Richard's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:42:32 -0700 60 Richard's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Artificial Wisdom: A Novel 230118827 In a climate-ravaged landscape where AI and humans vie for political power, a journalist must unravel a murderous plot that will either upend the world or save it.

2050: Investigative journalist Marcus Tully is grieving his wife and unborn child ten years after they perished in a deadly heat wave that gripped the Persian Gulf.

Now the whole planet is both burning and drowning, and the nations of the world decide to elect a global leader to steer humanity through the climate apocalypse. The final two a former U.S. president . . . and Solomon, the first Artificial Intellect to hold political office.

But as election day races closer, Solomon’s creator is murdered, and it's up to Tully to find the culprit.

Soon Tully is unraveling a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels. As the investigation heats up and the planet hurtles ever closer to the brink, Tully must find the truth and convince the world to face it.

Because salvation has a price—but is humanity willing to pay it?]]> 416 Thomas R. Weaver 0593984730 Richard 0 0.0 2023 Artificial Wisdom: A Novel
author: Thomas R. Weaver
name: Richard
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, arc, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, longlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Married A Dead Man (Penguin Modern Classics � Crime & Espionage)]]> 212342939 233 Cornell Woolrich 0241695864 Richard 0 4.00 1948 I Married A Dead Man (Penguin Modern Classics – Crime & Espionage)
author: Cornell Woolrich
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> The Big Clock 2091393
An audacious novel of terror and high tension, the basis for the classic 1948 film (with Ray Milland) and No Way Out, the 1987 Kevin Costner remake.]]> 166 Kenneth Fearing 0752851357 Richard 0 currently-reading, 2025 3.55 1946 The Big Clock
author: Kenneth Fearing
name: Richard
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: currently-reading, 2025
review:

]]> The Unmapping 216601229 Intimate and spellbinding, The Unmapping is a character-driven, literary speculative exploration of a city’s descent into chaos and confusion, perfect for fans of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.

4 a.m., New York City. A silent disaster.

There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.

Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.


While scientists scramble to find a solution—or at least a means to cope—and mysterious “red cloak� cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognizes. For Esme and Arjun, the fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions about themselves that they were too afraid to ask—and facing answers they never expected. With themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in a state of emergency, The Unmapping is a timely and captivating debut.]]> 408 Denise S. Robbins 1964721067 Richard 4 arc, 2025
The premise is simple and fresh: what would happen if buildings started moving about, repositioning each morning? How would society- and individuals - cope with such a change? The Unmappingby Denise S. Robbins explores both the micro and the macro effects of this strange phenomenon.

First the positives - the prose is clear, easy to read without being simplistic. Robbins can write and the story draws you forward without the need for an action-filled plot. In terms of mood and tone of the prose, the clearest comp I can think of is Famous Men Who Never Livedby K Chess, which is another literary-ish spec fic novel with an out-there premise featuring a deeply dysfunctional relationship.

The story covers a lot of thematic ground: belief and self-delusion, how we respond to our environment, climate change and consumerism, and. These topics are handled nicely - Robbins has a nice way of being thought-provoking without dictating to you.

The characters feel ... distinct and interesting. Could I imagine those people, in that situation doing the rather odd things they did? I think so. They do, however, feel unusual. Could it be that the three or four characters the story really focuses on (and, maybe, the author) are all just really different to me? It's possible. But, while thekey characters are generally rather engaging, they also feel a little .... un-real. Kind of odd, kind of off. Compared to say, Emily St. John Mandel or David Mitchell, the characterisation doesn't quite have that magical air of believability that can really lift a work.

Some readers will find the plot a little unsatisfying, too - once certain aspects are surplus to the requirements of the themes and characters, they're dropped. Those who like linearity, structure and clear answers are likely to be disappointed.

In short, The Unmappingwas enjoyable and thought-provoking, without fully blowing me away. I'd recommend it for those looking for a slightly unusual, thought-provoking literary spec-fic title. Those who want a strong, clear plot or fully leaping-off-the-page characters might want to steer clear.

Finally, a big thank you to Denise Robbins, Bindery Books and Netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.]]> 3.68 2025 The Unmapping
author: Denise S. Robbins
name: Richard
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: arc, 2025
review:
An intriguing debut novel that mostlyworks.

The premise is simple and fresh: what would happen if buildings started moving about, repositioning each morning? How would society- and individuals - cope with such a change? The Unmappingby Denise S. Robbins explores both the micro and the macro effects of this strange phenomenon.

First the positives - the prose is clear, easy to read without being simplistic. Robbins can write and the story draws you forward without the need for an action-filled plot. In terms of mood and tone of the prose, the clearest comp I can think of is Famous Men Who Never Livedby K Chess, which is another literary-ish spec fic novel with an out-there premise featuring a deeply dysfunctional relationship.

The story covers a lot of thematic ground: belief and self-delusion, how we respond to our environment, climate change and consumerism, and. These topics are handled nicely - Robbins has a nice way of being thought-provoking without dictating to you.

The characters feel ... distinct and interesting. Could I imagine those people, in that situation doing the rather odd things they did? I think so. They do, however, feel unusual. Could it be that the three or four characters the story really focuses on (and, maybe, the author) are all just really different to me? It's possible. But, while thekey characters are generally rather engaging, they also feel a little .... un-real. Kind of odd, kind of off. Compared to say, Emily St. John Mandel or David Mitchell, the characterisation doesn't quite have that magical air of believability that can really lift a work.

Some readers will find the plot a little unsatisfying, too - once certain aspects are surplus to the requirements of the themes and characters, they're dropped. Those who like linearity, structure and clear answers are likely to be disappointed.

In short, The Unmappingwas enjoyable and thought-provoking, without fully blowing me away. I'd recommend it for those looking for a slightly unusual, thought-provoking literary spec-fic title. Those who want a strong, clear plot or fully leaping-off-the-page characters might want to steer clear.

Finally, a big thank you to Denise Robbins, Bindery Books and Netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.
]]> The Anomaly 56920684
In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though he works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit. All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was.

This witty variation on the doppelgänger theme, which takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House, is Hervé Le Tellier's most ambitious work yet.]]> 391 Hervé Le Tellier 1635421691 Richard 0 3.80 2020 The Anomaly
author: Hervé Le Tellier
name: Richard
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> Pink Slime 123209155 Winner of the Uruguayan National Literature Prize for Fiction, the Bartolomé-Hidalgo Fiction Prize, and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize.

A port city is in the grips of an ecological crisis. The river has filled with toxic algae, and a deadly ‘red wind� blows through the city, forcing everyone indoors at the sound of a siren. Those exposed to the wind fall ill; much of the coast has been evacuated, with rich people migrating inland to escape the wind, while others remain behind, sheltering in abandoned houses as blackouts and food shortages abound, and a black-market economy reigns.

The unnamed narrator is one of those who has stayed, looking after a boy who’s been placed in her care. As the city outside continues to break down, she reflects on the collapse of her emotional ties, the uncertainty of this new world, and the emergence of a radical solitude.

With striking prose and vivid characters, Pink Slime offers profound reflections on motherhood, marriage, and caregiving, set against the backdrop of a climate-ravaged, deteriorating city.]]> 211 Fernanda Trías 1922585351 Richard 0 3.94 2020 Pink Slime
author: Fernanda Trías
name: Richard
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Black Swan Green 816654 371 David Mitchell 0340822791 Richard 0 3.93 2006 Black Swan Green
author: David Mitchell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> Cloud Atlas 17017081 Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 529 David Mitchell 1444730878 Richard 5 3.91 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: willoughby-library, 2025, city-of-sydney-library
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hours of the Virgin (Amos Walker, #13)]]> 473292 Detroit PI Amos Walker searches for a priceless medieval illuminated manuscript--and for evidence that can put his former partner's killer behind bars

Hired by a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts to serve as his bodyguard during a transaction involving a stolen illuminated manuscript, Amos Walker enters a darkened skin-flick theater where the exchange is supposed to take place. When the deal goes south, he's lucky to leave with his life . . . and a new lead to pursue in collaring the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago.

In a case that features a wheelchair-bound pornographer and rare book collector, an ultra-slick art expert, a trophy wife, and a white-collar criminal, Walker faces one of the greatest challenges of his career as a present-day crime draws him back to one of the darkest episodes of his past.

The Hours of the Virgin is the 13th book in the Amos Walker Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
]]> 336 Loren D. Estleman 0446608688 Richard 0 3.83 1999 The Hours of the Virgin (Amos Walker, #13)
author: Loren D. Estleman
name: Richard
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read, longlist, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume I]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Richard 0 3.90 2020 On the Calculation of Volume I
author: Solvej Balle
name: Richard
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, shortlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Witchfinder (Amos Walker, #12)]]> 463046 Never Street--returns in grand style in The Witchfinder. Walking the wickedly hot streets of a Detroit described as vividly and lovingly as Chandler's Los Angeles, Walker searches for the nasty parties who faked a photo that shows Furlong's much younger lady friend in bed with another man, thereby scuttling the architect's last chance for romance. Walker takes a bullet to the head, sneaks out of the hospital too early, and generally behaves as though he hasn't heard that this classic branch of the mystery tree has been declared dead by so-called experts. Other Estleman outings in paperback include Red Highway, Stamping Ground, and Stress.]]> 320 Loren D. Estleman 0446607606 Richard 4 3.86 1998 The Witchfinder (Amos Walker, #12)
author: Loren D. Estleman
name: Richard
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: amos-walker-books-i-own, own-read, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Star Surgeon (Sector General, #2)]]> 1695599
Sector General is a hospital station -- a place where all kinds of patients and medics from all worlds are welcome. But for the first time, the hospital is threatened by creatures too different its purpose, and so powerful that they can cause utter havoc! The book tells the story of the events that culminated in the Etlan War.

Here are all the strange and not so strange creatures who inhabit James White's hospital in space as both doctors and patients: the human doctor Conway, plus two-ton doctors with four-ton patients, creatures which are multi-legged and telepathic, gas breathers, underwater behemoths--a wild and wooly assortment of denizens from all parts of the galaxy.

"Sector General" is a mercy station--a place where all kinds from all worlds are welcome. But for the first time, the hospital itself is threatened by creatures too differnet to understand its purpose ans so powerful that they can cause utter havoc!]]> 160 James White 0345291697 Richard 0 3.99 1963 Star Surgeon (Sector General, #2)
author: James White
name: Richard
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A House Between Earth and the Moon]]> 58661987 The gripping story of one scientist in outer space, another who watches over him, the family left behind, and the lengths people will go to protect the people and planet they love.

Scientist Alex Welch-Peters has believed for twenty years that his super-algae can reverse the effects of climate change. His obsession with his research has jeopardized his marriage, his relationships with his kids, and his own professional future. When Sensus, the colossal tech company, offers him a chance to complete his research, he seizes the opportunity. The catch? His lab will be in outer space on Parallaxis, the first-ever luxury residential space station built for billionaires. Alex and six other scientists leave their loved ones to become Pioneers, the beta tenants of Parallaxis.

But Parallaxis is not the space palace they were sold. Day and night, the embittered crew builds the facility under pressure from Sensus, motivated by the promise that their families will join them. Meanwhile, back on Earth, with much of the country ablaze in wildfires, Alex’s family tries to remain safe in Michigan. His teenage daughter, Mary Agnes, struggles through high school with the help of the ubiquitous Sensus phones implanted in everyone’s ears, archiving each humiliation, and wishing she could go to Parallaxis with her father—but her mother will never allow it.

The Pioneers are the beta testers of another program, too. As they toil away two hundred miles in the sky, Sensus is designing an algorithm that will predict human behavior. Tess, a young social psychologist Sensus has hired to watch the Pioneers through their phones, begins to develop an intimate, obsessive relationship with her subjects. When she takes it a step further—traveling to Parallaxis to observe them up close—the controlled experiment begins to unravel.

Prescient and insightful, A House Between Earth and the Moon is at once a captivating epic about the machinations of big tech and a profoundly intimate meditation on the unmistakably human bonds that hold us together.]]> 386 Rebecca Scherm 1101980109 Richard 0 3.43 2022 A House Between Earth and the Moon
author: Rebecca Scherm
name: Richard
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Time Shelter 58999261
In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a “clinic for the past� that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. As Gaustine’s assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a “time shelter”—a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter announces Gospodinov to American readers as an essential voice in international literature.]]> 304 Georgi Gospodinov 1324090952 Richard 0 3.59 2020 Time Shelter
author: Georgi Gospodinov
name: Richard
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, city-of-sydney-library, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> Crossing to Safety 9820 335 Wallace Stegner 037575931X Richard 0 4.16 1987 Crossing to Safety
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Richard
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Hospital Station 2150705 191 James White 0552102148 Richard 3 2025 3.50 1962 Hospital Station
author: James White
name: Richard
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Answers 40738894 WELCOME TO THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIMENT

Mary is out of options. Estranged from her family and beset by phantom pain, she signs up for 'The Girlfriend Experiment' - a mysterious project masterminded by a famous Hollywood actor who hires a collection of women to fulfil the different roles of a relationship. Mary is to play the Emotional Girlfriend, alongside a Maternal Girlfriend, a Mundane Girlfriend, an Angry Girlfriend and, of course, an Intimacy Team. Each woman has her debts and her difficulties, her past loves and her secrets. As Mary and the actor are drawn ever closer together, the nature of the experiment changes, and the Girlfriends find themselves exposed to new perils, foremost among them love.]]> 294 Catherine Lacey 1783782188 Richard 4 2025 3.21 2017 The Answers
author: Catherine Lacey
name: Richard
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> We Live Here Now 221254243 From a literary master of the form, Calvino meets Borges in a wickedly smart novel that explores the boundaries between art and life, vision and reality, and beauty and commerce . . .

When a famous conceptual artist’s installation project suddenly vanishes, the sinister aftershocks radiate outwards through twelve people who were involved in the project, changing all of their lives, and launching them on a crazy-quilt trajectory that will end with them all together at one final, apocalyptic bacchanal.

Mixing illusion and reality, simulucra and replicants, sound artists and death artists, performers and filmmakers and galleriests and journalists, We Live Here Now ranges across the world of weapons dealers and international shipping to the galleries and studios on the cutting edge of hyper-contemporary art. Rose’s characters are, as one of the puts it, in search of “a gateway to the Un, the Ex, the Outer, the Under, the Anti, the Non, the Other Place, the Not,� and it is those mysterious Other Places where C. D. Rose weaves his surreal magic. We Live Here Now spins a dazzling web that conveys, with eerie precision, the sheer strangeness of what it is like to be alive today.]]> 320 C.D. Rose 1685892019 Richard 0 4.00 We Live Here Now
author: C.D. Rose
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read, arc, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, shortlist
review:

]]> Gai-jin (Asian Saga, #3) 453759 Tai-pan and two and a half centuries on from Shogun.

It is 1862, Japan is a land in chaos. The power of the Shogun is waning as rival factions fight for supremacy, among them a hot-headed, idealistic group of young Samurai dedicated to restoring the power of the Emperor - from whom, they believe, the first Shogun, Toranaga Yoshi, stole it.

Into the maelstrom of corruption and honour, intrigue and personal sacrifice come the gai-jin, the hated foreigners who, arrogantly certain of their own superiority, watch and wait from their Yokohama base, ready to make a profit by selling anything and everything, even guns and warships, to any or all of the competing parties.

But they are also a community divided, British against French, Prussian against Russian, traders against military. The traders know the wealth that could be their when the barriers crash down. At their head stands the Noble House and the heir to the title to Tai-pan, Malcolm Struan, who is determined to become his own man. At the head Shogunate is Lord Yoshi, a direct descendant of Shogun Toranaga.

James' Clavell's breathtaking picture of nineteenth-century Japan is a tour de force. The seeds of twentieth-century history are here. But over and above, Gai-jin is a monumental novel of people and passions that are strong and simple as love and death.]]> 1019 James Clavell 0340581263 Richard 0 3.79 1993 Gai-jin (Asian Saga, #3)
author: James Clavell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, willoughby-library, longlist
review:

]]> The Infinities 7069329 300 John Banville 0330450255 Richard 0 3.35 2009 The Infinities
author: John Banville
name: Richard
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> How to Make a Bomb 218118809 Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it

Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life.

Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn't end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to bear? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic
existence, or is he utterly self-deluded?

As he tries to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.]]> 425 Rupert Thomson 1035908549 Richard 0 3.50 2024 How to Make a Bomb
author: Rupert Thomson
name: Richard
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, longlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flashman (The Flashman Papers, #1)]]> 142458 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780006511250

Coward, scoundrel, lover and cheat, but there is no better man to go into the jungle with. Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.

Can a man be all bad? When Harry Flashman’s adventures as the reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan lead him to join the exclusive company of Lord Cardigan’s Hussars and play a part in the disastrous Retreat from Kabul, it culminates in the rascal’s finest � and most dishonest � turn.]]> 323 George MacDonald Fraser Richard 0 4.07 1969 Flashman (The Flashman Papers, #1)
author: George MacDonald Fraser
name: Richard
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Infomocracy (The Centenal Cycle, #1)]]> 31702749
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel.]]> 397 Malka Ann Older 0765392364 Richard 0 3.66 2016 Infomocracy (The Centenal Cycle, #1)
author: Malka Ann Older
name: Richard
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> The Scholars of Night 56179362
Nicholas Hansard is a brilliant historian at a small New England college. He specializes in Christopher Marlowe. But Hansard has a second, secret, career with The White Group, a “consulting agency� with shadowy government connections. There, he is a genius at teasing secrets out of documents old and new―to call him a code-breaker is an understatement.

When Hansard’s work exposes one of his closest friends as a Russian agent, and the friend then dies mysteriously, the connections seem all too clear. Shaken, Hansard turns away from his secret work to lose himself in an ancient Marlowe manuscript. Surely, a lost 400 year old play is different enough from modern murder.

He is very, very wrong.]]> 245 John M. Ford 1250269172 Richard 4 2025 3.81 1988 The Scholars of Night
author: John M. Ford
name: Richard
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Sympathy Tower Tokyo 221978628 The award-winning, bestselling Japanese phenomenon. A propulsive, prophetic novel about the beauty of language and the nature of identity in the age of AI.

Welcome to the Japan of tomorrow. Here, the practice of a radical sympathy toward criminals has become the norm and a grand skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house wrongdoers in compassionate comfort � Sympathy Tower Tokyo.

Acclaimed architect Sara Machina has been tasked with designing the city's new centrepiece, but is riven by doubt. Haunted by a terrible crime she experienced as a young girl, she wonders if she might inherently disagree with the values of the project, which should be the pinnacle of her career. As Sara grapples with these conflicting emotions, her relationship with her gorgeous � and much younger � boyfriend grows increasingly strained. In search of solace, in need of creative inspiration, Sara turns to the knowing words of an AI chatbot�

Awarded Japan's highest literary prize, Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an extraordinary novel from one of the most exciting new voices in world literature. Partly inspired by conversations with an artificial intelligence, it offers an extraordinary defence of the power of language written by humans, a touching exploration of the imaginative impulse, and an often hilarious send up of our modern world's unrelenting conformity.]]> 144 Rie Qudan 1405972068 Richard 0 3.15 2024 Sympathy Tower Tokyo
author: Rie Qudan
name: Richard
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of the Most Precious Substance]]> 58945991 Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series.

A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed.

After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written—if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it—if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we’ll go to get what we need—and what we want.]]> 319 Sara Gran 0578947099 Richard 0 3.53 2022 The Book of the Most Precious Substance
author: Sara Gran
name: Richard
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, willoughby-library
review:

]]> Light 56163852
In contemporary London, Michael Kearney is a serial killer on the run from the entity that drives him to kill. He is seeking escape in a future that doesn’t yet exist—a quantum world that he and his physicist partner hope to access through a breach of time and space itself. In this future, Seria Mau Genlicher has already sacrificed her body to merge into the systems of her starship, the White Cat. But the “inhuman� K-ship captain has gone rogue, pirating the galaxy while playing cat and mouse with the authorities who made her what she is. In this future, Ed Chianese, a drifter and adventurer, has ridden dynaflow ships, run old alien mazes, surfed stellar envelopes. He “went deep”—and lived to tell about it. Once crazy for life, he’s now just a twink on New Venusport, addicted to the bizarre alternate realities found in the tanks—and in debt to all the wrong people.

Haunting them all through this maze of menace and mystery is the shadowy presence of the Shrander—and three enigmatic clues left on the barren surface of an asteroid under an ocean of light known as the Kefahuchi Tract: a deserted spaceship, a pair of bone dice, and a human skeleton.]]> 320 M. John Harrison 0575074035 Richard 0 3.64 2002 Light
author: M. John Harrison
name: Richard
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> The Black Locomotive 61817761
‘Stunning . . . Brilliantly original� The Guardian

London is built from concrete, steel and the creative urge.

Old technology gives way to the new. Progress is inevitable � but is it more fragile than its inhabitants realize?

A strange anomaly is uncovered in the new top-secret Crossrail extension being built under Buckingham Palace. It is an archaeological puzzle, one that may transform our understanding of history � and the origins of London itself.

And if our modern world falls, we may have to turn to the technology of the past in order to save our future.]]> 416 Rian Hughes 1529074460 Richard 3 2025 3.69 2021 The Black Locomotive
author: Rian Hughes
name: Richard
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Glass Bead Game 18305126 530 Hermann Hesse Richard 0 3.82 1943 The Glass Bead Game
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Richard
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read, willoughby-library, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Empire Falls 187020
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles� soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything� includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace]]> 483 Richard Russo 0375726403 Richard 0 3.93 2001 Empire Falls
author: Richard Russo
name: Richard
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> Cage of Souls 40803025
Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new, is Stefan Advani, rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river and imprisoned him in verdant hell of the jungle's darkest heart; that led him deep into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. He will treat with monsters, madman, mutants. The question is, which one of them will inherit this Earth?]]> 602 Adrian Tchaikovsky Richard 3 willoughby-library, 2025 3.98 2019 Cage of Souls
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Richard
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: willoughby-library, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)]]> 853510
One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.]]> 274 Agatha Christie 0007119313 Richard 0 4.22 1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Richard
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, longlist
review:

]]> Someone to Watch Over You 150065099 An unsettling, poignant debut novella about unusual connections fostered by the covid pandemic, perfect for fans of sharp literary fiction that reflects and confronts our world.

It’s early 2020, and with the world in chaos as covid spreads, two lonely people, both seeking to break with their pasts, meet and start sharing a home.

One is a former security guard who was captured on video knocking down a protester who died soon afterward; the other, a former teacher accused of driving a student to suicide.

In an oppressive atmosphere of tension and fear, the pair avoid direct contact and communicate through notes and their shared presences, close yet distant. Their odd connection, with neither affection nor trust, brings them a kind of privacy and safety they both need � but at what cost?]]> 144 Kumi Kimura 1805330055 Richard 4 arc, 2025
This is the story of Tae, a former school teacher who has moved back home after a death and Shinobu, an out-of-work security guard whose past looms over him, and their unexpected connection throughout COVID-dominated 2020. There’s very little plot, though - while I found this engaging and eerie some readers will definitely find it dull.

For me the strength of the book is were the themes - it covered the value of connection, exclusion in small town Japan and the way people’s pasts linger with them really effectively: very much by showing rather than lecturing. The setting was another strength - the anxieties of lockdown were clear in an understated way.

This is the kind of book where you’re left to ponder what really happened and how much of what you’re shown is true. While I found that worked really well for the character’s pasts, I liked it a bit less when it came to the time the characters spent together as it all felt quite vague as things progressed.

All in all an enjoyable novella that was both thought-provoking and easy to read. Great for those who like books with themes and enjoy being allowed to reach your own views, less so for those who want plenty of plotting.

Thank you to Kumi Kimura, Pushkin Press and NetGalley providing an ARC of Someone to Watch Over You in return for an honest review.]]> 3.51 2021 Someone to Watch Over You
author: Kumi Kimura
name: Richard
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: arc, 2025
review:
A subtle but thought-provoking novella about alienation, belonging and the weight of the past.

This is the story of Tae, a former school teacher who has moved back home after a death and Shinobu, an out-of-work security guard whose past looms over him, and their unexpected connection throughout COVID-dominated 2020. There’s very little plot, though - while I found this engaging and eerie some readers will definitely find it dull.

For me the strength of the book is were the themes - it covered the value of connection, exclusion in small town Japan and the way people’s pasts linger with them really effectively: very much by showing rather than lecturing. The setting was another strength - the anxieties of lockdown were clear in an understated way.

This is the kind of book where you’re left to ponder what really happened and how much of what you’re shown is true. While I found that worked really well for the character’s pasts, I liked it a bit less when it came to the time the characters spent together as it all felt quite vague as things progressed.

All in all an enjoyable novella that was both thought-provoking and easy to read. Great for those who like books with themes and enjoy being allowed to reach your own views, less so for those who want plenty of plotting.

Thank you to Kumi Kimura, Pushkin Press and NetGalley providing an ARC of Someone to Watch Over You in return for an honest review.
]]> Cleopatra's Sister 23201196 282 Penelope Lively Richard 0 3.67 1993 Cleopatra's Sister
author: Penelope Lively
name: Richard
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> The Kingdoms 58739324 Come home, if you remember

The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. On the front is a lighthouse - Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides.

Joe has never left England, never even left London. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter.

But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed - a world where English is spoken in England, and not French.

And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well.

Joe's journey to unravel the truth will take him from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish island, and back through time itself as he battles for his life - and for a very different future.]]> 448 Natasha Pulley 1526623153 Richard 2 2025 4.13 2021 The Kingdoms
author: Natasha Pulley
name: Richard
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Dark Beyond the Stars 430150 Astron has searched the galaxy for alien life--without success. Now, just as the ship is falling apart, the only direction left to explore is across the Dark, a one-hundred-generation journey through empty space.

The ship's captain--immortal, obsessed--refuses to abandon the quest. He will cross the Dark, or destroy the ship trying.

Only Sparrow, a young crewman uncertain of his own past, can stand against the captain, and against the lure and challenge of the dark beyond the stars...]]> 420 Frank M. Robinson 0312866240 Richard 0 4.06 1991 The Dark Beyond the Stars
author: Frank M. Robinson
name: Richard
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Case of the Gilded Fly (Gervase Fen, #1)]]> 7186424 205 Edmund Crispin 0099542137 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.25 1944 The Case of the Gilded Fly (Gervase Fen, #1)
author: Edmund Crispin
name: Richard
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> A Sport and a Pastime 31328839
A Sport and A Pastime established James Salter's reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul.]]> 198 James Salter 150982331X Richard 4 2025 3.72 1967 A Sport and a Pastime
author: James Salter
name: Richard
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Luminaries 18308767
Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.]]> 834 Eleanor Catton 1847088767 Richard 0 3.89 2013 The Luminaries
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Richard
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> The Wrong Stars (Axiom, #1) 34409335 A ragtag crew of humans and posthumans discover alien technology that could change the fate of humanity... or awaken an ancient evil and destroy all life in the galaxy.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials... and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.
File Under: Science Fiction]]> 396 Tim Pratt 0857667092 Richard 3 city-of-sydney-library, 2025 3.69 2017 The Wrong Stars (Axiom, #1)
author: Tim Pratt
name: Richard
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2025
review:

]]> Bewilderment 56567240
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, while all the while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one.]]> 278 Richard Powers 1785152645 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.95 2021 Bewilderment
author: Richard Powers
name: Richard
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> The Library at Mount Char 58801386 A mysterious library contains the secrets to the universe in a sweeping visionary fantasy that is at once heartbreaking, horrifying, nail-biting and thrilling. Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman.

Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts.

After all, she was a normal American herself once.

That was a long time ago, of course. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father.

In the years since then, Carolyn hasn't had a chance to get out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have studied the books in his Library and learned some of the secrets of his power. And sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing—perhaps even dead—and the Library that holds his secrets stands unguarded. And with it, control over all of creation.]]> 489 Scott Hawkins 1789099862 Richard 0 4.16 2015 The Library at Mount Char
author: Scott Hawkins
name: Richard
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Ghostwritten 23574514 Note: this is an alternative cover edition of ISBN13: 9780340739754

An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas attack on a rush-hour metro, but what links him to a jazz buff in downtown Tokyo? Or to a Mongolian gangster, a woman on a holy mountain who talks to a tree, and a late night New York DJ? Set at the fugitive edges of Asia and Europe, Ghostwritten weaves together a host of characters, their interconnected destinies determined by the inescapable forces of cause and effect. A magnificent achievement and an engrossing experience, David Mitchell's first novel announced the arrival of one of the most exciting writers of the twenty-first century.]]> 436 David Mitchell Richard 5 city-of-sydney-library, 2025 4.01 1999 Ghostwritten
author: David Mitchell
name: Richard
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2025
review:

]]> The Memory Police 49098059 A compelling speculative mystery by one of Japan's greatest writers.

Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

The Memory Police is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, from one of Japan’s greatest writers.]]> 288 Yōko Ogawa 1784700444 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.72 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Richard
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Daemon 6377329 432 Daniel Suarez 1847249442 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 4.04 2006 Daemon
author: Daniel Suarez
name: Richard
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Tower 54609416 253 Bae Myung-hoon 1916277128 Richard 4 city-of-sydney-library, 2025 3.68 2009 Tower
author: Bae Myung-hoon
name: Richard
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2025
review:

]]> The Windup Girl 9696477
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.]]> 508 Paolo Bacigalupi 0356500535 Richard 0 3.61 2009 The Windup Girl
author: Paolo Bacigalupi
name: Richard
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> The Details 208534338 A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.

In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.

Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.

Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.]]> 156 Ia Genberg 1035400588 Richard 4 4.00 2022 The Details
author: Ia Genberg
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps]]> 123062 116 Michel Faber 1841953288 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.38 2001 The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps
author: Michel Faber
name: Richard
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> A Million Open Doors 10050848 springer, a device enabling teleportation travel, was opened, resulting in friction between the traditional dilettantes and Interstellars, youngsters who adopt new ways of life.

Giraut's old friend Aimeric is called back to his home colony of Caledony to aid in the economic recession and cultural explosion that will surely follow the opening of the springer there. When Giraut is betrayed by his entendedora (part mistress, part girlfriend), he seizes the opportunity to go along as an ambassador. A Million Open Doors becomes a coming-of-age tale as Giraut adapts to a culture radically different from his own. Caledony society is colorless, repressed, money-driven; it emphasizes religion and hard work. Bewildered by the discouragement of art or pleasure, Giraut opens a college to teach Occitanian culture to interested Caledonians. The threatened religious and political leaders, of course, look on this as an oddity, if not an outright seed of revolution. During the cultural and political upheavals on Caledony, Giraut and friends learn about life, love, diplomacy, and cross-cultural friendship.

The premise--human colonies flung across the universe evolving on hundreds of different planets now being transformed by instantaneous space travel--has been explored before. But John Barnes's sense of humor and world-building skills make it great fun. --Bonnie Bouman

]]> 314 John Barnes 1857980832 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.71 1992 A Million Open Doors
author: John Barnes
name: Richard
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Earth 65147062
Set in the year 2038, the book is a cautionary tale of the harm humans can cause their planet via disregard for the environment and reckless scientific experiments. The book has a large cast of characters and Brin uses them to address a number of environmental issues including endangered species, global warming, refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, and the social effects of overpopulation. The plot of the book involves an artificially created black hole which has been lost in the Earth's interior and the attempts to recover it before it destroys the planet. The events and revelations which follow reshape humanity and its future in the universe.

The scope of the story expands vastly as the plot gradually reveals itself, bringing into question the future course � and even the survival � of humanity.]]> 751 David Brin Richard 0 0.0 1990 Earth
author: David Brin
name: Richard
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There Is No Antimemetics Division]]> 54463474
Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

-----

This ebook is an official release by me, qntm from the SCP Foundation wiki! PM me if you require confirmation.]]> 220 qntm Richard 0 4.29 2020 There Is No Antimemetics Division
author: qntm
name: Richard
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, shortlist
review:

]]> The Capital 44284047
Fenia Xenapoulou is facing a career setback. She has been »promoted« to the Department of Culture by the Directorate General � no budget, no power, no reputation. So the »Big Jubilee Project« comes just at the right time for her: she is to revamp the boring image of the European Commission. Her Austrian personal assistant Martin Susmann suggests proclaiming Auschwitz as the birthplace of the European Commission. Fenia is thrilled, but she didn’t take the other European nations into account. Austria: a Polish camp could not be misused to question the Austrian nation. Poland: Auschwitz is a German problem. Germany: Islam, by now a part of Germany, had nothing to do with Auschwitz. What’s more, Fenia can’t count on David de Vriend, one of the last living witnesses, any longer: he runs to the metro station Maalbeek at the wrong time.

Inspector Brunfaut is in a difficult situation as well. He is supposed to leave a murder case covered up at the highest level at rest. But luckily he is friends with the chief computer scientists of the Brussels Police Department, who can gain access to the secret files of the public prosecutor‘s office. Matek, the Polish hitman, knows nothing of this when he makes his escape. But he does know that he shot the wrong guy. That’s not nothing to Matek. He would rather have become ordained a priest; the fact that he had to follow his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps in becoming a “soldier of Christ�, doesn’t really make him happy. And yes, there are others who are unhappy as well: the pig farmers who take to the streets with pitchforks in protest of the existing trade restrictions blocking the profitable export of pigs� ears to China]]> 419 Robert Menasse 0857058630 Richard 2 city-of-sydney-library, 2025 3.40 2017 The Capital
author: Robert Menasse
name: Richard
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (Santiago, #1)]]> 293291
Virtue Mackenzie: Freelance reporter. She never gives up. She wants an interview... with Santiago.

The Swagman: He collects art � at gun point. He wants a few pieces currently in the hands of Santiago.

Santiago: Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none... has he killed a thousand men? Has he saved a dozen worlds? His legend is as large as the Rim itself, his trail as elusive as a wisp of starlight in the empty realms of space. The reward for him is the largest in history.

Santiago: Do you dare chase him?]]> 376 Mike Resnick 0812522567 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 4.08 1986 Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (Santiago, #1)
author: Mike Resnick
name: Richard
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Postman Always Rings Twice]]> 13484940 The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.]]> 116 James M. Cain 1407233963 Richard 4 2025 3.70 1934 The Postman Always Rings Twice
author: James M. Cain
name: Richard
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Asymmetry 42852711 A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, and the inextricability of life and art, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.

Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, Folly tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, Folly also suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age. By contrast, Madness is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.

A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.]]> 275 Lisa Halliday 1783783621 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.43 2018 Asymmetry
author: Lisa Halliday
name: Richard
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Slade House 24499258 Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.]]> 238 David Mitchell 0812998685 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.81 2015 Slade House
author: David Mitchell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Under the Skin 123063 Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory—our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.]]> 296 Michel Faber 1841954802 Richard 0 3.76 2000 Under the Skin
author: Michel Faber
name: Richard
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Number9dream 32791497 Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, number9dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister’s death and his mother’s breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses—through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck—a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father’s identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.]]> 419 David Mitchell 1444706977 Richard 5 2025 3.81 2001 Number9dream
author: David Mitchell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Aerth 222051713 180 Deborah Tomkins 1739570782 Richard 0 4.06 Aerth
author: Deborah Tomkins
name: Richard
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> Case Study 58420842 I am convinced, you see, that Dr Braithwaite killed my sister, Veronica. I do not mean that he murdered her in the normal sense of the word, but that he is, nonetheless, as responsible for her death as if he had strangled her with his bare hands. Two years ago, Veronica threw herself from the overpass at Bridge Approach in Camden and was killed by the 4.45 to High Barnet. You could hardly imagine a person less likely to commit such an act. She was twenty-six years old, intelligent, successful and passably attractive. Regardless of this, she had, unbeknown to my father and me, been consulting Dr Braithwaite for some weeks. This I know from his own account.

When a young woman becomes convinced that her sister’s therapist was responsible for her suicide, she assumes an alter ego and presents herself as a client at his clinic, determined to get to the bottom of the charismatic therapist’s relationship with her sister. But just who is she convincing with her performance of the deeply troubled Rebecca?

Case Study is a game of cat-and-mouse between therapist and patient, between truth and deception, and between author and reader. It is a novel seething with secrets and teasing questions about the nature of identity itself, an enthralling, playful and layered depiction of 1960s society and the radical psychiatry propounded by R. D. Laing.]]> 288 Graeme Macrae Burnet 1922458155 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.62 2021 Case Study
author: Graeme Macrae Burnet
name: Richard
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> When The Sparrow Falls 58592082 Life in the Caspian Republic has taught Agent Nikolai South two rules. Trust No One. And work just hard enough not to make enemies.

Here, in the last sanctuary for the dying embers of the human race in a world run by artificial intelligence, if you stray from the path - your life is forfeit. But when a Party propagandist is killed - and is discovered as a "machine" - he's given a new mission: chaperone the widow, Lily, who has arrived to claim her husband's remains.

But when South sees that she, the first "machine" ever allowed into the country, bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife, he's thrown into a maelstrom of betrayal, murder, and conspiracy that may bring down the Republic for good.

WHEN THE SPARROW FALLS illuminates authoritarianism, complicity, and identity in the digital age, in a page turning, darkly-funny, frightening and touching story that recalls Philip K. Dick, John le Carré and Kurt Vonnegut in equal measure.]]> 374 Neil Sharpson 1781089167 Richard 0 4.00 2021 When The Sparrow Falls
author: Neil Sharpson
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> The French Lieutenant's Woman 17282089 445 John Fowles Richard 5 own-read, longlist 4.00 1969 The French Lieutenant's Woman
author: John Fowles
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: own-read, longlist
review:

]]> Thirst for Salt 75718675 “Madelaine Lucas’s Thirst for Salt gripped me immediately, with the tender acuity of its voice and the propulsive electricity of the relationship at its core: 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, this 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 woman from Jude’s past, threatens to rock the fragility of their newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something doesn’t fully understand between Maeve and Jude, she finds herself questioning everything—about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants.

Years later, when a photograph of Jude with a young child—presumably his own—comes to the surface, she finds herself drawn back to the events that took place at Sailors Beach and the decisions made there that changed the course of both of their lives. A sensuous and unforgettable debut, Madelaine Lucas’s Thirst for Salt is an electrifying, mesmerizing love story that lingers with powerful, aching emotional depth.]]> 336 Madelaine Lucas 1761066935 Richard 0 3.80 2023 Thirst for Salt
author: Madelaine Lucas
name: Richard
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, longlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gelignite (A Rinehart suspense novel)]]> 4541310 186 William Marshall 0030169062 Richard 0 3.71 1975 Gelignite (A Rinehart suspense novel)
author: William Marshall
name: Richard
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> Open City 13139098 261 Teju Cole 0571279430 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.39 2011 Open City
author: Teju Cole
name: Richard
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> The Humans 16130537
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, and the wars they witness on the news, and is totally baffled by concepts such as love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this weird species than he has been led to believe. He drinks wine, reads Emily Dickinson, listens to Talking Heads, and begins to bond with the family he lives with, in disguise. In picking up the pieces of the professor's shattered personal life, the narrator sees hope and redemption in the humans' imperfections and begins to question the very mission that brought him there--a mission that involves not only thwarting human progress...but murder.]]> 285 Matt Haig 1476727910 Richard 3 4.05 2013 The Humans
author: Matt Haig
name: Richard
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What You Are Looking for is in the Library]]> 203382793 _____
What are you looking for?

So asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi.

But she is no ordinary librarian.

Sensing exactly what someone is searching for in life, she provides just the book recommendation to help them find it.

We meet five visitors to the library, each at a different crossroads:

- The restless retail assistant eager to pick up new skills
- The mother faced with a demotion at work after maternity leave
- The conscientious accountant who yearns to open an antique store
- The gifted young manga artist in search of motivation
- The recently retired salaryman on a quest for newfound purpose

Can she help them find what they are looking for?

Which book will you recommend?

Awaiting your visit is a special library where every patron encounters the perfect book� Called one of 2023’s 10 best feel-good books by the Washington Post, this international sensation and “undeniable page-turner� (The New York Times Book Review) is “a celebration of community, connection, and the transformative power of libraries� (Booklist).]]> 256 Michiko Aoyama 1804994138 Richard 4 2025 4.05 2020 What You Are Looking for is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Richard
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Book of Doors 157591210 If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go?

In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door.

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals - individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons - a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened. ]]> 392 Gareth Brown 1787637255 Richard 2 2024 3.97 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Richard
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hatchet Man (Yellowthread Street Mystery)]]> 53465997 210 William Marshall 1911440977 Richard 4 2024 4.00 1976 The Hatchet Man (Yellowthread Street Mystery)
author: William Marshall
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Calculating God 264950
It seems that Earth, and the alien's home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling on the alien mother ship, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at about the same time, including events exactly like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Both alien races believe this proves the existence of God: i.e. he's obviously been manipulating the evolution of life on each of these planets.]]> 338 Robert J. Sawyer Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.86 2000 Calculating God
author: Robert J. Sawyer
name: Richard
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> No One Is Talking About This 57302775
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats—from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness—begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"

Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.

Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.]]> 210 Patricia Lockwood 1526633833 Richard 5 2024 3.39 2021 No One Is Talking About This
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Richard
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 59733531
The long-awaited new work from the author of Foster, Small Things Like These is an unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness.]]> 116 Claire Keegan 0571368700 Richard 4 2024, own-read 4.21 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Richard
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: 2024, own-read
review:

]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 55810629 445 Janice Hallett 1788165306 Richard 4 3.96 2021 The Appeal (The Appeal, #1)
author: Janice Hallett
name: Richard
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, 2024, own-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Street (Amos Walker, #11)]]> 644258 325 Loren D. Estleman 0446605964 Richard 4 3.86 1997 Never Street (Amos Walker, #11)
author: Loren D. Estleman
name: Richard
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: amos-walker-books-i-own, 2024, own-read
review:

]]> Rose/House 52263339 Dust jacket illustration by David Curtis.

Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella.

Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.

Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.

But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.

There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.

No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies]]> 128 Arkady Martine Richard 0 3.58 2023 Rose/House
author: Arkady Martine
name: Richard
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> Vurt 24942616 400 Jeff Noon 1447229215 Richard 3 2024 3.85 1993 Vurt
author: Jeff Noon
name: Richard
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Word Kill (Impossible Times, #1)]]> 40383616 Ready Player One meets Stranger Things in this thrilling new novel by bestselling author Mark Lawrence.

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.

He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.

Challenge accepted.]]> 197 Mark Lawrence 1503903265 Richard 3 city-of-sydney-library, 2024 3.65 2019 One Word Kill (Impossible Times, #1)
author: Mark Lawrence
name: Richard
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2024
review:

]]> Lonesome Dove 19771820
A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize� winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.]]> 859 Larry McMurtry Richard 0 4.70 1985 Lonesome Dove
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Richard
average rating: 4.70
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, longlist
review:

]]> Euphoria 23168325
In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives...]]> 261 Lily King 0802123708 Richard 0 3.85 2014 Euphoria
author: Lily King
name: Richard
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read, longlist
review:

]]> Desperate Characters 96544 176 Paula Fox 0007150385 Richard 4 2024 3.84 1970 Desperate Characters
author: Paula Fox
name: Richard
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Second Sleep 43561172
1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts � coins, fragments of glass, human bones � which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?

As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes � about himself, his faith and the history of his world � is tested to destruction.]]> 330 Robert Harris Richard 0 3.47 2019 The Second Sleep
author: Robert Harris
name: Richard
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read, willoughby-library, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> Diaspora 1281517
The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural and physical development divide into three: fleshers � true Homo sapiens; Gleisner robots � embodying human minds within machines that interact with the physical world; and polises � supercomputers teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis.

Diaspora is the story of Yatima � a polis being created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed � and of humankind, Of an astrophysical accident that spurs the thousandfold cloning of the polises. Of the discovery of an alien race and of a kink in time that means humanity � whatever form it takes � will never again be threatened by acts of God.]]> 295 Greg Egan 1857984382 Richard 3 2024 4.31 1997 Diaspora
author: Greg Egan
name: Richard
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Christmas Appeal (The Appeal, #1.5)]]> 124949815 Run Time = 3hr 36min

A charmingly festive novella from the “modern Agatha Christie� (The Sunday Times, London): In Lower Lockwood, a Christmas theater production takes a dark turn when a body is discovered onstage. As rivalries flare and secrets unravel, lawyers Femi and Charlotte race to uncover the killer before the final curtain falls � for good. Read by a full cast of narrators!


This immersive holiday caper follows the hilarious Fairway Players theater group as they put on a Christmas play—and solve a murder that threatens their production.

The Christmas season has arrived in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive holiday production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theater enthusiasts with petty rivalries, a possibly asbestos-filled beanstalk, and some perennially absent players behind the scenes.

Of course, there’s also the matter of the dead body onstage. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they investigate Christmas letters, examine emails, and pore over police transcripts to identify both the victim and killer before the curtain closes on their holiday production—for good.]]> 208 Janice Hallett 166803588X Richard 0 3.53 2023 The Christmas Appeal (The Appeal, #1.5)
author: Janice Hallett
name: Richard
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own
review:

]]> Starman (The Axis Trilogy #3) 232050 Winner of the 1996 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Axis is the Starman of Prophecy and legend, destined to lead the three races of his world to unite as one people. The people of his world all know the Prophecy of the Destroyer, despite the failed attempts of the Seneschal to suppress it in the name of the god Artor the Ploughman, and it predicts and dictates Axis's path through war and destruction to the creation of Tencendor.

The Prophecy foretold that Axis would defeat his half-brother and lay claim to the land that Tencendor will be created upon. The Prophecy told of the traitor in Axis's camp; Faradays champion, Timozel.

And the Prophecy foretold many a choice that Axis must make in order to fulfill his destiny . . . but neglected to mention the choice between the beautiful and courageous Faraday, his late half-brother's wife, and the feisty and hauntingly enchanting Azhure.

To Faraday, he had pledged his love and a place by his side as ruler of Tencendor; to Azhure, he had given his children, his time, and his devotion.

His love for both women is what the last twist of the Prophecy relies on. While Azhure explores her newfound powers as an Icarii Enchantress, and Faraday replants the ancient forests of the Mother, the evil Gorgrael is plotting Axis's downfall, invading the sky with ice and terror and the flesh-hungry Gryphons. His most daring move is to follow prophecy, to taunt Axis with the pain of his beloved.

But which beloved woman will Gorgrael choose . . . and will she be the one whose death will distract Axis from saving the world?

]]> 733 Sara Douglass 0732251591 Richard 3 2024 3.95 1996 Starman (The Axis Trilogy #3)
author: Sara Douglass
name: Richard
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Singularity 195830893 The Singularity, Ermanno Ismani, an unassuming university professor, is summoned by the minister of defense to accept a two-year, top-secret mission at a mysterious research center, isolated from the world among forests, plunging cliffs, and high mountains. What’s he supposed to do there? Not clear. How long will he be there? No saying.

Still, Ismani takes the mystifying job and, accompanied by his no-nonsense wife, Elisa, heads to the so-called Experimental Camp of Military Zone 36, wondering whether, in the midst of the Cold War, it’s some sort of nuclear project he’s been assigned to. But no, the colleagues the couple meets on arrival assure them, it’s nothing like that. It’s much, much more powerful.

At the center of the research complex is strange, shining, at times murmurous, white wall. Behind it, a deep gorge drops away, full of wires and radio towers and mobile sensors and a host of eccentric structures. A question begins to dawn: Could this be the shape of consciousness itself? And if so, whose?

Buzzati's novella of 1960, a pioneering work of Italian science fiction, is published here in a brisk new translation by Anne Milano Appel. In it, Buzzati explores his favorite themes of love and longing while offering a startlingly prescient parable of artificial intelligence.]]> 136 Dino Buzzati 1681378000 Richard 0 3.66 1960 The Singularity
author: Dino Buzzati
name: Richard
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, longlist
review:

]]> Rich Man's Sky 54303716
When billionaires control the space program, where does that leave the rest of us?

Space: a tycoon'splayground. From a space station full of women to a monastery on the Moon, from a Martian reality-TV contest to a solar shade large enough to cool the Earth, the dreams of a handful of trillionaires dictate the future of humanity. Outside the reach of Earthly lawand with the vast resources of the inner solar system at their disposal, the “Four Horsemen� do exactly as they please.

The governments of Earth are not amused; an international team of elite military women, masquerading as space colonists, are set to infiltrate and neutralize the largest and most dangerous project in human history. But nothing is that simple when rich men control the sky, as everyone involved is about to discover.

About Rich Man's Sky:

"Action SF built on a hard foundation of cutting-edge science."—Walter Jon Williams

"An action-crammed story that darts at hyper-speed from Burning Man, Nevada to Suriname to a convent on the Moon to an orbiting colony that’s clearly up to something. A jam-packed adventure fizzing with mind-blowing concepts, and a great read!"—Connie Willis

"A hard science fiction tour de force, populated by memorable characters in a tale of intrigue, adventure, and irresistible market forces."—Linda Nagata

About Antediluvian:
�. . . gripping and . . . grounded in archaeology.”� Publishers Weekly

�. . . plenty of verisimilitude . . . superbly intriguing and captivating . . . bravura historical recreations, full of conjectural material. . . . Presenting us with a colorful cast of characters from across the millennia who have thick and rich existences, and affirming that the cosmic stream of life flows forcefully despite all small blockades, McCarthy has written a novel that looks both forwards and backwards, thus making a stellar return to the field.”� Locus

About Wil McCarthy:
"McCarthy is an entertaining, intelligent, amusing writer, with Heinlein's knack for breakneck plotting and, at the same time, Clarke's thoughtfulness."� Booklist

“Imagination really is the only limit.”� The New York Times

“The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place.”� Publishers Weekly

“Abright light on the SF horizon.”—David Brin

“Wil McCarthy demonstrates that he has a sharp intelligence, a galaxy-spanning imagination, and the solid scientific background to make it all work.”—Connie Willis

“In nearly every passage, we get another slice of the science of McCarthy’s construction, and a deeper sense of danger and foreboding . . . McCarthy develops considerable tension.”� San Diego Union-Tribune

“An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns.”� Kirkus]]> 320 Wil McCarthy 1982125292 Richard 3 city-of-sydney-library, 2024 3.44 2021 Rich Man's Sky
author: Wil McCarthy
name: Richard
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, 2024
review:

]]> Declare 8238720 576 Tim Powers 1848874030 Richard 4 2024 3.60 2000 Declare
author: Tim Powers
name: Richard
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)]]> 209654575
For Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at the store is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including DallerGut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.

A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.]]> 243 Lee Mi-ye 103541273X Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.76 2020 DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)
author: Lee Mi-ye
name: Richard
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> The Black Cloud 32602990
The effect of this impending catastrophe on the scientists and politicians is convincingly described by Fred Hoyle, the leading Cambridge astronomer: so convincingly, in fact, that the reader feels that these events may actually happen. This is science fiction at its very highest level.]]> 219 Fred Hoyle Richard 4 2024 3.50 1957 The Black Cloud
author: Fred Hoyle
name: Richard
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Anyone 49114533
Two decades later, 'flash' technology allows individuals the ability to transfer their consciousness into other bodies for specified periods, paid, registered and legal. Society has been utterly transformed by the process, from travel to warfare to entertainment. But beyond the reach of the law is a sordid black market called the darkshare, where desperate vessels anonymously rent out their bodies, no questions asked... for any purpose.

Anami has her own reasons for using it, and they start with revenge.]]> 432 Charles Soule 1529346738 Richard 3 4.00 2019 Anyone
author: Charles Soule
name: Richard
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Enchanter (The Axis Trilogy, #2)]]> 232046 704 Sara Douglass 073225129X Richard 3 2024 3.96 1996 Enchanter (The Axis Trilogy, #2)
author: Sara Douglass
name: Richard
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Karla's Choice 210678583 A gripping new novel set in the universe of John le Carré's most iconic spy, George Smiley, written by acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway

Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carré.

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall � unconfirmed and a little scandalous � that George Smiley might almost be happy.

But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy�

'The Smiley novels are key to understanding the 20th century' Margaret Atwood

‘Smiley is John le Carré’s finest creation, one of the great characters of twentieth-century literature� The Telegraph

‘The last English gentlemen, Smiley is the finest secret agent in the world� New York Times ]]> 304 Nick Harkaway 1405969849 Richard 4 arc, 2024
Karla's Choice is a new addition to John le Carre's world of espionage and intrigue, authored by Le Carre's son, Nick Harkaway. This filled me with excitement and trepidation before I started: I enjoyed the original Smiley novels, and I'd been meaning to read Harkaway for a while, but a poor pastiche would be quite the disappointment.

Fortunately, Karla's Choice is nicely executed. The novel has the same moody feel, dense prose and slightly unbelievable logic leaps as the original novels. Like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it's at its best when there are spy or bureaucratic set pieces: there's a particularly well-done scene about an overheard conversation, and the climax is note-perfect. Like The Spy Who Came in From The Cold, this novel also subtly grapples with bigger questions: Are the ends worth the means? What is family and when should it come first?

Compared to the original novels, there are a few modernisations - the cast feels more diverse, and Harkaway spent more time than his father unpacking the steps taken, the reasons for them and the implications of those choices. This makes Karla's Choice slightly more approachable without feeling alien to the original books.

As for the limitations... the pace was quite slow, which coupled with the prose meant this was a book that took a little work to get through. Also - and I say this while being aware that it's best not to compare the book to some theoretical *other* book the author could have written - this was tied much more closely to one of the original books (The Spy who Came in From the Cold) than I could imagine Le Carre tying a book together. I found this choice rather distracting - like a shout for legitimacy, or a marketer's pitch - that drew me out of the world and drew unnecessary attention to the fact that Karla's Choice was written decades after the original novels.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read - but make sure you read The Spy who Came in From the Cold first. Finally, a big thank you to Nick Harkaway, Penguin and Netgalley for this advance review copy, provided in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.23 2024 Karla's Choice
author: Nick Harkaway
name: Richard
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: arc, 2024
review:
4/5: A worthy addition to the Smiley-verse, which balances authenticity to the world it is written in with modern sensibilities and thoughtful reflections on life and choices.

Karla's Choice is a new addition to John le Carre's world of espionage and intrigue, authored by Le Carre's son, Nick Harkaway. This filled me with excitement and trepidation before I started: I enjoyed the original Smiley novels, and I'd been meaning to read Harkaway for a while, but a poor pastiche would be quite the disappointment.

Fortunately, Karla's Choice is nicely executed. The novel has the same moody feel, dense prose and slightly unbelievable logic leaps as the original novels. Like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it's at its best when there are spy or bureaucratic set pieces: there's a particularly well-done scene about an overheard conversation, and the climax is note-perfect. Like The Spy Who Came in From The Cold, this novel also subtly grapples with bigger questions: Are the ends worth the means? What is family and when should it come first?

Compared to the original novels, there are a few modernisations - the cast feels more diverse, and Harkaway spent more time than his father unpacking the steps taken, the reasons for them and the implications of those choices. This makes Karla's Choice slightly more approachable without feeling alien to the original books.

As for the limitations... the pace was quite slow, which coupled with the prose meant this was a book that took a little work to get through. Also - and I say this while being aware that it's best not to compare the book to some theoretical *other* book the author could have written - this was tied much more closely to one of the original books (The Spy who Came in From the Cold) than I could imagine Le Carre tying a book together. I found this choice rather distracting - like a shout for legitimacy, or a marketer's pitch - that drew me out of the world and drew unnecessary attention to the fact that Karla's Choice was written decades after the original novels.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read - but make sure you read The Spy who Came in From the Cold first. Finally, a big thank you to Nick Harkaway, Penguin and Netgalley for this advance review copy, provided in exchange for an honest review.
]]> <![CDATA[Battleaxe (The Axis Trilogy, #1)]]> 232047
The Sentinels walk the land, the TreeFriend has been found, and the people of the Plough, the Wing and the Horn must set aside their differences and unite under one leader against the evil rising in the north . .]]> 674 Sara Douglass 0732258650 Richard 3 2024 3.99 1995 Battleaxe (The Axis Trilogy, #1)
author: Sara Douglass
name: Richard
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Devil and the Dark Water 59722431 Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Three impossible crimes.
Two unlikely detectives.
One deadly voyage.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam, where he is set to face trial for a crime that no one dares speak of.

But no sooner is the ship out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. Strange symbols appear on the sails. A figure stalks the decks. Livestock are slaughtered. Passengers are plagued with ominous threats, promising them three unholy miracles. First: an impossible pursuit. Second: an impossible theft.

Then: an impossible murder.

With Pipps imprisoned in the depths of the ship, can his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes solve the mystery before the ship descends into anarchy?]]> 552 Stuart Turton 1408889536 Richard 0 3.86 2020 The Devil and the Dark Water
author: Stuart Turton
name: Richard
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, want-to-read-but-don-t-own, willoughby-library
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spy Hook (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 55818517
In the first part of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, friends become enemies, pursuer becomes victim and no one - not even Bernard himself - is above suspicion.

A BERNARD SAMSON NOVEL]]> 271 Len Deighton 024150547X Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.93 1988 Spy Hook (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Len Deighton
name: Richard
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[White Eagles Over Serbia (English and Spanish Edition)]]> 2071577 200 Lawrence Durrell 0571065473 Richard 0 to-read, own-but-haven-t-read 3.38 1957 White Eagles Over Serbia (English and Spanish Edition)
author: Lawrence Durrell
name: Richard
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> The Electric Kingdom 55686924
A deadly flu has swept the globe, leaving a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, who are on a journey devised by Nico’s father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, who knows almost nothing of the world outside the old abandoned cinema he was raised in; and and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together.]]> 368 David Arnold 1922330922 Richard 0 3.70 2021 The Electric Kingdom
author: David Arnold
name: Richard
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, city-of-sydney-library, willoughby-library, own-but-haven-t-read
review:

]]> Bellwether 19245351 320 Connie Willis 0575120320 Richard 4 2020 3.92 1996 Bellwether
author: Connie Willis
name: Richard
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: 2020
review:

]]> The Family Tree 21339891 Alternate Cover Edition for this ASIN can be found here

Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.
And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.
A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The nearer Dora gets to a murderer - and to the truth - the more seemingly desperate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in a far distant future...one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.]]> 500 Sheri S. Tepper 0575116269 Richard 4 2023, own-read 4.31 1997 The Family Tree
author: Sheri S. Tepper
name: Richard
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: 2023, own-read
review:

]]>