misery.

But leave all that behind and plunge into escapist fantasy of the most irrelevant kind, and in the ragged wake of the tale told in Lees of Laughter's End, those most civil adventurers, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, along with their suitably phlegmatic manservant, Emancipor Reese, make gentle landing upon a peaceful beach, beneath a quaint village at the foot of a majestic castle. There they make acquaintance with the soft-hearted and generous folk of Spendrugle, which lies at the mouth of the Blear River and falls under the benign rule of the Lord of Wurms in his lovely keep.

Make welcome, then, to Spendrugle's memorable residents, including the man who should have stayed dead, the woman whose prayers should never have been answered, the tax collector everyone ignores, the ex-husband town militiaman who never married, the beachcomber who lives in his own beard, the now singular lizard cat who used to be plural, and the girl who likes to pee in your lap. And of course, hovering over all, the denizen of the castle keep, Lord--Ah, but there lies this tale.]]> 208 Steven Erikson 0765376229 Adam 0 4.00 2012
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/03/06
shelves:
review:
Probably the best of the lot with these wacky guys
]]> 7143429 180 Steven Erikson 1848630581 Adam 0 Silly, yes, but also bad 3.65 2009
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves:
review:
Silly, yes, but also bad
]]> 29610749 The Fiends of Nightmaria is a new novella from New York Times bestselling author Steven Erikson, set in the world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The king is dead, long live King Bauchelain the First, crowned by the Grand Bishop Korbal Broach. Both are, of course, ably assisted in the running of the Kingdom of Farrog by their slowly unravelling servant, Emancipor Reese. However, tensions are mounting between Farrog and the neighboring country of Nightmaria, the mysterious home of the Fiends. Their ambassador, Ophal D Neeth Flatroq, seeks an audience with King Bauchelain, who has thus far rebuffed his overtures. But the necromancer has some other things on his plate.

To quell potential rebellion nearly all the artists, poets, and bards in the city have been put to death. A few survivors languish in the dungeons, bemoaning their fates. Well, just moaning in general really...and maybe plotting escape and revenge.]]> 99 Steven Erikson 1786360101 Adam 0 Decidedly silly 3.81 2016
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves:
review:
Decidedly silly
]]> 29347839
One of countless messages intercepted by the crack team of British decoders, the Zimmermann telegram was a top-secret message from Berlin inviting Mexico to join Japan in an invasion of the United States: Mexico would recover her lost American territories while keeping the U.S. occupied on her side of the Atlantic.

How Britain managed to inform America of Germany's plan without revealing that the German codes had been broken makes for an incredible, true story of espionage, intrigue, and international politics as only Barbara W. Tuchman could tell it.]]> Barbara W. Tuchman Adam 0 3.99 1958
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Adam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves:
review:
Some good history writing! Kinda wandered a bit but an enjoyable read
]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Adam 0 4.12 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves:
review:
not an auspicious start for my relationship with booktok
]]> 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 Adam 0
Wait what do you mean that was just what the title blurb said! Anyways very very good]]> 3.66 2020
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Adam
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves:
review:
Haunting.... luminous....

Wait what do you mean that was just what the title blurb said! Anyways very very good
]]> 52905 Friday, winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française, is a sly, enchanting retelling of the legend of Robinson Crusoe by the man the New Yorker calls "France's best and probably best-known writer." Cast away on a tropical island, Michel Tournier's god-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against incredible odds, he almost succeeds. Then a mulatto named Friday appears and teaches Robinson that there are, after all, better things in life than civilization.

]]> 240 Michel Tournier 0801855926 Adam 0 3.83 1967
author: Michel Tournier
name: Adam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves:
review:
A little dicey in the middle, but I guess who wouldn't want to fuck an island
]]> 52892857 Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

â€Áè±ð²¹»å¾±²Ô²µ The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women’s literature as world literature. In writing us into the world—bravely, unapologetically, and honestly—Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay.â€� —Tayari Jones

�The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.� —Kiese Laymon]]> 287 Alice Walker 0143135694 Adam 0 4.40 1982
author: Alice Walker
name: Adam
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves:
review:
Fantastic, lived up to its reputation
]]> 938534
Hidden hands pluck the strings of tyranny like a fell chorus. While the bards sing their tragic tales, somewhere in the distance can be heard the baying of Hounds...And in the distant city of Black Coral, where rules Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, ancient crimes awaken, intent on revenge. It seems Love and Death are indeed about to arrive...hand in hand, dancing.

A thrilling, harrowing novel of war, intrigue and dark, uncontrollable magic, Toll the Hounds is the new chapter in Erikson's monumental series - epic fantasy at its most imaginative and storytelling at its most exciting.]]> 1294 Steven Erikson 0765348853 Adam 0 4.35 2008
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves:
review:
As advertised! There were, hounds, and they were tolled. Sorry, Tall, dark and placid
]]> 80081 An enchanting story that has inspired generations of writers, including Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and KeatsÌý

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and initiates Lucius into her cult. It has long been disputed whether Apuleius meant this last-minute conversion seriously or as a final comic surprise and the challenge of interpretation continues to keep readers fascinated. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writers such as Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness and sheer exuberance, and The Golden Ass remains the most continuously and accessibly amusing book to have survived from Classical antiquity.
]]> 256 Apuleius 0253200369 Adam 0 A good Ass 3.90 159
author: Apuleius
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 159
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/22
date added: 2024/01/03
shelves:
review:
A good Ass
]]> 46170 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Adam 0 3.98 1940
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves:
review:
Oh man can't wait to find out who this bell tolls for come on guys lets go see whoa
]]> 259020 Henry James explores his favorite themes in this novel â€� money, class,Ìýdesire,Ìýand theÌýcollision of European and American cultures.

Excerpt:
He handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. "My Golden Bowl," he observed--and it sounded on his lips as if it said everything. He left the important object--for as "important" it did somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. Simple but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. It might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height.]]> 591 Henry James 0140432353 Adam 0 a very florid bowl 3.79 1904
author: Henry James
name: Adam
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1904
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves:
review:
a very florid bowl
]]> 17668563
In contrast, Hesiod's "Works and Days", written to advise his indolent brother Perseus, is an intriguing, sophisticated combination of ethical maxims, social and political comment and superstitious law.

Elegiac rather than epic, the works of Theognis - written some two centuries after Hesiod - include theological speculations, love lyrics and moral advice for his protege Kurnos, reflecting the moods and themes of an aristocratic poet who mourned a changing Greek society.]]> 176 Hesiod Adam 0 3.48 -800
author: Hesiod
name: Adam
average rating: 3.48
book published: -800
rating: 0
read at: 2014/03/11
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves:
review:
Paid for by the campaign to re-elect Zeus
]]> 51648276
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

Duration: 11 hours 39 minutes.]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk Adam 0 Fantastic 3.93 2009
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Adam
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2023/11/06
shelves:
review:
Fantastic
]]> 463376 303 Gene Wolfe 0671416162 Adam 0 4.02 1981
author: Gene Wolfe
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/06
shelves:
review:
they breast boobily in this a lot
]]> 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Adam 0 A little too precious 3.88 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Adam
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2012/10/11
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
review:
A little too precious
]]> 60211 262 Gene Wolfe 0671540661 Adam 0 Sevarian's Very Long Day 3.86 1980
author: Gene Wolfe
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/27
date added: 2023/10/30
shelves:
review:
Sevarian's Very Long Day
]]> 24983
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin--barely of age herself--finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.]]> 578 Connie Willis 0553562738 Adam 0 Lots of BellCon in this one 4.02 1992
author: Connie Willis
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/20
date added: 2023/10/30
shelves:
review:
Lots of BellCon in this one
]]> 752936 A Shropshire Lad, first published in 1896. Scholars and critics have seen in these timeless poems an elegance of taste and perfection of form and feeling comparable to the greatest of the classic. Yet their simple language, strong musical cadences and direct emotional appeal have won these works a wide audience among general readers as well.

This finely produced volume, reprinted from an authoritative edition of A Shropshire Lad, contains all 63 original poems along with a new Index of First Lines and a brief new section of Notes to the Text. Here are poems that deal poignantly with the changing climate of friendship, the fading of youth, the vanity of dreams � poems that are among the most read, shared, and quoted in our language.]]> 51 A.E. Housman 0486264688 Adam 0 A good lad 4.02 1896
author: A.E. Housman
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1896
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/10/30
shelves:
review:
A good lad
]]> 56027 208 John Fowles 0316290270 Adam 0 umm... ok 3.21 1982
author: John Fowles
name: Adam
average rating: 3.21
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/05
date added: 2023/10/05
shelves:
review:
umm... ok
]]> 459064
Erikson’s � Malazan Book of the Fallen � has been recognised the world-over by writers, critics and fans alike � in a recent review of The Bonehunters, the sixth chapter in this remarkable tale, the UK’s Interzone magazine hailed it ‘a masterpiece� and ‘the benchmark for all future works in the field�, while the hugely influential genre website, Ottawa-based SF Site, declared ‘this series has clearly established itself as the most significant work of epic fantasy since Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant�.

Now comes Reaper’s Gale � the seventh Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen � and neither Erikson nor the excitement are showing any sign of letting up. Mauled and now cut adrift by the Malazan Empire, Tavore and her now infamous 14th army have landed on the coast of a strange, unknown continent and find themselves facing an even more dangerous the Tiste Edur, a nightmarish empire pledged to serve the Crippled God�

A brutal, harrowing novel of war, intrigue and dark, uncontrollable magic, this is fantasy at its most imaginative and storytelling at its most thrilling.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 1280 Steven Erikson 0593046315 Adam 0
That aside, I enjoyed most of this book more than I was expecting to.]]> 4.38 2007
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2014/05/21
date added: 2023/09/01
shelves:
review:
The whole thing was "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?" and then at the end the fireworks factory had moved.

That aside, I enjoyed most of this book more than I was expecting to.
]]> 31244 Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap’s expected heir, is found in the Thames, fortunes change hands surprisingly, raising to new heights “Noddy� Boffin, a low-born but kindly clerk who becomes “the Golden Dustman.� Charles Dickens’s last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend encompasses the great themes of his earlier works: the pretensions of the nouveaux riches, the ingenuousness of the aspiring poor, and the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt all who crave it. With its flavorful cast of characters and numerous subplots, Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens’s most complex—and satisfying—novels.]]> 801 Charles Dickens 0375761144 Adam 0 he's a good friend! 4.08 1865
author: Charles Dickens
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1865
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/27
date added: 2023/09/01
shelves:
review:
he's a good friend!
]]> 19803433
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.]]> 144 Joseph de Maistre 0141941669 Adam 0 4.00 1821
author: Joseph de Maistre
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1821
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/05
date added: 2023/08/05
shelves:
review:
ehhhhh questionable takes here
]]> 127738876 Cambridge, one of England's most highly acclaimed young novelists tells their stories with an uncanny authenticity of voice and juxtaposes them to devastating effect. As a suspenseful and inescapably damning portrait of the schizophrenia of slavery, Caryl Phillips's book belongs to the company of Beloved and The Confessions of Nat Turner.]]> 0 Caryl Phillips Adam 0 Pretty good! 3.30 1992
author: Caryl Phillips
name: Adam
average rating: 3.30
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/03
date added: 2023/08/03
shelves:
review:
Pretty good!
]]> 22754934
Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby.Ìý

Burton’s been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.

Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass.]]> 490 William Gibson Adam 0 jackpots are good right 4.06 2014
author: William Gibson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/27
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves:
review:
jackpots are good right
]]> 9597
Alternate cover edition here]]> 341 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333781 Adam 0 it do be like that 3.90 1952
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/27
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves:
review:
it do be like that
]]> 55401
Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, Deadhouse Gates is a novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Eirkson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--a new master of epic fantasy.]]> 604 Steven Erikson 0765310023 Adam 0 Mappo / Icarium otp 4.27 2000
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at: 2021/11/16
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves:
review:
Mappo / Icarium otp
]]> 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Adam 0 idiot solidarity 4.22 1869
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/08
date added: 2023/07/08
shelves:
review:
idiot solidarity
]]> 54468020
Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.

Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.

Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?

In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.]]> 256 Calvin Kasulke Adam 0 :dusty-stick: 3.63 2021
author: Calvin Kasulke
name: Adam
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/15
date added: 2023/06/15
shelves:
review:
:dusty-stick:
]]> 8432418
Greymane believed he'd outrun his past. With his school for swordsmanship in Falar, he was looking forward to a quiet life, although his colleague Kyle wasn't as enamoured with things outside the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard.

However, it seems it is not so easy for an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire to disappear, especially one under sentence of death from that same Empire. For there is a new Emperor on the throne of Malaz, and he is dwelling on the ignominy that is the Empire's failed invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the vaults beneath Unta, the Imperial capital, lie the answers to that disaster. And out of this buried history surfaces the name Stonewielder.

In Korel, Lord Protector Hiam, commander of the Stormguard, faces the potential annihilation of all that he holds dear. With few remaining men and a crumbling stone wall that has seen better days, he confronts an ancient the sea-borne Stormriders have returned. Religious war also threatens these lands. The cult of the Blessed Lady, which had stood firm against the Riders for millennia, now seeks to eradicate its rivals. And as chaos looms, a local magistrate investigating a series of murders suddenly finds himself at the heart of a far more ancient and terrifying crime -- one that has tainted an entire land.]]> 634 Ian C. Esslemont 0593064445 Adam 0 4.08 2010
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/13
date added: 2023/06/15
shelves:
review:
Took him long enough to wield that stone
]]> 2485836 702 Ian C. Esslemont 0593058097 Adam 0 It was fine 4.04 2008
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/23
date added: 2023/05/28
shelves:
review:
It was fine
]]> 4652
"In Our Time" provides key insights into Hemingway's later works.]]> 156 Ernest Hemingway Adam 0 3.74 1924
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Adam
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/12
date added: 2023/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 478951

Here is the stunning new chapter in Steven Erikson magnificent 'Malazan Book of the Fallen' - hailed an epic of the imagination and acknowledged as a fantasy classic in the making.]]> 1203 Steven Erikson 0553813153 Adam 0 4.48 2006
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/10
date added: 2023/05/12
shelves:
review:
Not many bones were hunted, all thing considered.
]]> 31242
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce� is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case started but many different individuals have found their fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and disappointments with the proceedings. But while the intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by lawyers, other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that involve heartbreak, lost children, blackmail and murder.

The fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all his passion, brilliance, and narrative verve to this huge novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational lawsuit—and through it, he achieved, at age 41, a stature almost Shakespearean.]]> 1017 Charles Dickens 0143037617 Adam 0 4.01 1853
author: Charles Dickens
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1853
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/12
date added: 2023/05/12
shelves:
review:
This was not bleak as in sad, but bleak as in boring
]]> 334286 112 Peter Shaffer 0140260706 Adam 0 This was really good! 3.91 1973
author: Peter Shaffer
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/08
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves:
review:
This was really good!
]]> 832484
Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1900, when Mann was only twenty-five, has become a classic of modem literature -- the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. With consummate skill, Mann draws a rounded picture of middle-class life: births and christenings; marriages, divorces, and deaths; successes and failures. These commonplace occurrences, intrinsically the same, vary slightly as they recur in each succeeding generation. Yet as the Buddenbrooks family eventually succumbs to the seductions of modernity -- seductions that are at variance with its own traditions -- its downfall becomes certain.

In immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modem family chronicles; it has, indeed, proved a model for most of them. Judged as the greatest of Mann's novels by some critics, it is ranked as among the greatest by all. Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 731 Thomas Mann 0679752609 Adam 0 Sesami Squad 4.25 1901
author: Thomas Mann
name: Adam
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1901
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/05
date added: 2023/03/05
shelves:
review:
Sesami Squad
]]> 28789711 SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.]]> 606 Mary Beard 1631492225 Adam 0 Loved it! 4.04 2015
author: Mary Beard
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/04
date added: 2023/03/02
shelves:
review:
Loved it!
]]> 22312 282 Douglas Coupland 0743231538 Adam 0 Woah I finished this ages ago 3.53 1992
author: Douglas Coupland
name: Adam
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/08
date added: 2023/03/02
shelves:
review:
Woah I finished this ages ago
]]> 60149 176 Michael Moorcock 0441860397 Adam 0 Almost too silly 3.99 1970
author: Michael Moorcock
name: Adam
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2023/01/03
shelves:
review:
Almost too silly
]]> 458394 304 Ian C. Esslemont 0593057813 Adam 0 Pretty fun, generous margins 3.82 2004
author: Ian C. Esslemont
name: Adam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/20
date added: 2022/12/30
shelves:
review:
Pretty fun, generous margins
]]> 292408
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.]]> 569 Wallace Stegner 014016930X Adam 0 4.24 1971
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/28
date added: 2022/12/30
shelves:
review:
Maybe not the best beach read lmao
]]> 105400 320 François Mauriac 0141186224 Adam 0 3.80
author: François Mauriac
name: Adam
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2012/02/16
date added: 2022/12/13
shelves:
review:
Long boring bits, punctuated by some absolutely fascinating parts.
]]> 25933 The Black Sheep is a dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of life in nineteenth-century France.

Donald Adamson's translation captures the radical modernity of Balzac's style, while the introduction places The Black Sheep in context as one of the great novels of Balzac's renowned Comédie Humaine.]]> 339 Honoré de Balzac 0140442375 Adam 0 4.00 1842
author: Honoré de Balzac
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1842
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/02
date added: 2022/12/02
shelves:
review:
The back described it as "The most exciting story in the world" and honestly it wasn't too far off. A+
]]> 16902 352 Henry David Thoreau Adam 0 3.77 1854
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Adam
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1854
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/19
date added: 2022/11/23
shelves:
review:
You had me right up until the no coffee or beer bit
]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Adam 0 Pretty good! 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Adam
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/06
date added: 2022/11/06
shelves:
review:
Pretty good!
]]> 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Adam 0 4.10 2018
author: Richard Powers
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/02
date added: 2022/11/02
shelves:
review:
Your mileage may vary based on how much you like trees
]]> 13407681 253 Murasaki Shikibu Adam 0 Woah this sucked ass 3.83 1000
author: Murasaki Shikibu
name: Adam
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1000
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/18
date added: 2022/10/24
shelves:
review:
Woah this sucked ass
]]> 99664 The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

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

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 246 W. Somerset Maugham 0307277771 Adam 0 It's a world of jerks 3.95 1925
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2022/10/04
shelves:
review:
It's a world of jerks
]]> 4796
Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty that today ranks it alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This edition features an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.]]> 291 John Steinbeck 0143039482 Adam 0 Ethan, ya goof 4.01 1961
author: John Steinbeck
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/23
date added: 2022/09/23
shelves:
review:
Ethan, ya goof
]]> 60932 Parable of the Sower continues the story of Lauren Olamina in socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s. Convinced that her community should colonize the stars, Lauren and her followers make preparations. But the collapse of society and rise of fanatics result in Lauren's followers being enslaved, and her daughter stolen from her. Now, Lauren must fight back to save the new world order.]]> 448 Octavia E. Butler 0446610380 Adam 0 More! 4.31 1998
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Adam
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/15
date added: 2022/09/15
shelves:
review:
More!
]]> 345299 960 Steven Erikson 0553813145 Adam 0 O Bugg! My Bugg! 4.41 2004
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/01
date added: 2022/09/11
shelves:
review:
O Bugg! My Bugg!
]]> 140671
Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.]]> 319 Glen Cook Adam 0 Grim, dark ,as advertised 3.94 1984
author: Glen Cook
name: Adam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
shelves:
review:
Grim, dark ,as advertised
]]>