Cadence's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 09:58:29 -0700 60 Cadence's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Blue Hole Back Home 36337074
Shelby Lenoir Maynard, nicknamed Turtle, has never much trusted girls her own age, spending her days instead with her brother and his pack of friends. But when a mysterious Sri Lankan girl of Moorish descent moves to town, Turtle invites her to their secret haven: the Blue Hole. Turtle could not have imagined how much that simple gesture would alter the rest of her life, or the lives of those she loves...]]>
400 Joy Jordan-Lake 069295709X Cadence 4 2025-books 4.06 2008 Blue Hole Back Home
author: Joy Jordan-Lake
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]>
1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Cadence 2 2025-books, audiobooks 4.35 2024 Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: 2025-books, audiobooks
review:

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The Summer of Yes 201335518 A near-death experience catapults workaholic junior editor Kelsey Worthington into changing her life--one yes at a time.

Kelsey Worthington always dreamed of being a writer, but she's settled into a routine of helping other people tell their stories in her job as a junior editor. She doesn't go outside of her comfort zone. Her relationships are safe. Her job is secure. Her existence is stable. And she's great with that.

And then, the accident.

While she's in the hospital overnight, she meets an older woman named Georgina Tate--a glass-ceiling-shattering, wildly successful businesswoman. Georgina sacrificed everything to become the woman she is today, but now, with a pair of failing kidneys and only a handful of months left to live, Georgina is forced to come face-to-face with her regrets. Kelsey is forced to reckon with her own list of "things I'll do someday," and she starts to ask a simple but life-changing What if I said yes to all the things I normally say no to? And The Yes Plan is born.

It takes some convincing, but Georgina finally agrees to go along with Kelsey on her Summer of Yes adventures. The two of them set off to see what might be out there waiting for them if they simply open themselves up to it. Together, they say yes to whatever comes their way--a whole day being tourists in their own New York City, dinner with strangers, a convertible that is far from practical but so much fun. But when Kelsey springs a surprise visit to Georgina's son Hayden and Georgina's ex-husband (who is not so much of an ex), the older woman is less than thrilled. But this is where the true journey begins.

Two stories of love, forgiveness, regret, romance, and finding a way to live a fearless life intertwine as these two women make an indelible impression on each other. And it all starts with a simple "yes."]]>
384 Courtney Walsh 084071369X Cadence 2 2025-books 3.94 2024 The Summer of Yes
author: Courtney Walsh
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Emma and Joseph: Their Divine Mission]]> 848332 Emma and Their Divine Mission is a careful, sensitive history describing the powerful sustaining relationship that Joseph and Emma shared and their tremendous mutual loyalty throughout the seventeen years of their marriage. Author Gracia Jones writes, â There is no doubt that Emma put her whole soul into the effort of helping to lay the foundation of the kingdom of God. Her faith in the truthfulness of (Joseph's) mission caused Emma to turn her back on parents, social position, security and all things a girl holds dear, to share a beggar's life with her prophet husband, whose entire energy was directed toward fulfilling God's commandment to take the message of the Restoration to the whole world. . . â Joseph's devotion to Emma shines through his numerous letters to her. Of Emma, Joseph wrote, â She that was my wife of my youth, and the choice of my heart. . . Again she is here, even in the seventh trouble â undaunted, firm, and unwavering â unchangeable, affectionate Emma!â In sharing her personal study of Joseph and Emma, including letters not published elsewhere, sister Jones offers readers new understanding into these two very important figures in Church history and the various events that shaped their lives. Insightful and thoroughly documented, Emma and Their Divine Mission will undoubtedly become a classic among all students of Church history. Not only does it contain information that has not been widely available, it presents many familiar incidents in a new light, from the author's new perspective.]]> 364 Gracia N. Jones 1577345290 Cadence 0 2025-books 3.97 1999 Emma and Joseph: Their Divine Mission
author: Gracia N. Jones
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation]]> 24303 160 Avi 0152057900 Cadence 0 2025-books 3.78 2006 Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation
author: Avi
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[I Will Fear No Evil: How the Lord Sustains Us in Perilous Times]]> 286205
In I Will Fear No Evil, Brother Millet discusses:

how to understand human tragedy from God's perspective,

how the power of the Atonement makes sense of suffering and uncertainty,

the importance of staying grounded in the gospel,

the blessings and benefits that come to us through hearkening to the words of living apostles and prophets, and,

the importance of reading the signs of the times while remaining sane and balanced in living the gospel.

Filled with insights from the prophets, both ancient and modern, and further brought to life with personal examples, I Will Fear No Evil is a timely and thoughtful book to calm our fears and sustain our faith in times of distress.

Although our world often seems locked in a downward spiral, we can find reassurance in the prophetic promise that this era of turmoil, strife, and war can also be a time of growth, unity, and peace. And we can take comfort in the words of the twenty-third Psalm: 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for [God is] with me' (v. 4).]]>
191 Robert L. Millet 1570088292 Cadence 0 2025-books 4.19 2002 I Will Fear No Evil: How the Lord Sustains Us in Perilous Times
author: Robert L. Millet
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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The Berlin Letters 180352054 368 Katherine Reay 1400243068 Cadence 4 2025-books 4.15 2024 The Berlin Letters
author: Katherine Reay
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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A Girl Called Samson 58769584 From New York Times bestselling author Amy Harmon comes the saga of a young woman who dares to chart her own destiny in life and love during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1760, Deborah Samson is born to Puritan parents in Plympton, Massachusetts. When her father abandons the family and her mother is unable to support them, Deborah is bound out as an indentured servant. From that moment on, she yearns for a life of liberation and adventure.

Twenty years later, as the American colonies begin to buckle in their battle for independence, Deborah, impassioned by the cause, disguises herself as a soldier and enlists in the Continental Army. Her impressive height and lanky build make her transformation a convincing one, and it isn’t long before she finds herself confronting the horrors of war head-on.

But as Deborah fights for her country’s freedom, she must contend with the secret of who she is—and, ultimately, a surprising love she can’t deny.]]>
405 Amy Harmon 1542039738 Cadence 0 to-read 4.48 2023 A Girl Called Samson
author: Amy Harmon
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
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The Idiot 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Cadence 0 2025-books 4.22 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II]]> 55920278 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and courage: the special Japanese-American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment.

They came from across the continent and Hawaii. Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of their American homeland. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire.

Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.

But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.]]>
560 Daniel James Brown 0525557407 Cadence 0 to-read 4.45 2021 Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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Stories Told By 'Abdu'l-Bahá 34869325
'These stories by the Master are an introduction to living a spiritual life pleasing to the Creator of all humankind. Gleaned from the written record of stories told over a period of many years, they provide life changing perceptions of spiritual realities that often escape the modern mind. Stories hold the key to unlocking the human heart by revealing the eternal verities that can remove the barriers blinding one's spiritual insight and hearing, and they create a taste for spiritual things in one's soul, a taste that leads one to explore the great wealth of the spiritual world. Let the reader reflect and meditate on these matchless gems of wisdom and discover the love of God enshrined therein.' Jack E. McCants

'Dr Badiei's delightful collection of stories told by 'Abdu'l-Bahá is a timely addition to the wealth of materials on the ministry of One Who was characterized by His father, Bahá'u'lláh, as the perfect Exemplar of His Faith. In the context of the Iranian culture (or the Middle East, for that matter), stories are used to make a moral, philosophical or spiritual. And no one ever better used the medium for those purposes than the Master. For the reader it is a joy to have them available in one volume. Such stories should not be neglected or lost by the passage of time. We are grateful that Dr Badiei has rendered the Cause such a service, a service that to him also has been a labour of love.'
Nosratollah Rassekh, Portland, Oregon]]>
196 Amir Badiei Cadence 0 2025-books 4.25 Stories Told By 'Abdu'l-Bahá
author: Amir Badiei
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: 2025-books
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The Outlaw Noble Salt 195511946 From New York Times bestselling author Amy Harmon comes a sweepingly romantic tale of risk, redemption, and what happens when America’s most famous outlaw falls in love.

When infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy decides to go straight, he discovers that too many of the powerful men he crossed won’t let bygones be bygones. To have a chance at a new life, he’ll have to become someone else entirely.

A brief, fateful encounter with the celebrated singer Jane Touissant on the eve of his escape offers a glimpse of what might have been, but Butch disappears, leaving her behind, until their paths unexpectedly converge again in Paris.

Despite having discovered his true identity, Jane trusts the outlaw and enlists his protection on her upcoming American tour. Although Butch is reluctant to agree, fearing his sordid past may put the woman and her young son in danger, the salvation she offers is too hard to resist.

As they set forth on their journey, Butch’s past and Jane’s secrets put them at risk from threats far greater than the law, and this legend of the American West will have to decide what matters most—his life, his legacy, or the woman he loves.]]>
364 Amy Harmon 1662514441 Cadence 4 2025-books 4.41 2024 The Outlaw Noble Salt
author: Amy Harmon
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans]]> 25028680 84 Adam S. Miller Cadence 0 2025-books 4.55 2015 Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans
author: Adam S. Miller
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8]]> 221735399
The Year is 1884 and Emma M. Lion has, at long last, gained her majority. Entering a golden age of friendship with Pierce, Islington, and Hawkes, Emma is confident she will manage whatever comes her way. It is The Season she must help Arabella secure a husband, while navigating the threat of Aunt Eugenia, the unflagging adoration of Charles Goddard, and the amusing unpredictability of St. Crispian's. But the secrets of her trusted friends are what might very well bring about disaster.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.

Readers have compared The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion to Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, L. M. Montgomery, and Jean Webster.]]>
339 Beth Brower 1957492031 Cadence 5 2025-books 4.76 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.76
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley]]> 63354446 She’s out to prove that there’sno such thing as choosing happiness.

Isadora Bentley follows the rules. Isadora Bentley likes things just so. Isadora Bentley believes that happiness is something that flat-out doesn’t exist in her life—and never will.

As a university researcher, Isadora keeps to herself as much as possible. She avoids the students she’s supposed to befriend and mentor. She stays away from her neighbors and lives her own quiet, organized life in her own quiet, organized apartment. And she will never get involved in a romantic relationship again—especially with another academic. It will be just Isadora and her research. Forever.

But on her thirtieth birthday, Isadora does something completely out of character. The young woman who never does anything “on a whim� makes an impulse purchase of a magazine featuring a silly article detailing “Thirty-One Ways to Be Happy”—which includes everything from smiling at strangers to exercising for endorphins to giving in to your chocolate cravings. Isadora decides to create her own secret research project—proving the writer of the ridiculous piece wrong.

As Isadora gets deeper into her research—and meets a handsome professor along the way—she’s stunned to discover that maybe, just maybe, she’s proving herself wrong. Perhaps there’s actually something to this happiness concept, and possibly there’s something to be said for loosening up and letting life take you somewhere...happy.


Contemporary Christian romance
Perfect for fans of Denise Hunter and Rachel Linden
Includes discussion questions for book clubs]]>
358 Courtney Walsh 0840712804 Cadence 3 2025-books 4.14 2023 The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley
author: Courtney Walsh
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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Amazed by Grace 25066869 Do we believe we are saved by grace? With access to sacred scripture and modern revelation, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ought to have special insight into the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the amazing power of grace in our individual lives. Yet how many of us truly understand grace and how to unlock the power it contains?

In Amazed by Grace, author Sheri Dew considers four questions: What is grace? What difference can grace make in our lives? How does the Savior make His power available to us? And what must we do to gain access to the Savior's power?

Expand your understanding of grace and broaden your gospel horizon with Sheri as she reminds us that "the central, most compelling, most life-changing message of all time is that Jesus Christ already triumphed over sin, death, hell and every kind of misery. Surely there is nothing our Father is more eager for us to understand than the breathtaking scope of the Atonement of His Son and the power the Atonement makes available to us."

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80 Sheri Dew 1629733172 Cadence 0 4.66 2015 Amazed by Grace
author: Sheri Dew
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: 2025-books, out-of-the-best-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton]]> 63264983
General George Patton once remarked that World War II undoubtedly would have lasted a lot longer were it not for his soldiers and his wife. Those who knew the Pattons were aware of the vital role Beatrice played in his reaching his destiny, but few others understood the singular impact of this remarkable woman whom people described as having "a personality which radiates like a brilliant gem."

Raised in a forward-looking family to be independent, Beatrice possessed an iron will and maturity beyond her years by the time she was sixteen. When she first laid eyes on George S. Patton Jr. in the summer of 1902, she was determined to make him her husband. She followed him relentlessly across Catalina Island on a family vacation in Southern California, setting a pattern for the rest of their lives.

The arduous army life was alien to Beatrice growing up on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue, but her adventurous spirit and insatiable curiosity allowed her to adapt quickly. She became an immediate asset to her husband's career and continuously fanned the flames of his burning ambition, yet she managed to maintain her identity and pursue her interests. As comfortable on the back of a magnificent steed as at the helm of a great schooner, she became an authority on Hawaiian legends while stationed on the islands twice.

Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton tells the story of the General's greatest champion in life and fiercest defender in death while shedding new light on a complex personality many remember as "old blood and guts." Beatrice Ayer Patton was a good soldier who fought the war on the home-front three times, but she would not have hesitated a second had she been offered the chance to stand beside her husband on the battlefield.

Includes over one hundred pictures, family trees, and extensive notes.]]>
787 Stefanie Van Steelandt Cadence 4 2025-books 4.54 Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton
author: Stefanie Van Steelandt
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: 2025-books
review:

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Appalachian Song 123185835
Always remember, you are perfectly loved.

Bertie Jenkins has spent forty years serving as a midwife for her community in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Out of all the mothers she’s tended, none affects her more than the young teenager who shows up on her doorstep, injured, afraid, and expecting, one warm June day in 1943. As Bertie and her four sisters tenderly nurture Songbird back to health, the bond between the childless midwife and the motherless teen grows strong. But soon Songbird is forced to make a heartbreaking decision that will tear this little family apart.

Thirty years later, the day after his father’s funeral, Walker Wylie is stunned to learn he was adopted as an infant. The famous country singer enlists the help of adoption advocate Reese Chandler in the hopes of learning why he was abandoned by his birth parents. With the only clue he has in hand, Walker and Reese head deep into the Appalachian Mountains to track down Bertie Jenkins, the midwife who holds the secrets to Walker’s past.

For fans of historical and Southern fiction comes a poignant story of love and sacrifice set in the heart of Appalachia, from award-winning author Michelle Shocklee.]]>
352 Michelle Shocklee 1496472438 Cadence 0 to-read 4.34 2023 Appalachian Song
author: Michelle Shocklee
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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Beneath a Scarlet Sky 32487617 Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

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509 Mark T. Sullivan 1503943372 Cadence 0 to-read 4.33 2017 Beneath a Scarlet Sky
author: Mark T. Sullivan
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row]]> 34964905 A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.]]>
272 Anthony Ray Hinton 1250124719 Cadence 0 to-read 4.64 2018 The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
author: Anthony Ray Hinton
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Talking with God: Divine Conversations that Transform Daily Life]]> 7950072 - A valuable guide to making our prayers more effective and inspiring.
- Shows how consistent, sincere prayer can transform us into better men and women.
- Covers a wide variety of topics, including: preparation for prayer, fasting and prayer, prayers of gratitude, receiving help from the other side, and what to do when no clear answer comes.
- Inspires renewed gratitude for the privilege of prayer and a deeper appreciation of the blessings it brings.]]>
160 Robert L. Millet 1606416545 Cadence 0 4.17 2010 Talking with God: Divine Conversations that Transform Daily Life
author: Robert L. Millet
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: 2024-books, out-of-the-best-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]>
304 John Green 0525555218 Cadence 5 2022-books 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/15
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: 2022-books
review:

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The Little Liar 112975105 333 Mitch Albom 0062406655 Cadence 5 2024-books 4.54 2023 The Little Liar
author: Mitch Albom
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Perfect in Christ 217954670
In Perfect in Trading the Burden of Enough for the Beauty of Sufficient, author Michelle Wilson invites us to stop trying to perfect ourselves and instead focus on moving closer to Jesus Christ, who can perfect us. With hope, faith, humility, and repentance, we are accepted by Christ who guides us to become more than we are capable of being on our own.

When we embrace the beauty of sufficient, obligation is replaced by motivation, anxiety is replaced by excitement, guilt is replaced by grace, and shame is replaced by love. As we move closer to Jesus Christ, His sufficient grace and strength will make us perfect—perfect in Him.]]>
158 Michelle Wilson Cadence 0 4.38 Perfect in Christ
author: Michelle Wilson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: 2024-books, out-of-the-best-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity]]> 70917084
On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie !The Mona Lisa, she’s gone!

No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?

Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary turn-of-the-century Paris. Walk its backstreets. Meet the infamous thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa , through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa —the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.

Here is a middle-grade nonfiction, with black-and-white illustrations by Brett Helquist throughout, written at the pace of a thriller, shot through with stories of crime and celebrity, genius and beauty.]]>
288 Nicholas Day 0593643844 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.09 2023 The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity
author: Nicholas Day
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: 2024-books, audiobooks
review:

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The Grand Sophy 261689 328 Georgette Heyer 0099465639 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.14 1950 The Grand Sophy
author: Georgette Heyer
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1950
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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I Still Dream About You 7897620 I Still Dream About You, a comic mystery romp through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, past, present, and future.

Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful real estate agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up in her present condition. She had been on her hopeful way to becoming Miss America and realizing her childhood dream of someday living in one of the elegant old homes on top of Red Mountain, with the adoring husband and the 2.5 children, but then something unexpected happened and changed everything.

Maggie graduated at the top of her class at charm school, can fold a napkin in more than forty-eight different ways, and can enter and exit a car gracefully, but all the finesse in the world cannot help her now. Since the legendary real estate dynamo Hazel Whisenknott, beloved founder of Red Mountain Realty, died five years ago, business has gone from bad to worse—and the future isn’t looking much better. But just when things seem completely hopeless, Maggie suddenly comes up with the perfect plan to solve it all.

As Maggie prepares to put her plan into action, we meet the cast of high-spirited characters around her. To Brenda Peoples, Maggie’s best friend and real estate partner, Maggie’s life seems easy as pie. Slender Maggie doesn’t have to worry about her figure, or about her Weight Watchers sponsor catching her at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. And Ethel Clipp, Red Mountain’s ancient and grumpy office manager with the bright purple hair, thinks the world of Maggie but has absolutely nothing nice to say about their rival Babs “The Beast of Birmingham� Bingington, the unscrupulous estate agent who hates Maggie and is determined to put her out of business.

Maggie has heartbreaking secrets in her past, but through a strange turn of events, she soon discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems—dead or alive—has at least one little secret.

I Still Dream About You is a wonderful novel that is equal parts Southern charm, murder mystery, and that perfect combination of comedy and old-fashioned wisdom that can be served up only by America’s own remarkable Fannie Flagg.
ձ>
315 Fannie Flagg 1400065933 Cadence 3 2024-books 3.56 2010 I Still Dream About You
author: Fannie Flagg
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole]]> 58734811 In her new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet reveals the power of a bittersweet outlook on life, and why we’ve been so blind to its value.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality, and love.

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind—and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans.

But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions—amplified by recent scientific and management research—teach us its power.

Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.]]>
310 Susan Cain 0451499786 Cadence 3 2024-books 3.96 2022 Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
author: Susan Cain
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Death of a Hussy (Hamish Macbeth, #5)]]> 671498 151 M.C. Beaton 0804107688 Cadence 2 2024-books, audiobooks 3.74 1988 Death of a Hussy (Hamish Macbeth, #5)
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1988
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: 2024-books, audiobooks
review:

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Grace Works 423585 Book by Millet, Robert L. 144 Robert L. Millet 157008906X Cadence 0 2024-books 4.27 2003 Grace Works
author: Robert L. Millet
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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In His Steps 223838 This is the inspirational novel that popularized the expression,What Would Jesus Do? Written bya Congregational minister, it tells offour prominent members of a small town who resolve to undertake no action without first considering Christ's example. Originally published in 1897, itcontinues to speak to modern readers.]]> 96 Charles Monroe Sheldon 1557488150 Cadence 0 2024-books 4.18 1897 In His Steps
author: Charles Monroe Sheldon
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Far Above Rubies 60555791
With Hebrew, humor, and reassurance, author Tamara Uzelac Hall injects a much-needed dose of reality into women’s interpretation of this section of scripture with this all of us are virtuous. This book teaches how to embrace the unique and impactful role you already play and will help you discover a truth that will change the way you view your no matter your progress on the path, thou art already a virtuous woman!]]>
188 Tammy Uzelac Hall 1524419788 Cadence 0 4.55 Far Above Rubies
author: Tammy Uzelac Hall
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: 2024-books, out-of-the-best-books
review:

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<![CDATA[A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking]]> 54369251
But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…]]>
306 T. Kingfisher 1614505241 Cadence 3 2024-books 4.02 2020 A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Whole in Christ 59002239 Robert L Millet Cadence 0 4.52 Whole in Christ
author: Robert L Millet
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: 2024-books, out-of-the-best-books
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I Cheerfully Refuse 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Cadence 4 2024-books 3.95 2024 I Cheerfully Refuse
author: Leif Enger
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: 2024-books
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Leaving Cold Sassy 19246586 Olive Ann Burns had completed fifteen chapters of this novel by the time of her death in 1990, and she expressed her wish for them to be published, as they are here, with her notes for future scenes. In addition, Olive Ann's longtime editor and friend, Katrina Kenison, leaves us with an appreciative reminiscence of the beloved author and the legacy she left behind.]]> 330 Olive Ann Burns 0547527292 Cadence 0 2023-books 3.79 1992 Leaving Cold Sassy
author: Olive Ann Burns
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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Notorious 51316712 A funny, suspenseful mystery and unlikely friendship story from New York Times bestselling authorGordon Korman—perfect for fans of Swindle and Ungifted.

Keenan has lived all over the world but nowhere quite as strange as Centerlight Island, which is split between the United States and Canada. The only thing weirder than Centerlight itself is his neighbor Zarabeth, aka ZeeBee.

ZeeBee is obsessed with the island’s history as a Prohibition-era smuggling route. She’s also convinced that her beloved dog, Barney, was murdered—something Keenan finds pretty hard to believe.

Just about everyone on Centerlight is a suspect, because everyone hated Barney, a huge dog—part mastiff, part rottweiler—notorious for terrorizing the community. Accompanied by a mild-mannered new dog who is practically Barney’s opposite, ZeeBee enlists Keenan’s help to solve the mystery.

As Keenan and ZeeBee start to unravel the clues, they uncover a shocking conspiracy that dates back to Centerlight’s gangster past. The good news is that Keenan may have found the best friend he’s ever had. The bad news is that the stakes are sky-high.

And now someone is after them. . . .

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320 Gordon Korman 006279888X Cadence 3 2020-books 4.43 2020 Notorious
author: Gordon Korman
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: 2020-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (The Penderwicks, #1)]]> 266904 262 Jeanne Birdsall Cadence 3 2024-books 4.19 2005 The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (The Penderwicks, #1)
author: Jeanne Birdsall
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Tress of the Emerald Sea 60531406 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?]]>
443 Brandon Sanderson Cadence 3 2024-books 4.35 2023 Tress of the Emerald Sea
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Grant 34237826
Before the Civil War, Grant was flailing. His business ventures had been dismal, and despite distinguished service in the Mexican War, he ended up resigning from the army in disgrace amid recurring accusations of drunkenness. But in the Civil War, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential, soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at the Battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign and ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general Robert E. Lee after a series of unbelievably bloody battles in Virginia. Along the way Grant endeared himself to President Lincoln and became his most trusted general and the strategic genius of the war effort. His military fame translated into a two-term presidency, but one plagued by corruption scandals involving his closest staff. All the while Grant himself remained more or less above reproach. But, more importantly, he never failed to seek freedom and justice for black Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him 'the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race." After his presidency, he was again brought low by a trusted colleague, this time a dashing young swindler on Wall Street, but he resuscitated his image by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are recognized as a masterpiece of the genre.

With his famous lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds the threads that bind these disparate stories together, shedding new light on the man whom Walt Whitman described as "nothing heroic... and yet the greatest hero." His probing portrait of Grant's lifelong struggle with alcoholism transforms our understanding of the man at the deepest level. This is America's greatest biographer, bringing movingly to life one of America's finest but most underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography, Grant is a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Grant's life, explaining how this simple Midwesterner could at once be so ordinary and so extraordinary.]]>
1074 Ron Chernow 159420487X Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.46 2017 Grant
author: Ron Chernow
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: 2024-books, audiobooks
review:

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<![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Cadence 3 2024-books 4.07 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience]]> 66354 303 Mihály Csíkszentmihályi 0060920432 Cadence 0 to-read 4.11 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
author: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War]]> 195607632
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Fort Sumter.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]>
559 Erik Larson 0385348754 Cadence 0 to-read 4.37 2024 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
author: Erik Larson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)]]> 49021976 The eagerly awaited sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson

After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.

Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.

At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.]]>
1232 Brandon Sanderson 0765326388 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.58 2020 Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: 2024-books, audiobooks
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The Last of the Plainsmen 1580793 Zane Grey 089190753X Cadence 4 2015-books 3.73 1908 The Last of the Plainsmen
author: Zane Grey
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1908
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2015-books
review:

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Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Cadence 3 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
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The Q 32591947
A dying man with a scheme
A charming smuggler one step ahead of the law
A former foundling with a mangled hand
A family of kingmakers
A printing tycoon
A constable on the trail of justice
An idealistic solicitor with secrets of his own
&
The genius at the center of it all, Quincy St. Claire]]>
592 Beth Brower 0998063606 Cadence 3 2024-books 4.50 2016 The Q
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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Sense and Sensibility 14935 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439662

'The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!'

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

This edition includes explanatory notes, textual variants between the first and second editions, and Tony Tanner's introduction to the original Penguin Classic edition.]]>
409 Jane Austen 0141439661 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.10 1811 Sense and Sensibility
author: Jane Austen
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1811
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: 2024-books, audiobooks
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Fathers and Sons 19117
Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.

Introduction by Jane Costlow]]>
244 Ivan Turgenev 0451529693 Cadence 0 to-read 3.99 1862 Fathers and Sons
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1862
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6]]> 63027990 There is bedlam, and there is delightful bedlam.
This afternoon touched on the second, much to my pleasure.

The Year is 1884 and Emma M. Lion has, at long last, gained her majority. Entering a golden age of friendship with Pierce, Islington, and Hawkes, Emma is confident she will manage whatever comes her way. It is The Season she must help Arabella secure a husband, while navigating the threat of Aunt Eugenia, the unflagging adoration of Charles Goddard, and the amusing unpredictability of St. Crispian’s. But the secrets of her trusted friends are what might very well bring about disaster.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.

Readers have compared The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion to Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, L. M. Montgomery, and Jean Webster.]]>
249 Beth Brower Cadence 3 2024-books 4.79 2022 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.79
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 7]]> 185965151
The Year is 1884 and Emma M. Lion has, at long last, gained her majority. Entering a golden age of friendship with Pierce, Islington, and Hawkes, Emma is confident she will manage whatever comes her way. It is The Season she must help Arabella secure a husband, while navigating the threat of Aunt Eugenia, the unflagging adoration of Charles Goddard, and the amusing unpredictability of St. Crispian’s. But the secrets of her trusted friends are what might very well bring about disaster.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.

Readers have compared The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion to Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, L. M. Montgomery, and Jean Webster.]]>
313 Beth Brower 1957492015 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.77 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 7
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.77
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)]]> 192893 212 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043575 Cadence 3 2024-books 3.87 1923 Whose Body?  (Lord Peter Wimsey, #1)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1923
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4]]> 56553921
The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighborhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be, which comprise a series of novella-length volumes. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.]]>
208 Beth Brower Cadence 5 2024-books 4.75 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5]]> 59041700 “What a lovely bible,� Mrs. Tribly said.
“Isn’t it just?� I replied, hoping she would not ask me to read a favorite verse aloud.
I do not believe the psalmist wrote,
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighbourhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be, which comprise a series of novella-length volumes. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.]]>
247 Beth Brower 0998063657 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.76 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.76
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948]]> 13096280
Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history. Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.

The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are never-theless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong.

"No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why."

At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures.]]>
467 Madeleine K. Albright 0062030310 Cadence 0 to-read 4.01 2012 Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
author: Madeleine K. Albright
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3]]> 55138117 "It has been a day ordained by the fates, for how else could one explain the wholly cursed chain of events?" The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London Neighbourhood of St. Crispian's. But Emma's plan for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian's. Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be, which comprise a series of volumes. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House. Readers have compared The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion to Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, L. M. Montgomery, and Jean Webster.]]> 229 Beth Brower Cadence 5 2024-books 4.65 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.65
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/06/02
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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 2]]> 48677941
The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighbourhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be, which comprise a series of novella-length volumes. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.
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162 Beth Brower Cadence 4 2024-books 4.59 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 2
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.59
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/30
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<![CDATA[The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1]]> 52085140
The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighborhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s.

Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be, which comprise a series of novella-length volumes. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.]]>
125 Beth Brower 0998063614 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.23 2019 The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1
author: Beth Brower
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: 2024-books
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The Children's Blizzard 240373
The gripping story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.

By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.

With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. Drawing on family interviews and memoirs, as well as hundreds of contemporary accounts, David Laskin creates an intimate picture of the men, women, and children who made choices they would regret as long as they lived. Here too is a meticulous account of the evolution of the storm and the vain struggle of government forecasters to track its progress.

The blizzard of January 12, 1888, is still remembered on the prairie. Children fled that day while their teachers screamed into the relentless roar. Husbands staggered into the blinding wind in search of wives. Fathers collapsed while trying to drag their children to safety. In telling the story of this meteorological catastrophe, the deadliest blizzard ever to hit the prairie states, David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.]]>
307 David Laskin 0060520760 Cadence 4 2024-books 3.89 2004 The Children's Blizzard
author: David Laskin
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/10
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<![CDATA[The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota]]> 57834941 404 Clay S. Jenkinson 1646631013 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.53 The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota
author: Clay S. Jenkinson
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/07
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Giants in the Earth 57586 Giants in the Earth (Norwegian: Verdens Grøde) is a novel by Norwegian-American author Ole Edvart Rølvaag. First published in Norway as two books in 1924 and 1925, the author collaborated with Minnesotan Lincoln Colcord on the English translation.

The novel follows a Norwegian family's struggles as they try to make a new life as pioneers in the Dakota territory. Rølvaag is interested in psychology and the human cost of empire building, at a time when other writers focused on the glamor and romance of the West. The book reflects his personal experiences as a settler as well as the immigrant homesteader experience of his wife’s family. Both the grim realities of pioneering and the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind are captured in depictions of snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land. It is a novel at once palpably European and distinctly American.

Giants in the Earth was turned into an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.]]>
531 O.E. Rølvaag 0060931930 Cadence 0 to-read 4.03 1925 Giants in the Earth
author: O.E. Rølvaag
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Not So Wild a Dream (Volume 1)]]> 199607 544 Eric Sevareid 0826210147 Cadence 0 to-read 4.28 1946 Not So Wild a Dream (Volume 1)
author: Eric Sevareid
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1946
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America]]> 223411 ]]> 264 Ivan Doig 0156972158 Cadence 2 2024-books 3.77 1980 Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America
author: Ivan Doig
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1980
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/05/04
shelves: 2024-books
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<![CDATA[The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place]]> 18885674 The students of St. Etheldreda's School for Girls face a bothersome dilemma. Their irascible headmistress, Mrs. Plackett, and her surly brother, Mr. Godding, have been most inconveniently poisoned at Sunday dinner. Now the school will almost certainly be closed and the girls sent home—unless these seven very proper young ladies can hide the murders and convince their neighbors that nothing is wrong.

Julie Berry's The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a smart, hilarious Victorian romp, full of outrageous plot twists, mistaken identities, and mysterious happenings.]]>
368 Julie Berry 1596439572 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 3.83 2014 The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place
author: Julie Berry
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/05/03
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Oliver Twist 18254
The story of Oliver Twist - orphaned, and set upon by evil and adversity from his first breath - shocked readers when it was published. After running away from the workhouse and pompous beadle Mr Bumble, Oliver finds himself lured into a den of thieves peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the Artful Dodger, vicious burglar Bill Sikes, his dog Bull's Eye, and prostitute Nancy, all watched over by cunning master-thief Fagin. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

This Penguin Classics edition of Oliver Twist is the first critical edition to faithfully reproduce the text as its earliest readers would have encountered it from its serialisation in Bentley's Miscellany, and includes an introduction by Philip Horne, a glossary of Victorian thieves' slang, a chronology of Dickens's life, a map of contemporary London and all of George Cruikshank's original illustrations.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
608 Charles Dickens Cadence 4 2024-books 3.88 1838 Oliver Twist
author: Charles Dickens
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1838
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Teddy and Booker T.: How Two American Icons Blazed a Path for Racial Equality]]> 112974903 The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington.

When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country’s most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but if newly freed citizens were condemned to lives as share croppers, how much improvement would their lives really see? In Teddy and Booker T., Brian Kilmeade tells the story of how two wildly different Americans faced the challenge of keeping America moving toward the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Theodore Roosevelt was white, born into incredible wealth and privilege in New York City. Booker T. Washington was Black, born on a plantation without even a last name. But both men embodied the rugged, pioneering spirit of America. Kilmeade takes us to San Juan Hill, where Roosevelt led his Rough Riders to a thrilling victory that set the stage for a legendary presidency, and to a small town in Alabama, where Washington founded the first university for African Americans, paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement. Both men abhorred the decadence and moral rot the nation had fallen into, believed that improvement through careful collaboration was possible, and trusted that the American ideals of individual liberty and hard work could propel the neediest toward success, if only those holding them back would step aside.

As he did in George Washington's Secret Six, Kilmeade has transformed this nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out how these two heroes, through their principles and courage, not only changed each other, but helped lay the groundwork for true equality.]]>
366 Brian Kilmeade 0593543823 Cadence 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Teddy and Booker T.: How Two American Icons Blazed a Path for Racial Equality
author: Brian Kilmeade
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End]]> 20696006 In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.]]>
282 Atul Gawande 0805095152 Cadence 0 to-read 4.47 2014 Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
author: Atul Gawande
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]>
208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Cadence 4 book-club-picks, 2024-books 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/03/23
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<![CDATA[A Season of Gifts (A Long Way from Chicago, #3)]]> 6469790 One of children's literature's most memorable characters returns in this Christmastime companion to the Newbery Medal-winning A Year Down Yonder and Newbery Honor-winning A Long Way from Chicago.

The eccentric, larger-than-life Grandma Dowdel is back in this heart-warming tale. Set 20 years after the events of A Year Down Yonder , it is now 1958 and a new family has moved in next door: a Methodist minister and his wife and kids. Soon Grandma Dowdel will work her particular brand of charm on all of them: ten-year-old Bob Barnhart, who is shy on courage in a town full of bullies; his two fascinating sisters; and even his parents, who are amazed to discover that the last house in town might also be the most vital.
As Christmas rolls around, the Barnhart family realizes that they’ve found a true home, and a neighbor who gives gifts that will last a lifetime.
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176 Richard Peck 0803730829 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 3.99 2009 A Season of Gifts (A Long Way from Chicago, #3)
author: Richard Peck
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/03/21
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<![CDATA[The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County]]> 187016422 The Chicken Sisters.

Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,� she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed—it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can’t fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days. Iris, Esther’s whip-smart Gen Z granddaughter, would do anything for her family and her community.

As she watches her friends and family move out of their lakeside town onto bigger and better things, Iris wonders why she feels so left behind in the place she is desperate to make her home. But when Cooper Welsh shows up, she finally starts to feel like she’s found the missing piece of her puzzle. Cooper is dealing with becoming a legal guardian to his younger half-sister after his beloved stepmother dies. While their celebrity-chef father is focused on his booming career and top-ranked television show, Cooper is still hurting from a public tragedy he witnessed last year as a paramedic and finding it hard to cope. With Iris in the gorgeous Ellerie County, though, he hopes he might finally find the home he’s been looking for.

It doesn’t seem like a community cookbook could possibly solve their problems, especially one where casseroles have their own section and cream of chicken soup mix is the most frequently used ingredient. But when you mix the can-do spirit of Midwestern grandmothers with the stubborn hope of aboyraised by food plus a dash of long-awaited forgiveness—things might just turn out okay. Includes Recipesձ>
272 Claire Swinarski 0063319888 Cadence 0 to-read 3.69 2024 The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County
author: Claire Swinarski
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/20
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Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]>
311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Cadence 4 2024-books 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/03/20
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Bartleby the Scrivener 114230 Moby-Dick�Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?

The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.]]>
64 Herman Melville 0974607800 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 3.91 1853 Bartleby the Scrivener
author: Herman Melville
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1853
rating: 4
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The Kingdom of Back 45872054
As Nannerl's hope grows dimmer with each passing year, the talents of her beloved younger brother, Wolfgang, only seem to shine brighter. His brilliance begins to eclipse her own, until one day a mysterious stranger from a magical land appears with an irresistible offer. He has the power to make her wish come true—but his help may cost her everything.

In her first work of historical fiction, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu spins a lush, lyrically told story of music, magic, and the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.]]>
313 Marie Lu 1524739014 Cadence 2 2024-books 3.72 2020 The Kingdom of Back
author: Marie Lu
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2020
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/03/14
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The Death of Ivan Ilych 18386
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]>
86 Leo Tolstoy Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.12 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilych
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 4
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Hang the Moon 61272702
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.

Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.

Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.

You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.]]>
368 Jeannette Walls 1501117297 Cadence 3 2024-books 3.67 2023 Hang the Moon
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/03/01
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The Murmur of Bees 42306076 From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel—her first to be translated into English—about a mysterious child with the power to change a family’s history in a country on the verge of revolution.

From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined.

Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable.]]>
471 Sofía Segovia 1542090490 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.20 2015 The Murmur of Bees
author: Sofía Segovia
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/02/16
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The One (The Selection, #3) 18635016
When she was chosen to compete in the Selection, America never dreamed she would find herself anywhere close to the crown—or to Prince Maxon's heart. But as the end of the competition approaches, and the threats outside the palace walls grow more vicious, America realizes just how much she stands to lose—and how hard she'll have to fight for the future she wants.]]>
323 Kiera Cass 0062059998 Cadence 3 2024-books 4.14 2014 The One (The Selection, #3)
author: Kiera Cass
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/02/14
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The Elite (The Selection, #2) 16248068
America is desperate for more time. But the rest of the Elite know exactly what they want—and America's chance to choose is about to slip away.]]>
336 Kiera Cass 0062059963 Cadence 2 2024-books 3.94 2013 The Elite (The Selection, #2)
author: Kiera Cass
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: 2024-books
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<![CDATA[In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom]]> 24611623 273 Yeonmi Park 1594206791 Cadence 0 2024-books, audiobooks 4.45 2015 In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
author: Yeonmi Park
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/11
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<![CDATA[The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt]]> 40929
Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.]]>
816 Edmund Morris 0375756787 Cadence 4 2024-books, audiobooks 4.22 1979 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
author: Edmund Morris
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1979
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/02/04
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<![CDATA[The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]>
639 James Islington 1982141190 Cadence 3 2024-books 4.60 2023 The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/02/04
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<![CDATA[The Selection (The Selection, #1)]]> 10507293
But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself—and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.]]>
336 Kiera Cass 0062059939 Cadence 3 2024-books 4.07 2012 The Selection (The Selection, #1)
author: Kiera Cass
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves: 2024-books
review:
Quick, fluffy, entertaining read.
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Finding Dorothy 40265841 A richly imagined novel that tells the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , the book that inspired the iconic film, through the eyes of author L. Frank Baum's intrepid wife, Maud--from the family's hardscrabble days in South Dakota to the Hollywood film set where she first meets Judy Garland.

Maud Gage Baum, widow of the author of the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, met Judy Garland, the young actress playing the role of Dorothy on the set of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. At the time, Maud was seventy-eight and Judy was sixteen. In spite of their age difference, Maud immediately connected to Judy--especially when Maud heard her sing "Over the Rainbow," a song whose yearning brought to mind the tough years in South Dakota when Maud and her husband struggled to make a living--until Frank Baum's book became a national sensation.

This wonderfully evocative two-stranded story recreates Maud's youth as the rebellious daughter of a leading suffragette, and the prairie years of Maud and Frank's early days when they lived among the people--especially young Dorothy--who would inspire Frank's masterpiece. Woven into this past story is one set in 1939, describing the high-pressured days on The Wizard of Oz film set where Judy is being badgered by the director, producer, and her ambitious stage mother to lose weight, bind her breasts, and laugh, cry, and act terrified on command. As Maud had promised to protect the original Dorothy back in Aberdeen, she now takes on the job of protecting young Judy.]]>
351 Elizabeth Letts 0525622101 Cadence 4 2024-books 4.14 2019 Finding Dorothy
author: Elizabeth Letts
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth]]> 10146243 The President Is a Sick Man details an extraordinary but almost unknown chapter in American history: Grover Cleveland’s secret cancer surgery and the brazen political cover-up by a politician whose most memorable quote was “Tell the truth.� When an enterprising reporter named E. J. Edwards exposed the secret operation, Cleveland denied it. The public believed the “Honest President,� and Edwards was dismissed as “a disgrace to journalism.� The facts concerning the disappearance of Grover Cleveland that summer were so well concealed that even more than a century later a full and fair account has never been published. Until now.]]> 255 Matthew Algeo 156976350X Cadence 4 2024-books 3.93 2011 The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
author: Matthew Algeo
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: 2024-books
review:

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This Tender Land 25813942
After committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee for their lives along with their best friend, Mose, a mute young man of Sioux heritage. Out of pity, they also take with them a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy. Together, they steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search for a place to call home.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphan vagabonds journey into the unknown, crossing paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.]]>
450 William Kent Krueger 1476749299 Cadence 4 2023-books 4.35 2019 This Tender Land
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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<![CDATA[The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective]]> 6261270 The Traveler’s Gift.

Orange Beach, Alabama is a simple town filled with simple people. But like all humans on the planet, the good folks of Orange Beach have their share of problems � marriages teetering on the brink of divorce, young adults giving up on life, business people on the verge of bankruptcy, as well as the many other obstacles that life seems to dish out to the masses.

Fortunately, when things look the darkest � a mysterious man named Jones has a miraculous way of showing up. An elderly man with white hair, of indiscriminate age and race, wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt and leather flip flops carrying a battered old suitcase, Jones is a unique soul. Communicating what he calls “a little perspective,� Jones explains that he has been given a gift of noticing things that others miss. “Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely,� he says. “Don’t squander your words or your thoughts. Consider even the simplest action you take, for your lives matter beyond measure…and they matter forever.�

Jones speaks to that part in everyone that is yearning to understand why things happen and what we can do about it.

Like The Traveler’s Gift, The Noticer is a unique narrative is a blend of fiction, allegory, and inspiration. Gifted storyteller Andy Andrews helps us see how becoming a “noticer� just might change a person’s life forever.]]>
167 Andy Andrews 0785229213 Cadence 3 2023-books 4.16 2009 The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
author: Andy Andrews
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/12/24
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of A Man, His Wife, and Her Alligator]]> 24585366 Big Fish meets The Notebook in this emotionally evocative story about a man, a woman, and an alligator that is a moving tribute to love, from the author of the award-winning memoir Rocket Boys—the basis of the movie October Sky

Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie’s dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.

Unfulfilled as a miner’s wife, Elsie was reminded of her carefree days with Buddy every day because of his unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert she raised in the only bathroom in the house. When Albert scared Homer by grabbing his pants, he gave Elsie an ultimatum: “Me or that alligator!� After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do: Carry Albert home.

Carrying Albert Home is the funny, sweet, and sometimes tragic tale of a young couple and a special alligator on a crazy 1000-mile adventure. Told with the warmth and down-home charm that made Rocket Boys/October Sky a beloved bestseller, Homer Hickam’s rollicking tale is ultimately a testament to that strange and marvelous emotion we inadequately call love.]]>
432 Homer Hickam 0062325892 Cadence 3 2023-books 3.83 2015 Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of A Man, His Wife, and Her Alligator
author: Homer Hickam
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/12/22
shelves: 2023-books
review:
3.75 Stars. Loved the first 2/3 but the last few chapters lost some of the initial shine of the story. It was fun trying to decipher fact from fiction.
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<![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

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

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

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]>
331 David Grann 0385534264 Cadence 3 2023-books, audiobooks 4.14 2023 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
author: David Grann
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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Winter Solstice 116054 Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....

Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely.

Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile.

Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.

Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.

It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan.

It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth.]]>
720 Rosamunde Pilcher 0340752483 Cadence 4 2023-books 4.16 2000 Winter Solstice
author: Rosamunde Pilcher
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/08
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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A Redbird Christmas 199532 193 Fannie Flagg 0345480260 Cadence 4 2023-books, audiobooks 3.89 2004 A Redbird Christmas
author: Fannie Flagg
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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<![CDATA[Extreme North: A Cultural History]]> 58085232
Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political fictions at play from the first "discoveries" of northern landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the "Nordic" phenotype (which in turn influenced America’s limits on immigration), to the idealization of Scandinavian social democracy as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi philosophies that tied the "Aryan race" to the upper latitudes have influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural superiority the world over.

The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. Full of glittering details embedded in vivid storytelling, Extreme North is a fascinating romp through both actual encounters and popular imaginings, and a disturbing reminder of the power of fantasy to shape the world we live in.]]>
256 Bernd Brunner 0393881008 Cadence 0 2023-books 3.25 2022 Extreme North: A Cultural History
author: Bernd Brunner
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/24
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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The Language of Flowers 10032672
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.]]>
323 Vanessa Diffenbaugh 034552554X Cadence 4 2023-books, audiobooks 4.09 2011 The Language of Flowers
author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/15
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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<![CDATA[The Light of All That Falls (The Licanius Trilogy, #3)]]> 36111098
The Boundary is whole once again, but it may be too late.

Banes now stalk Andarra, while in Ilin Illan, the political machinations of a generation come to a head as Wirr's newfound ability forces his family's old enemies into action.

Imprisoned and alone in a strange land, Davian is pitted against the remaining Venerate as they work tirelessly to undo Asha's sacrifice - even as he struggles with what he has learned about the friend he chose to set free.

And Caeden, now facing the consequences of his centuries-old plan, must finally confront its reality - heartbroken at how it began, and devastated by how it must end.]]>
864 James Islington Cadence 3 2023-books 4.39 2019 The Light of All That Falls (The Licanius Trilogy, #3)
author: James Islington
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/11/07
shelves: 2023-books
review:

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<![CDATA[Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal]]> 18377999 Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.]]>
348 Mary Roach 0393348741 Cadence 3 2023-books, audiobooks 3.91 2013 Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
author: Mary Roach
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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<![CDATA[The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell]]> 35995489
Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.

Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design—especially not the tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he’d always known. Running from the pain, eyes closed, served little purpose. Now, as he looks back on his life, Sam embarks on a journey that will take him halfway around the world. This time, his eyes are wide open—bringing into clear view what changed him, defined him, and made him so afraid, until he can finally see what truly matters.]]>
448 Robert Dugoni 1503949001 Cadence 0 to-read 4.37 2018 The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[An Echo of Things to Come (The Licanius Trilogy, #2)]]> 32498052
The second book in a glorious new fantasy trilogy by the next major force in commercial epic fantasy.

In the wake of the devastating attack on Ilin Illan, an amnesty has been declared for all Augurs - finally allowing them to emerge from hiding and openly oppose the dark forces massing against Andarra. However as Davian and his new allies hurry north toward the ever-weakening Boundary, fresh horrors along their path suggest that their reprieve may have come far too late.
In the capital, Wirr is forced to contend with assassins and an increasingly hostile Administration as he controversially assumes the mantle of Northwarden, uncovering a mystery that draws into question everything commonly believed about the rebellion his father led twenty years ago. Meanwhile, Asha begins a secret investigation into the disappearance of the Shadows, determined to discover not only where they went but the origin of the Vessels that created them - and, ultimately, a cure.
And with time against him as he races to fulfill the treacherous bargain with the Lyth, Caeden continues to wrestle with the impossibly heavy burdens of his past. Yet as more and more of his memories return, he begins to realise that the motivations of the two sides in this ancient war may not be as clear-cut as they first seemed...
The Licanius TrilogyThe Shadow of What Was LostAn Echo of Things to Come]]>
752 James Islington 0316274119 Cadence 3 2023-books 4.21 2017 An Echo of Things to Come (The Licanius Trilogy, #2)
author: James Islington
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves: 2023-books
review:
I excused a lot of my issues with the first book because it was his first and debuts can be a little rocky, especially when self-published. I liked the story well enough and could see the potential for the sequels. Since this one was commercially published, I thought for sure it would be better, but it was actually worse. I don’t know if working under a deadline didn’t leave the author enough time to fine-tune his writing, but it just didn’t jive for me. 2.75 stars.
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<![CDATA[Pemberley: Mr. Darcy's Dragon (Jane Austen's Dragons, #1)]]> 32575303 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B01MECLQTW


England is overrun by dragons of all shapes and sizes. Most people are blissfully unaware of them and the Pendragon Treaty that keeps the peace between human and dragon kind. Only those born with preternatural hearing, like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are able to hear and converse with dragonkind.

When the first firedrake egg laid in a century is stolen from Pemberley, the fragile dragon peace teeters on collapse. Darcy has no choice but to chase down the thief, a journey that leads him to quaint market town of Meryton and fellow Dragon Keeper, Elizabeth Bennet.

Elizabeth shares a unique bond with dragons, stronger than anything Darcy has ever experienced. More than that, her vast experience and knowledge of dragon lore may be the key to uncovering the lost egg. . But Elizabeth can’t stand Darcy’s arrogance and doesn’t trust him to care properly for a precious baby firedrake. After all, he already lost the egg once. What’s to prevent it from happening again?

Can he win her trust and recover the stolen egg before it hatches and sends England spiraling back into the Dark Ages of Dragon War?
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340 Maria Grace Cadence 0 to-read 4.11 2016 Pemberley: Mr. Darcy's Dragon (Jane Austen's Dragons, #1)
author: Maria Grace
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)]]> 60556912
Every day I clean the Winchesters� beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out� and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of�

An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!]]>
329 Freida McFadden 1803144378 Cadence 0 to-read 4.31 2022 The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Cadence
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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Born on a Blue Day 74812
This unique first-person account offers a window into the mind of a high-functioning, 27-year-old British autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. Tammet's ability to think abstractly, deviate from routine, and empathize, interact and communicate with others is impaired, yet he's capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation. Besides being able to effortlessly multiply and divide huge sums in his head with the speed and accuracy of a computer, Tammet, the subject of the 2005 documentary Brainman, learned Icelandic in a single week and recited the number pi up to the 22,514th digit, breaking the European record. He also experiences synesthesia, an unusual neurological syndrome that enables him to experience numbers and words as "shapes, colors, textures and motions." Tammet traces his life from a frustrating, withdrawn childhood and adolescence to his adult achievements, which include teaching in Lithuania, achieving financial independence with an educational Web site and sustaining a long-term romantic relationship. As one of only about 50 people living today with synesthesia and autism, Tammet's condition is intriguing to researchers; his ability to express himself clearly and with a surprisingly engaging tone (given his symptoms) makes for an account that will intrigue others as well.]]>
226 Daniel Tammet 1416535071 Cadence 3 2023-books, audiobooks 3.82 2006 Born on a Blue Day
author: Daniel Tammet
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/17
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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<![CDATA[Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery]]> 15998328 Duel with the Devil is acclaimed historian Paul Collins� remarkable true account of astunning turn-of-the-19th century murder and the trial that ensued � a showdown in which iconic political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr joined forces to make sure justice was done. Still our nation’s longest running “cold case,� the mystery of Elma Sands finally comes to a close with this book, which delivers the first substantial break in the case in over 200 years.

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic.Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached—with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge—their animosity reached a crescendo. Central to their dispute was the Manhattan water supply, which Burr saw not just as an opportunity to help a city devastated by epidemics but as a chance to heal his battered finances.

But everything changed when Elma Sands, a beautiful young Quaker woman, was found dead in Burr's newly constructed Manhattan Well. The horrific crime quickly gripped the nation, and before long accusations settled on one of Elma’s suitors, handsome young carpenter Levi Weeks. As the enraged city demanded a noose be draped around the accused murderer’s neck, the only question seemed to be whether Levi would make it to trial or be lynched first.

The young man’s only hope was to hire a legal dream team.And thus it was that New York’s most bitter political rivals and greatest attorneys did the unthinkable—they teamed up.

At once an absorbing legal thriller and an expertly crafted portrait of the United States in the time of the Founding Fathers, Duel with the Devil is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.]]>
304 Paul Collins 0307956458 Cadence 4 2023-books, audiobooks 3.65 2013 Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery
author: Paul Collins
name: Cadence
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/05
shelves: 2023-books, audiobooks
review:

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