Anita's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:52:28 -0700 60 Anita's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Opera)]]> 7703520
The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class.

This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.]]> 336 Alexandra Wilson 0521106370 Anita 0 to-read 4.10 2007 The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Opera)
author: Alexandra Wilson
name: Anita
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2007
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]]> Madama Butterfly 23436766 38 Benjamin Lacombe 8426392822 Anita 0 to-read 4.53 Madama Butterfly
author: Benjamin Lacombe
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]]> All That's Left Unsaid 59856071
Just let him go. These are the words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night, Denny—optimistic, guileless, brilliant Denny—is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, an indifferent police force, and the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history.

Returning home to Cabramatta for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by Denny’s case: a dozen people were at Lucky 8 restaurant when Denny died, but each of the bystanders claim to have seen nothing.

Desperately hoping that understanding what happened might ease her suffocating guilt, Ky sets aside her grief and determines to track down the witnesses herself. With each encounter, she peels back another layer of the place that shaped her and Denny, exposing trauma and seeds of violence that were planted well before that fateful celebration dinner: by colonialism, by the war in Vietnam, and by the choices they’ve all made to survive.

Alternating between Ky’s voice and the perspectives of the witnesses, Tracey Lien’s extraordinary debut is at once heart-pounding and heart-rending as it probes the intricate bonds of friendship, family, and community through an unforgettable cast of characters, all connected by a devastating crime. Combining evocative family drama and gripping suspense, All That’s Left Unsaid is a profound and moving page turner, perfect for readers of Liz Moore, Brit Bennett, and Celeste Ng.]]> 304 Tracey Lien 0063227738 Anita 0 to-read 3.93 2022 All That's Left Unsaid
author: Tracey Lien
name: Anita
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays]]> 201852
Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.]]> 480 Mikhail Bakhtin 029271534X Anita 0 to-read 4.17 1975 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
author: Mikhail Bakhtin
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average rating: 4.17
book published: 1975
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]]> <![CDATA[Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium]]> 207301225 Tracing uranium's past—and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements—Chain Reactions aims to enlighten readers and refresh our attitudes about the atomic world.Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten stories that can be found throughout the history of uranium. From glassworks to penny stocks; from medicines to atomic weapons; from something to be feared to a powerful source of energy, this global history explores the scientific narrative of this unique element, but also shines a light on its cultural and social impact. By understanding our nuclear past, we can move beyond the ideological opposition to technologies and encourage a more nuanced dialogue about whether it is feasible—and desirable—to have a genuinely nuclear-powered future.]]> 288 Lucy Jane Santos 1639367446 Anita 0 to-read 3.67 Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium
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]]> <![CDATA[Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium]]> 53344258
The discovery of radium in the late 19th century prompted a flurry of experiments to scope the limits of its potential applications.

Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item � a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in-the-dark dance costume, a boon to the housewife, and an ingredient in a startling host of consumer products � to its role as a cure-all in everyday 20th-century life.

Finally, it details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold and eventually came to fear it.

Half Lives is an enjoyable journey into the odd areas where science and consumerism meet, telling the tale of the entrepreneurs and consumers in radium’s history who have until now been considered quacks, or fools, or both.]]> 320 Lucy Jane Santos 1785786075 Anita 0 to-read 3.69 2020 Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium
author: Lucy Jane Santos
name: Anita
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
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]]> Barbara 209546137 Like Nolan’s Oppenheimer by way of Lucia Berlin, a radiant novel tracking the lifecycle of a silver screen starlet rising against the backdrop of the mid-20th century.

Barbara is born shortly before World War II and lives through the conflict as a desert child trailing her father, an engineer in the famed and infamous Manhattan Project. When Barbara is thirteen, her beautiful, sensitive mother commits suicide. From that point on, these twin poles—the historic and the personal, the political and the violently intimate—vie for control of Barbara’s consciousness.

As Barbara grows up and becomes a successful actress, traveling the world between film sets and love affairs, she takes on and sheds various roles—vampire’s victim and frontier prostitute; a saint and a bored housewife. She marries and divorces and marries again, the second time to a visionary director who proves to be the love of her life. Though they are not faithful to each other, their relationship provides the most enduring anchor in a remarkable life turbulent with fiction.

Joni Murphy’s Barbara is a deep character study of a woman losing hold and recapturing her identity through the art and technology of moviemaking. Through an intimate first-person perspective, the novel follows Barbara as she navigates decades and genres—from austere 1950s family dramas to countercultural 1970s gothics—glimpsing herself in the reflective and deadly shards of the long 20th Century.]]> 244 Joni Murphy 166260288X Anita 0 to-read 3.75 2025 Barbara
author: Joni Murphy
name: Anita
average rating: 3.75
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]]> <![CDATA[38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia]]> 83774249 Philippe Sands 1474620779 Anita 0 to-read 4.37 2025 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia
author: Philippe Sands
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average rating: 4.37
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]]> Humankind: A Hopeful History 52879286 From the author of Utopia For Realists, a revolutionary argument that the innate goodness and cooperation of human beings has been the greatest factor in our success

If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman's thinking, it is that every progressive idea -- whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women's suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality -- was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.

By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect."

In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.

The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.]]> 462 Rutger Bregman 0316418536 Anita 0 to-read 4.37 2019 Humankind: A Hopeful History
author: Rutger Bregman
name: Anita
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
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]]> On a Woman's Madness 61244744 A classic of queer literature that’s as electrifying today as it was when it originally appeared in 1982, On a Woman’s Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by the passionate romances of the present but haunted by society’s expectations and her ancestral past.

Translated into sensuous English for the first time by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer’s intimate novel—with its tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers—is a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. “I’m Noenka,â€� she responds resolutely, “which means Never Again.”]]> 265 Astrid H. Roemer 1949641430 Anita 0 to-read 3.34 1982 On a Woman's Madness
author: Astrid H. Roemer
name: Anita
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1982
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]]> The Wall 586852 The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal. This novel is at once a simple and moving tale and a disturbing meditation on humanity.
]]> 240 Marlen Haushofer 1573440949 Anita 0 to-read 3.99 1963 The Wall
author: Marlen Haushofer
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average rating: 3.99
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]]> <![CDATA[The King Must Die (Theseus, #1)]]> 39359728 “Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us.â€� —Hilary Mantel

In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault’s Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure—a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness—but also one steered by implacable prophecy.

The story follows Theseus’s adventures from Troizen to Eleusis, where the death in the book’s title is to take place, and from Athens to Crete, where he learns to jump bulls and is named king of the victims. Richly imbued with the spirit of its time, this is a page-turner as well as a daring act of imagination.

Renault’s story of Theseus continues with the sequel The Bull from the Sea.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author.
]]> 354 Mary Renault 1480433128 Anita 0 to-read 3.92 1958 The King Must Die (Theseus, #1)
author: Mary Renault
name: Anita
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1958
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]]> The Artist 221897664 All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe's world. All Ettie wants is to escape it.

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

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

The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.]]> 304 Lucy Steeds 1399819569 Anita 0 to-read 4.29 2025 The Artist
author: Lucy Steeds
name: Anita
average rating: 4.29
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]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?â€�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,â€� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Anita 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
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average rating: 3.98
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]]> Birding 178632549 In a small seaside town, autumn is edging into winter, gulls ride winds over the waves, and two women, pass each other on the promenade, as yet unaware of each other's existence.

In the nineties Lydia was a teen pop star, posed half naked on billboards everywhere with a lollipop between her lips and no idea how to live, letting the world happen to her. Now, three decades later, Lydia is less and less sure that what happened to her was in the least bit okay. The news cycle runs hot with #MeToo stories, and a famous former lover has emerged with a self-serving apology, asking her to forgive him. Suddenly, the past is full of trapdoors she is desperately trying not to fall through.

Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty's day; so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.

Amid the grey skies, amusement parks and beauty parlours of a gentrifying run-down seaside resort, these two women might never meet. But as they both try to untangle the damaging details of their past in the hope of a better future, their lives are set on an unlikely collision course.

With mordant wit and lyrical prose, Birding asks if we can ever see ourselves clearly or if we are always the unreliable narrators of our own experiences. It is a story about the difference between responsibility and obligation, unhealthy relationships and abusive ones, third acts and last chances, and two women trying to take flight on clipped wings.]]> 271 Rose Ruane 1472157982 Anita 0 to-read 3.76 2024 Birding
author: Rose Ruane
name: Anita
average rating: 3.76
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]]> Somewhere Else 217352361
Somewhere Else is an epic generational novel about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. A novel which explores today’s most difficult and urgent questions, not least of which: how to find identity in displacement.]]> 360 Jenni Daiches 1910895954 Anita 0 to-read 3.74 2024 Somewhere Else
author: Jenni Daiches
name: Anita
average rating: 3.74
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]]> Ulysses Annotated 10543 Ulysses. Annotations in this edition are keyed both to the reading text of the new critical edition of Ulysses published in 1984 and to the standard 1961 Random House edition and the current Modern Library and Vintage texts.

Gifford has incorporated over 1,000 additions and corrections to the first edition. The introduction and headnotes to sections provide general geographical, biographical and historical background. The annotations gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, trace literary allusions and references to other cultures.

The suggestive potential of minor details was enormously fascinating to Joyce, and the precision of his use of detail is a most important aspect of his literary method. The annotations in this volume illuminate details which are not in the public realm for most of us.]]> 698 James Joyce 0520067452 Anita 0 to-read 4.20 1922 Ulysses Annotated
author: James Joyce
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average rating: 4.20
book published: 1922
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]]> ¿De quién es la culpa? 199238848 250 Sofia Tolstaya 9566088183 Anita 4 4.62 1893 ¿De quién es la culpa?
author: Sofia Tolstaya
name: Anita
average rating: 4.62
book published: 1893
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/02/27
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Sofia Tolstaia es una de las heroínas de la literatura, sin ella, no habríamos tenido las obras de Tolstoy como las tenemos ahora. Y por supuesto, fue maltratada no sólo por su marido, sino por otros hombres que no toleraban su influencia en las obras maestras de la literatura rusa, y por tanto, fue relegada. Esta novela, publicada un siglo después de ser escrita, es una nueva muestra de la sensibilidad e inteligencia de la que Tolstaia fue capaz, y la forma en la que presenta a una mujer que sacrifica su felicidad por su marido, sólo para ser acusada de infidelidad y maltratada, es revolucionaria para la época.
]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume I]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

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

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Anita 0 to-read 3.88 2020 On the Calculation of Volume I
author: Solvej Balle
name: Anita
average rating: 3.88
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]]> <![CDATA[There's a Monster Behind the Door]]> 218718725 ready to pounce at the slightest disturbance.

‘In the heat of the Tropic of Capricorn, on the flanks of an active volcano, the sharks would tear apart your favourite magazine if only they could crawl as far as your beach towel.â€�

Here, the naĂŻve Dessaintes couple make a failing bid for happiness, soon growing jaded and bitter as the orange tree in their front yard â€� ‘the branches laden with flowers, the juicy oranges and, eventually, the nests of insatiable weaverbirds and the stench of rotten fruit.â€�

Even so, sprouting defiantly through the cracks of this postcolonial legacy of violence, poverty and intergenerational trauma, the Dessaintesâ€� daughter shows an irrepressible zest for life. Amidst the chaos raging behind and beyond the door of her childhood home, our young narrator stubbornly resists her parentsâ€� refrain, ‘that’s the way it is and that’s that!â€�

Finding refuge in reading and determined to write her own story, she falls in love with words â€� ‘a group of jumbled black arabesques was dancing on a little white wall ... I worshipped them as sacred beings.â€�

With clear-eyed, offbeat, buoyant humour, BĂ©lem plunges us into a vivid world of extremes where, ‘quiet times and places are rare.’]]> 176 GaĂ«lle BĂ©lem 1739842367 Anita 0 to-read 3.62 There's a Monster Behind the Door
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average rating: 3.62
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]]> Hunchback 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder,ÌęShaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostituteâ€�). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body andÌęunrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potentialÌęof our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]> 112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 Anita 0 to-read 3.51 2023 Hunchback
author: Saou Ichikawa
name: Anita
average rating: 3.51
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]]> Heart Lamp: Selected Stories 205544315 Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters â€� the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost â€� that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.]]> 192 Banu Mushtaq 1916751164 Anita 0 to-read 3.57 Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
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]]> The Nature of Witches 54717138
In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It's wild and volatile, and the price of her magic―losing the ones she loves―is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.

In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she's the only one who can make a difference.

In Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she's terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.

In Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves... before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.

Practical Magic meets Twister in this debut contemporary fantasy standalone about heartbreaking power, the terror of our collapsing atmosphere, and the ways we unknowingly change our fate.]]> 367 Rachel Griffin 1728229421 Anita 0 to-read 3.79 2021 The Nature of Witches
author: Rachel Griffin
name: Anita
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
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date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> <![CDATA[School of Shards (Vita Nostra, #3)]]> 212217962 The haunting final chapter of the modern classic Vita Nostra trilogy. The Dyachenkos� magical dark academia novel brings the story of Sasha to a revelatory climax as she learns to take control of her powers and reshape the world...or destroy it forever. Beautifully translated from Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.

The Institute of Special Technologies teaches students just one the magic that allows them to become parts of speech, and in doing so, transforming into a specific piece of grammar (a verb, or an adjective, or an article) so they will be able to shape the world around them. As the new provost, though, Sasha is facing an enormous the students in the world she just created, her “world without fear,â€� are unable to master the curriculum. Whether it’s the magic or the natural order of things, what they need to learn and become—Speech—is the basis of the material world.

And if she can’t teach it, Sasha knows that matter will soon cease to exist.

To protect the world, Sasha must collect fragments of her former reality. Only three people carry these fragments within her younger brother, Valya, and the Grigoriev twins, Arthur and Pashka, the sons of her former lover, Yaroslav Grigoriev. Sasha must lure these three to the Institute and make them learn—and understand—at any cost.

But she knows how difficult the path is, even more so from the other side of the teacher’s desk. Forced to act ever more ruthlessly, Sasha also notices the faster the world around the Institute changes. It is a vicious circle.

And one she must break.

To do so, she will have to shape reality again, one in which communication doesn’t break down and Speech once again needs to evolve and grow and flourish.

Sasha has already given up so much in pursuit of this dream—often her nightmare—and she might be asked to make one more sacrifice so that the world and Speech might live on.]]> 416 Marina Dyachenko 0063225476 Anita 0 to-read 4.27 2025 School of Shards (Vita Nostra, #3)
author: Marina Dyachenko
name: Anita
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Life and Loves of a She Devil]]> 135048 256 Fay Weldon 0340589353 Anita 0 to-read 3.78 1983 The Life and Loves of a She Devil
author: Fay Weldon
name: Anita
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Satanic Verses 26881272
Consiguen llegar a una playa inglesa y notan unos extraños cambios: uno ha adquirido una aureola y el otro ve con horror cómo crece el vello de sus piernas, los pies se le convierten en cascos y las sienes se abultan...]]> 560 Salman Rushdie 0963270702 Anita 0 kindle, currently-reading 3.62 1988 The Satanic Verses
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: kindle, currently-reading
review:

]]> Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]> 309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Anita 4 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Anita
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:
This was surprisingly fun and compulsively readable. Yes, it does feel like a self fulfiment fanfic, but honestly, who cares?
]]> <![CDATA[Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth]]> 58312875
This is the story of Fenfang who, determined to carve out a life more independent than her provincial roots, gets a job as a film extra in Beijing. But living a modern life is not as easy as it looks in this tumultuous, messy city. Grappling with the narrow world of cinema, an outworn Communist regime, and the city's far-from-progressive attitudes to women, charismatic Fenfang finds her true freedom in the one place she never expected.

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a sparkling and wry coming-of-age story about the changing identity of women in contemporary China.

Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.]]> 208 Xiaolu Guo Anita 4 3.91 2000 Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
author: Xiaolu Guo
name: Anita
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
A character study of a young woman trying to figure herself out. I liked the structure of the novel, in "fragments", which end up painting a complete picture and show her in different lights. It's also fast paced, which is not usual for a character study.
]]> After You'd Gone 55727061
A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.

After You'd Gone follows Alice's mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family's heart.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell Anita 5
It's one of those books you can't help but keep reading because you just need to know. Maggie O'Farrell writes beautiful sentences and constructs her stories in a way you can't help but be fascinated by.]]> 4.08 2000 After You'd Gone
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Anita
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
Oh, Maggie O'Farrell, why do you keep doing this to me? This is a story about family secrets, family relationships in general, love, but mostly it's about loss. Alice Raikes after suddenly visiting her sisters in Edinburgh, decides to return immediately to London and steps in front of a car, which lands her in a comma. In her head, she goes through different moments in her life, all out of order, as if trying to make sense of them all. At the same time, her family gathers around her and wonders what happened.

It's one of those books you can't help but keep reading because you just need to know. Maggie O'Farrell writes beautiful sentences and constructs her stories in a way you can't help but be fascinated by.
]]> Delayed Rays of a Star 42504640 A dazzling novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women--Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl--cinema legends who lit up the twentieth century

At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing for bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director would first make her famous--then, infamous.

From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a seaside resort in East Germany to a luxury apartment on the Champs-ÉlysĂ©es, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, muse, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours.
Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of ego, persona, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and raw, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice.]]> 389 Amanda Lee Koe 0385544340 Anita 4
The book tells their stories and also embroiders them with fictional and real characters who provide other perspectives on their lives. It's a very interesting novel, and it has a structure that seems to be chaotic, but there's also some wholeness that permeates the whole thing and makes it feel as a unified whole. Really liked it.]]> 3.73 2019 Delayed Rays of a Star
author: Amanda Lee Koe
name: Anita
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
This book kind of surprised me. It's a character study of these three actresses that met once in Berlin: Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl. They all had vastly different careers: Marlene is probably the most well-known and she was one of the most iconic actors in the 30s and 40s, she had a long career and was outspoken during WWII about the nazis in her homeland; Anna May Wong was always limited in the roles she could do because of the pervasive racism in Hollywood and the Hay Code; Leni Riefenstahl became a filmmaker and she was also a nazi, closely related to Hitler (she suuuuuuuucks).

The book tells their stories and also embroiders them with fictional and real characters who provide other perspectives on their lives. It's a very interesting novel, and it has a structure that seems to be chaotic, but there's also some wholeness that permeates the whole thing and makes it feel as a unified whole. Really liked it.
]]> <![CDATA[Evening Descends Upon The Hills (Stories from Naples)]]> 40014293
The stories and reportage collected in this volume form a powerful portrait of ordinary lives, both high and low, family dramas, love affairs, and struggles to pay the rent, set against the crumbling courtyards of the city itself, and the dramatic landscape of Naples Bay.]]> 208 Anna Maria Ortese 1782273352 Anita 5 3.48 1953 Evening Descends Upon The Hills (Stories from Naples)
author: Anna Maria Ortese
name: Anita
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
One of the short stories hit close to my heart, since I was also a tiny girl who needed glasses to see the world around her. I really liked it, and I understand why Elena Ferrante has said Anna Maria Ortese is one of her favourite writers. Hopefully more of her works are translated soon!
]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

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

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

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Anita 0 to-read 4.52 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Anita
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 Anita 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Anita
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Everything I Know About Love 40099418 Sunday Times dating columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod-Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you've ever been able to rely on, and finding that that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out. It's a book about bad dates, good friends and - above all else - about recognising that you and you alone are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humour, Dolly Alderton's powerful début weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age - while making you laugh until you fall over. Everything I know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.]]> 358 Dolly Alderton 0241982103 Anita 4 4.00 2018 Everything I Know About Love
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Anita
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I agree with the fact that Dolly Alderton IS the Nora Ephron of our generation. She's funny, loves food, and has a knack for giving advice. And while my twenties looked very different to hers, I found some great comfort in realizing that there's stuff that's universal: friends getting married, one's first experience with death, friends having babies, feeling lost, and so on. This book felt like having the older sister I never had talking to me about her life and letting me know that it's going to be fine. I also like how she emphasizes that love doesn't only come from romantic relationships, but also from friends and family (and ever our friends's families!). It's such a heartwarming book, it made me happy to read it, largely because you can feel the love in its pages.
]]> <![CDATA[The Graduate (The Graduate, #1)]]> 71047 272 Charles Webb 0743456459 Anita 3 3.38 1963 The Graduate (The Graduate, #1)
author: Charles Webb
name: Anita
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: rory-gilmore-s-reading-challenge, men-writing
review:
The main character is such a mess, which I guess is relatable if you think about that post-grad time where you don't know what you're doing with your life. But he's also such a dick to everyone, that I was not rooting for him. Get job, stay away from her.
]]> Kappa 876637 144 Ryƫnosuke Akutagawa 080483251X Anita 4 3.81 1927 Kappa
author: Ryƫnosuke Akutagawa
name: Anita
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I don't know enough about the historical context to completly get the satire here, but I enjoyed the weirdness.
]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship
]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Anita 4 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Anita
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this was not it. It was really funny, though darkly so. Gotta love a messy main character who is just a massive walking disaster.
]]> <![CDATA[Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste]]> 383300 176 Carl Wilson 082642788X Anita 5 4.15 2007 Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
author: Carl Wilson
name: Anita
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I'm not a Celine Dion fan, nor am I a hater, like Mr. Wilson here. However, I enjoyed so much his exploration of what makes her popular despite being kind trashy, or, as I'd put it, basic. My mum is a fan, so I like a few of her songs, but they are also just... not my vibe. It's also really funny that she actually has gotten the reapprisal he predicted here.
]]> Good Material 221527827
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 352 Dolly Alderton Anita 5 3.97 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Anita
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I'm quickly falling in love with Dolly Alderton's writing. She manages to be witty, emotional, and honest, despite having a male main character as the main perspective throughout the book. He's a bit of a mess, and sometimes you want to slap him, and other times you want to give him a hug and tell him everything will be alright. She truly is the Nora Ephron of our generation.
]]> The Passion According to G.H. 17573206 208 Clarice Lispector 0141197358 Anita 5 3.95 1964 The Passion According to G.H.
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Anita
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1964
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
Woman enters an empty room in her flat and sees a cockroach, which makes her have an existential crisis about the nature of being and the world. Amazing, no notes. Clarice Lispector is one of my favourite writers since I was 17 and this book might be my favourite by her.
]]> Bride (Bride, #1) 181344829 A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he wasâ€�.

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory
alone with the wolf.]]> 410 Ali Hazelwood Anita 3 3.98 2024 Bride (Bride, #1)
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Anita
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
I kind of have this weird attraction to those random fanfic-y werewolves stories that all have the same sort of lore and I just wonder where did all of that came out. So Ali Hazelwood did one but also with vampires (which are also very different from regular vampires) and I needed a breather after my last book, so this one was my pick. It was fun, a bit silly, and the worldbuilding was a mess. What else can I say?
]]> <![CDATA[The Years of Theory: Lectures on Modern French Thought]]> 205015113 Legendary lectures on the major figures of French theory from America’s leading Marxist criticFredric Jameson’s The Years of Theory introduces the major themes of French theory, including existentialism, structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism.In a series of accessible lectures, Jameson places this effervescent period of thought in the context of its most significant political conjunctures, including the Liberation of Paris, the Algerian War, the uprisings of May â€�68, and the creation of the EU.The contentious philosophical debates of the period come to life as much through anecdotes as through extended readings of work by their participants, including Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du CinĂ©ma, and contemporary thinkers like RanciĂšre and Badiou.Drawing on a wide range of references and thinkers, Jameson’s seminar provides an essential account of an intellectual moment whose significance is compared to that of ancient Athenian philosophy, both situating it historically and revitalizing its central concerns for the present.]]> 480 Fredric Jameson 1804295892 Anita 5
The throughline of these essays is the chronological description and explanation of how different philosophical currents appeared and developed, and he explains each of them in their historical and cultural context, which makes them easier to understand. As I said in the beginning, this book would've been FANTASTIC to have as a fresher. ]]> 4.24 The Years of Theory: Lectures on Modern French Thought
author: Fredric Jameson
name: Anita
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
What can I say? This book would've been such a saviour in my first year in college. Jameson is great at explaining philosphy and I really enjoyed reading this, despite the topic being inherently difficult. He was clearly good as a professor, and the tone of these lectures make him seem like someone who liked teaching these philosophers.

The throughline of these essays is the chronological description and explanation of how different philosophical currents appeared and developed, and he explains each of them in their historical and cultural context, which makes them easier to understand. As I said in the beginning, this book would've been FANTASTIC to have as a fresher.
]]> <![CDATA[The Grammar of Angels: A Search for the Magical Powers of Language in Renaissance Italy]]> 215767763 'In his ingenious new book The Grammar of Angels, Edward Wilson-Lee paints a glorious portrait of the great 15th-century prince of learning' Daily Telegraph

'A deeply fascinating, sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer, which uses the life story of a Renaissance prodigy to summon an angel-host of ideas, people and stories, all circling the question of language's ability to transcend the mortal realm' Robert Macfarlane

Does there exist a form of speech so powerful as to allow the speaker to control the listener, taking over their thoughts and even their will?

The Grammar of Angels tells the story of Renaissance prodigy and polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the uncontested marvel of an age of true wonders. Pico dedicated his life to a quest to find the sublime; to reconcile all existing thought into a philosophy that would settle the most important questions about human existence. This philosophy would also provide tools by which man could transcend his mortal limitations and join the ranks of the angels. At the heart of Pico’s ideas were questions that he traced through the depth and breadth of human thought, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to the medieval Arabs and Jews. He made use of everything at his disposal from Europe’s broadening horizons and asked primal questions of himself and the world. Why is it that we can be astonished by beauty? That the hairs on the backs of our necks can be made to stand by intoxicating rhythms and harmonies? That we can be provoked to ecstatic experiences by the simple means of an incantation? In Catholic Italy, the implications of this line of thought were dangerous and provoked violent reactions, suggesting as they did that the notion of the individual might be just as much of an illusion as a flat earth or a geocentric universe. That there may well be notions of the divine other than the Christian God.

During a tempestuous life at the exquisite heart of the Italian Renaissance, Pico’s life is a testament to intellectual daring, to a human dignity founded in the willingness to think the unthinkable and to peer over the edge of the abyss in search of answers.]]> 334 Edward Wilson-Lee 0008621810 Anita 0 to-read 3.85 The Grammar of Angels: A Search for the Magical Powers of Language in Renaissance Italy
author: Edward Wilson-Lee
name: Anita
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Starving Saints 217896248 From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing, intensely atmospheric fever dream of medieval horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new mastersâ€� or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 Anita 0 to-read 4.05 2025 The Starving Saints
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Anita
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One Yellow Eye 220160134 In this heartrending spin on the zombie mythos, a brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a monumental secret—her undead husband.

Having always preferred the company of microbes, British scientist Kesta Shelley has spent her life peering through a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. That changed when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.

Although the government rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent. As Kesta races against the clock, her colleagues start noticing changes in her behavior and appearance. Her care for Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession. Whispers circulate that a top-secret lab is working on a cure, and Kesta clings to the possibility of being recruited, but can she save her husband before he is discovered?]]> 352 Leigh Radford 1668081210 Anita 0 to-read 3.82 2025 One Yellow Eye
author: Leigh Radford
name: Anita
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Possession of Alba DĂ­az 220756054 When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trustâ€� from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.

In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancĂ©, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.

ElĂ­as, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between themâ€� and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger.]]> Isabel Cañas Anita 0 to-read 4.54 2025 The Possession of Alba DĂ­az
author: Isabel Cañas
name: Anita
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)]]> 16054217 The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.]]> 561 Deborah Harkness 0670025593 Anita 3 us, women-writing, fantasy 4.15 2014 The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)
author: Deborah Harkness
name: Anita
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2019/08/11
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: us, women-writing, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret, Book & Scone Society (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #1)]]> 33632473
Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked “comfortâ€� scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That’s Nora’s special talent—prescribing the perfect novel to ease a person’s deepest pain and lighten their heaviest burden.

When a visiting businessman reaches out to Nora for guidance, she knows exactly which novels will help. But before he can keep their appointment at Miracle Books, he’s found dead on the train tracks.

Stunned, Nora forms the Secret, Book, and Scone Society, a group of damaged souls yearning to gain trust and earn redemption by helping others. To join the society, members must divulge their darkest secret—the terrible truth that brought each of them to Miracle Springs in the first place.

Determined to uncover the truth behind the businessman’s demise, the women meet in Nora’s cramped and cozy bookstore to share stories and trade support. And as they untangle a web of corruption, they also discover their own courage, purpose, and a sisterhood that will carry them through every challenge—proving it’s never too late to turn the page and start over . . .]]> 290 Ellery Adams 1496712374 Anita 0 to-read 3.65 2017 The Secret, Book & Scone Society (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #1)
author: Ellery Adams
name: Anita
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diva Runs Out of Thyme (A Domestic Diva Mystery, #1)]]> 3663410
But Sophie's search for the perfect turkey takes a basting when she stumbles across a corpse. And when the police find her name and photo inside the victim's car, Sophie will have to set her trussing aside to solve the murder, or she'll be serving up prison grub.]]> 292 Krista Davis 0425224260 Anita 0 to-read 3.92 2008 The Diva Runs Out of Thyme (A Domestic Diva Mystery, #1)
author: Krista Davis
name: Anita
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chapter and Curse (Cambridge Bookshop, #1)]]> 56269019
In Chapter and Curse, Molly Kimball is used to cracking open books . . .but when a poetry reading ends in murder, she must use her skills to crack the case.

Librarian Molly Kimball and her mother, Nina, need a change. So when a letter arrives from Nina’s Aunt Violet in Cambridge, England requesting their help running the family bookshop, they jump at the chance.

Thomas Marlowe—Manuscripts and Folios, is one of the oldest bookshops in Cambridge, and—unfortunately—customers can tell. When Molly and Nina arrive, spring has come to Cambridge and the famed Cambridge Literary Festival is underway. Determined to bring much-needed revenue to the bookstore, Molly invites Aunt Violet’s college classmate and famed poet Persephone Brightwell to hold a poetry reading in the shop. But the event ends in disaster when a guest is found dead—with Molly’s great-aunt’s knitting needle used as the murder weapon. While trying to clear Violet and keep the struggling shop afloat, Molly sifts through secrets past and present, untangling a web of blackmail, deceit, and murder.]]> 310 Elizabeth Penney 125078770X Anita 0 to-read 3.86 2021 Chapter and Curse (Cambridge Bookshop, #1)
author: Elizabeth Penney
name: Anita
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody, #1)]]> 40881649
Strange visitations, suspicious accidents, and a botched kidnapping convince Amelia that there is a plot afoot to harm Evelyn. Now Amelia finds herself up against an unknown enemy-and perilous forces that threaten to make her first Egyptian trip also her last . . .]]> 262 Elizabeth Peters Anita 0 to-read 3.98 1975 Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody, #1)
author: Elizabeth Peters
name: Anita
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Allegro Pastel 217214539
Written with crackling insight, dry humour, and deep emotional intelligence, Allegro Pastel proclaims Leif Randt as the premiere German stylist of his generation.]]> 215 Leif Randt 1738536238 Anita 0 to-read 3.00 Allegro Pastel
author: Leif Randt
name: Anita
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This House Is Mine 28220691
Told in skillfully-crafted alternating points of view and a non-linear storyline, Hansen's bestselling debut novel showcases her impressive talent for characterization and dialog in an unusual book that combines emotional depth and humor. She immerses the reader in a series of brightly lit or obscure scenes that call for close reading and offer many rewards. The author's sparse language and sometimes oblique references make for a deeply immersive reading experience, and the characters will resonate long after the last page has been turned. Readers of Anthony Doerr and M.L. Stedman will find much to love here.

All her life Vera has felt like a stranger in the old and drafty farmhouse she arrived in as a five-year-old refugee from East Prussia in 1945, and yet she can’t seem to let it go. 60 years later, her niece Anne suddenly shows up at her door with her small sonâ€� Anne has fled the trendy Hamburg neighborhood she never fit into when her relationship implodes. Vera and Anne are strangers to each other, but have much more in common than they think. As the two strong-willed and very different women share the great old house, they surprisingly find what they have never searched for: a family.]]> 336 Dörte Hansen 1250100852 Anita 0 to-read 3.82 2015 This House Is Mine
author: Dörte Hansen
name: Anita
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Having and Being Had 51151745 The New York Times as a writer who "advances from all sides, like a chess player," Biss brings her approach to the lived experience of capitalism. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, across bars and laundromats and universities, she asks, of both herself and her class, "In what have we invested?"]]> 324 Eula Biss 0525537457 Anita 0 to-read 3.84 2020 Having and Being Had
author: Eula Biss
name: Anita
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inventions of A Present: The Novel in its Crisis of Globalization]]> 195887572 The giant of literary theory analyses the Conrad, James, Atwood, Oe, Mailer, Grass, Grossman, Garcia Marquez, Gibson, Knausgaard and more!A novel is an act, an intervention, which, most often, the naïve reader takes as a representation. The novel intervenes to modify or correct our conventional notions of a situation, and, in the best and most intense cases, to propose a wholly new idea of what constitutes an event or of the very experience of living.The most interesting contemporary novels are those which try � and sometimes succeed � in awakening our sense of a collectivity behind individual experience; opening up a relationship between the isolated subjectivity and class or community. But even if this happens (rarely!), one must go on to find traces of collective praxis hidden away within the mere awakening of a feeling of multitude.And, since it is in the sense of the nation and nationality that collectivity is most often expressed, it is urgent to disengage the possibilities of genuine action within these nationalisms.This sweeping collection of essays ranges from the elusive politicality of North American literature to the sometimes frozen narrative experiences of the eastern countries and the old Soviet Union; from East Germany to Japan, Latin America and the Nordic countries. Like any such voyage, it is an arbitrary movement across the world of historical situations which, however, seeks to dramatize their common kinship in late capitalism itself.]]> 273 Fredric Jameson 1804292427 Anita 0 to-read 4.10 Inventions of A Present: The Novel in its Crisis of Globalization
author: Fredric Jameson
name: Anita
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Thrones, Dominations (Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane #1)]]> 132671 316 Dorothy L. Sayers 0312181965 Anita 4 3.88 1998 Thrones, Dominations (Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane #1)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anita
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
While one can clearly see that there's a difference in writing (the vocabulary is rather different here), the mystery and the characters were well plotted and structured, so I definitely enjoyed reading it.
]]> Nemesis (Miss Marple, #11) 31304
Rafiel had left instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death. The only problem was, he had failed to tell her who was involved or where and when the crime had been committed. It was most intriguing. Soon she is faced with a new crime - the ultimate crime - murder. It seems someone is adamant that past evils remain buried.

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "Nemesis." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 213 Agatha Christie 0451200187 Anita 4 3.86 1971 Nemesis (Miss Marple, #11)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
The premise is really interesting, and having Miss Marple actively try and find a crime to solve (and trying to figure out what crime she is supposed to be solving) was really fun. Something I found very interesting was how Christie writes Miss Marple getting older, and reflecting on that and the changes in the world around her, which are really clever.
]]> <![CDATA[Busman's Honeymoon (Lord Peter Wimsey, #13)]]> 116971
Dramatised by Alistair Beaton for BBC Radio 4 with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey, Sarah Badel as Harriet Vane and Peter Jones as Bunter. It was first broadcast from 2 January to 7 February 1983.

2 CDs. 2 hrs 25 mins.]]> 409 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043516 Anita 5 4.23 1937 Busman's Honeymoon (Lord Peter Wimsey, #13)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anita
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1937
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
Peter and Harriet are relationship goals. Of course they get into a mystery in their honeymoon, but apart from that, Sayers writes their relationship with such love, warmth, and utter respect for each other. And she also shows the ways they still need to learn to trust each other and be vulnerable together, which is fantastic. I absolutely adore them.
]]> Accabadora 16598591
source: lafeltrinelli.it]]> 208 Michela Murgia 0857050478 Anita 5 3.92 2009 Accabadora
author: Michela Murgia
name: Anita
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
There's a lot here: women's lives, mother-daughter relationships, traditional folklore, and so many other topics I personally found fascinating, so this book was really a fun, fascinating read. And Michela Murgia was a fantastic writer, with several lines extremely well constructed and crafted.
]]> <![CDATA[At Bertram’s Hotel (Miss Marple)]]> 75009930 272 Agatha Christie Anita 3 3.20 1965 At Bertram’s Hotel (Miss Marple)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.20
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
The actual mystery was very random, not as well thought out and plotted as most of the books in Miss Marple's books. But Agatha Christie has a knack for writing characters and settings, which made this book really fun to read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow, #3)]]> 62991463
Always mindful of the debt she owes, the girl finds her worth as a weapon in the hand of the Prince. Her victories make him a king, then an emperor. The bards sing her name and her enemies fear it. But the war never ends and the cost keeps rising—how many times will she repeat her own story?]]> 31 Alix E. Harrow 166250957X Anita 0 to-read 4.32 2022 The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow, #3)
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Anita
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey #12)]]> 33302975 576 Dorothy L. Sayers 1473621402 Anita 5 4.08 1935 Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey #12)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anita
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1935
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
I think I might have said this a lot this year, but I found my favourite Lord Wimsey novel. Maybe because it's centered around Harriet Vane, who is amazing, and it's also a lot about their relationship (again, perfection). But the academic setting and the characters in Shrewsbury college are really great and honestly, this was such a fun time.
]]> <![CDATA[The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom]]> 211003829 Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom.

When Nancy Reddy had her first child she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from mid-century researchers, yet their bad ideas about so-called “goodâ€� motherhood have seeped pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one illustration of a father interacting with his child. Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.]]> 256 Nancy Reddy 1250336643 Anita 0 to-read 3.67 2025 The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom
author: Nancy Reddy
name: Anita
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> ThérÚse Desqueyroux 18342937
Nobel-prize winner François Mauriac's masterpiece is ThérÚse Desqueyroux, the story of a complex woman trapped by provincial life. First published in 1927, this astonishing and daring novel has echoes of Madame Bovary and has recently been made into a ravishing film starring Amélie actress Audrey Tautou.]]> 128 François Mauriac 0141394056 Anita 4 3.65 1927 ThérÚse Desqueyroux
author: François Mauriac
name: Anita
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1927
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
One of those really interesting character studies, ThérÚse is a woman frustrated with the possibilities open to her as a woman, which makes her a bit related to characters like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, but she gets to have a better ending, I guess.
]]> The Nine Tailors 34624276 384 Dorothy L. Sayers 1473621399 Anita 4 3.88 1934 The Nine Tailors
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anita
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
I am enjoying very much the Peter Wimsey series, and this one has everything: murder, lost jewels, terrible natural disasters, quirky British towns, old manors... you know, all the hits of a really fun detective story.
]]> <![CDATA[A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple #9)]]> 198471144
Nephew Raymond West has given his favourite aunt a vacation at a beautiful resort in the Caribbean. While there she encounters an old wind-bag. One of his stories is about meeting a murderer. He has a snapshot. Suddenly he hesitates, and gets flustered. By the next morning he is dead, seemingly of natural causes. Miss Marple has doubts.

And well she should.]]> 240 Agatha Christie 0008196605 Anita 4 3.90 1964 A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple #9)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
Miss Marple can't chill on the beach without at least two people dropping off dead at some point. But she does what she does best and solves the crime among the several eccentric characters, but now in the Caribbean.
]]> <![CDATA[María Antonieta y el escåndalo del collar]]> 8224530 María Antonieta y el escåndalo del collar narra el célebre episodio que ha fascinado a novelistas, dramaturgos, ensayistas, historiadores y eruditos. María Antonieta, el cardenal de Rohan y la condesa de La Motte son los protagonistas de este hecho histórico que tuvo gran repercusión política en Francia durante el reinado de Luis XVI, y cuya narración deja ver las intrigas cortesanas y palaciegas de la época.]]> 95 Benedetta Craveri 9681683862 Anita 4 3.72 2006 María Antonieta y el escåndalo del collar
author: Benedetta Craveri
name: Anita
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
Un pequeño libro muy interesante sobre el escåndalo que terminó de hundir la reputación de María Antonieta (a pesar de que ella no hizo nada), explicando el rol de cada uno de los participantes y cómo terminó por afectar a la monarquía a ojos del pueblo.
]]> <![CDATA[The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (Miss Marple, #8)]]> 16372
Marina’s frozen expression suggested she had witnessed something horrific. While others searched for material evidence, Jane Marple conducted a very different investigation â€� into human nature.

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 351 Agatha Christie 0007120982 Anita 4 3.95 1962 The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (Miss Marple, #8)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: books-i-own, 20th-century, women-writing, english
review:
This is one of my favourite Miss Marple stories, in which she shows her talent at observing how people behave and this is how she solves crimes. She is great at reading people, which makes her a genious detective, to everyone's surprise.
]]> <![CDATA[Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)]]> 36098582
Disguised as his disreputable cousin Death Bredon, Lord Peter Wimsey takes a job � one that soon draws him into a vicious network of blackmailers and drug pedlars.

Five people will die before Wimsey unravels a sinister and deadly plot.]]> 388 Dorothy L. Sayers 1473621380 Anita 4 Mad Men should have had way more murders and drug smuggling. Sayers is really good at writing quirky characters and have several of them interact without being annoying.]]> 4.10 1933 Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anita
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
A very funny novel about murder and advertising. Which makes me think that Mad Men should have had way more murders and drug smuggling. Sayers is really good at writing quirky characters and have several of them interact without being annoying.
]]> Family and Borghesia 216413549
Carmine, an architect, and Ivana, a translator, lived together long ago and even had a child, but the child died, and their relationship fell apart, and Carmine married Ninetta, and their child is DodĂČ, who Carmine feels is a little dull, and these days Carmine is still spending every evening with Ivana, but Ninetta has nothing to say about that. Family , the first of these two novellas from the 1970s, is an examination, at first comic, then progressively dark, about how time passes and life goes on and people circle around the opportunities they had missed, missing more as they do, until finally time is up.

Borghesia , about a widow who keeps acquiring and losing the Siamese cats she hopes will keep her company in her loneliness, explores similar ground, along with the confusions of feeling and domestic life that came with the loosening social strictures of the 1970s. “She remembered saying that there were three things in life you should always refuse,â€� thinks one of Natalia Ginzburg’s characters, beginning to age out of “Hypocrisy, resignation, and unhappiness. But it was impossible to shield yourself from those three things. Life was full of them and there was no holding them back.”]]> 160 Natalia Ginzburg 1914198840 Anita 5 Borghesia, with its dark humour and fantastic insight on the lives of the middle class characters. She's both witty and generous, a combination that should be more common. ]]> 3.85 1977 Family and Borghesia
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: Anita
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
I've been loving Natalia Ginzburg this year, and these two novellas are no exception. I particularly liked Borghesia, with its dark humour and fantastic insight on the lives of the middle class characters. She's both witty and generous, a combination that should be more common.
]]> <![CDATA[4:50 from Paddington (Miss Marple, #7)]]> 205880785 281 Agatha Christie 0008196583 Anita 4 3.93 1957 4:50 from Paddington (Miss Marple, #7)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anita
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
What can I say? I love Miss Marple for being a nosy old maid, and she does it brilliantly in this novel, as always. Also, what a great character is Lucy Eyelesbarrow, an icon. In the end, she does go a little too far on the plot twist thing, but it's fun nonetheless.
]]> <![CDATA[The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune Anita 4 4.37 2020 The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Anita
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
Okay, this was a cute palate cleanser. Bit on the nose when it comes to themes and concepts, but very enjoyable.
]]> Victorian Psycho 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Anita 0 to-read 3.62 2025 Victorian Psycho
author: Virginia Feito
name: Anita
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chasing the Dream 57828490
Josiane de Valneige is young, beautiful and rich. She is also exhausted, depressed and despairing. Although scores of wealthy Parisians have been her lovers, she has loved none in return. And despite Josiane’s fame as one of the fin de siĂšcle’s grandes horizontales, fĂȘted in every gossip column, the journey to success has revealed a flaw in her character: she has a heart. Her real self is never engaged. It is not enough to be universally loved. She needs, she yearns, to give her heart.]]> 127 Liane de Pougy 1912868563 Anita 3 3.60 1898 Chasing the Dream
author: Liane de Pougy
name: Anita
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
Fascinating little book about a courtesan's attempt at true love. It's a sad story, told in letters from the main character to one of her friends (and viceversa), and it's very interesting. Will look for more book by Liane de Pougy in the future.
]]> <![CDATA[The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women]]> 59817014 � New York Times Book Review


The chilling story of one woman’s rise to prominence in the Italian Mafia, and the as-yet untold stories of the women who followed in her footsteps.

For as long as it has gripped our imaginations, the Mafia has been tied to an ingrained image of masculinity. We read about "made men ," "wise guys ," and "good fellas " leading criminal organizations whose culture prizes machismo, with women as ancillary and often-powerless trivialized mistresses and long-suffering mob wives. The reality is far more complex.

In The Godmother , investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the stories of the women who have risen to prominence, and fallen out of favor, in the Italian mob, beginning with the most infamous of these Pupetta Maresca. A Mafia woman born and raised, Pupetta avenged her husband’s murder, firing 29 shots at the man who killed him.

Woven throughout Pupetta's story is Nadeau's diligent research, and her personal interviews with the Mafia women themselves. Nadeau takes readers inside the Mafia families to paint a complete and complex portrait of the real culture that has shaped the Mafia, and the women who are part of it.

Leaving behind the stereotypes we know from Mafia movies, The Godmother shows the Mafia in an entirely new full-fledged, ruthless, twenty-first-century criminal enterprises led by whoever is strong enough and smart enough to take control.]]> 256 Barbie Latza Nadeau 0143136119 Anita 4 3.55 2022 The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women
author: Barbie Latza Nadeau
name: Anita
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
Women in the mafia have mostly gone unseen through the years, despite the fact that our culture has long been obsessed with the mob, and it's obvious that women are needed somehow to sustain that culture. This book delves on the stories of women in the Italian mafias, describing the ways in which they are both victims and perpetrators of horrific crimes and violence. It's well researched and written, weaving dozens of stories into a compelling narrative that shows these women and their world in fascinating detail.
]]> On Immunity: An Inoculation 20613511
In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. As she hears more and more fears about vaccines, Biss researches what they mean for her own child, her immediate community, America, and the world, both historically and in the present moment. She extends a conversation with other mothers to meditations on Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond.

On Immunity is a moving account of how we are all interconnected-our bodies and our fates.]]> 205 Eula Biss 1555976891 Anita 5 3.93 2014 On Immunity: An Inoculation
author: Eula Biss
name: Anita
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:
LOVED this one. Loved how she framed immunity from the community perspective, and also from love and mutual aid. It's one of those books I'll keep on recommending for ages to come. How was this not compulsory reading in 2020?
]]> <![CDATA[In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial]]> 59116318
A source of terror, a misogynistic image of woman inherited from the trials and the pyres of the great early modern witch hunts � in In Defence of Witches the witch is recast as a powerful role model to women today: an emblem of power, free to exist beyond the narrow limits society imposes on women.

Whether selling grimoires on Etsy, posting photos of their crystal-adorned altar on Instagram, or gathering to cast spells on Donald Trump, witches are everywhere. But who exactly were the forebears of these modern witches? Who was historically accused of witchcraft, often meeting violent ends? What types of women have been censored, eliminated, repressed, over the centuries?

Mona Chollet takes three archetypes from historic witch hunts, and examines how far women today have the same charges levelled against them: independent women; women who choose not to have children; and women who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing. Finally, Chollet argues that by considering the lives of those who dared to live differently, we can learn more about the richness of roles available, just how many different things a woman can choose to be.]]> 308 Mona Chollet 125027222X Anita 4 3.76 2018 In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial
author: Mona Chollet
name: Anita
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
An interesting look at the ways in which the witch trials have shaped how we see women even to this day: aging, sexuality, childlessness, and other things that have garnered criticism through the ages and became suspect in the burning times.
]]> <![CDATA[Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen]]> 45904728
My name is Amrou Al-Kadhi � by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to.

Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning.

This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way.

Most of all, this is a book about my mother. It’s the journey of how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope â€� and the life-long search for belonging.]]> 272 Amrou Al-Kadhi 0008306060 Anita 4 4.24 2019 Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen
author: Amrou Al-Kadhi
name: Anita
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
Beautiful exploration of the links between queerness and identity within Islam, as well as the trauma that comes from feeling rejected by every single element that appears to unite the rest. He has a beautiful way of writing and it shows how much work he has had to do to become who he is today.
]]> The Superrationals 53637626
Over the course of a few days in the fall of 2015, the sophisticated and awkward, wry and beautiful Mathilde upends her tidy world. She takes a short leave from her job at one of New York's leading auction houses and follows her best friend Gretchen on an impromptu trip to Paris. While there, she confronts her late mother's hidden life, attempts to rein in Gretchen's encounters with an aloof and withholding sometime-boyfriend, and faces the traumatic loss of both her parents when she was a teenager.

Reeling between New York, Paris, Munich London, and Berlin, The Superrationals is an erotic and darkly comic story about female friendship, set at the intersection between counterculture and the multimillion dollar art industry. Mathilde takes short, perceptive notes on artworks as a way to organize her own chaotic thoughts and life. Featuring a bitchy gossip chorus within a larger carousel of voices, The Superrationals coolly surveys the international art and media worlds while exploring game theory, the uncanny, and psychoanalysis. Written in the "Young Girl" tradition of Michelle Bernstein's All The King's Horses, Bernadette Corporation's Reena Spaulings and Natasha Stagg's Surveys, The Superrationals confronts the complexity of building narrative in life and on the page and the instability that lies at the heart of everything.]]> 160 Stephanie LaCava 1635901324 Anita 0 to-read 3.11 2020 The Superrationals
author: Stephanie LaCava
name: Anita
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge]]> 30753748 Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave who risked it all to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.

Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.

At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.

Impeccably researched, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father.]]> 253 Erica Armstrong Dunbar 1501126393 Anita 4 3.80 2017 Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
author: Erica Armstrong Dunbar
name: Anita
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
While most of the stuff about Ona Judge herself is speculative (since there's not much written records from her), the stuff about the Washingtons definitely serves to underline the ambivalent attitudes towards black people that permeated the early years of the US, and I believe it's worth looking at it.
]]> <![CDATA[I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Further Conversations with My Psychiatrist]]> 197363973 The sequel to the Sunday Times and international-bestselling South Korean therapy memoir, translated by International Booker Prize-shortlisted Anton Hur

When Baek Sehee started recording her sessions with her psychiatrist, her hope was to create a reference for herself. She never imagined she would reach so many people, especially young people, with her reflections. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki became a runaway bestseller in South Korea, Indonesia, and the U.S., and reached a community of readers who appreciated depression and anxiety being discussed with such intimacy. Baek's struggle with dysthymia continues in I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki. And healing is a difficult process; the inner conflict she experiences in treatment becomes more complex, more challenging. With this second book, Baek Sehee reaches out to hold the hands of all those for whom grappling with everyday despair is part of a lifelong project, part of the journey.]]> 224 Baek Se-hee 1639732306 Anita 4 3.60 2019 I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Further Conversations with My Psychiatrist
author: Baek Se-hee
name: Anita
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
For a bunch of personal reasons, I don't feel comfortable talking too much about this book. But I appreciate Baek Se-hee's bravery and honesty when discussing these themes and issues.
]]> How Propaganda Works 23528852
Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States.

"How Propaganda Works" shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.]]> 376 Jason F. Stanley 0691164428 Anita 4 3.56 2015 How Propaganda Works
author: Jason F. Stanley
name: Anita
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
A dense and very very complete exploration of the different styles and forms propaganda can take in the world. Kind of important to know in this day and age (once again).
]]> <![CDATA[Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way]]> 52130354 The physical world is infinitely complex, yet most of us are able to find our way around it. We can walk through unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction, take shortcuts along paths we have never used and remember for many years places we have visited only once. These are remarkable achievements.

In Wayfinding, Michael Bond explores how we do it: how our brains make the ‘cognitive mapsâ€� that keep us orientated, even in places that we don’t know. He considers how we relate to places, and asks how our understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and behaviour.

The way we think about physical space has been crucial to our evolution: the ability to navigate over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage over the rest of the human family. Children are instinctive explorers, developing a spatial understanding as they roam. And yet today few of us make use of the wayfaring skills that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors. Most of us have little idea what we may be losing.

Bond seeks an answer to the question of why some of us are so much better at finding our way than others. He also tackles the controversial subject of sex differences in navigation, and finally tries to understand why being lost can be such a devastating psychological experience.

For readers of writers as different as Robert Macfarlane and Oliver Sacks, Wayfinding is a book that can change our sense of ourselves.

]]> 314 Michael Shaw Bond 1509841083 Anita 5 4.12 2020 Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way
author: Michael Shaw Bond
name: Anita
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
review:
As someone who grew up in a semirural area and had a lot of freedom to roam in my neighbourhood, and then went into the scouts and spent years hiking and exploring different places, I never thought about the ways all those experiences shaped my brain. I also love walking around cities, and I'm generally rather good at finding out where I'm going, and this book made me appreciate how all that connects me to a tradition of explorers and people who travelled the world.
]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Anita 5 english, women-writing 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Anita
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 5
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: english, women-writing
review:

]]> La cĂĄmara lĂșcida 50264147 144 Roland Barthes 8449336856 Anita 5 4.11 1980 La cĂĄmara lĂșcida
author: Roland Barthes
name: Anita
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
Siempre que leo estos libros sobre fotografía me pregunto qué pensarían ahora que tenemos la fotografía en el bolsillo. En todo caso, las reflexiones de Barthes sobre la fotografia y las emociones que genera en nosotros son preciosas y definitivamente serå un libro al que regresaré en el futuro.
]]> If I Go Missing 45430039 If I Go Missing is derived from excerpts of a letter that went viral and was also the basis of a documentary film. In her letter, Jonnie calls out the authorities for neglecting to immediately investigate missing Indigenous people and urges them to not treat me as the Indigenous person I am proud to be if she were to be reported missing. Indigenous artist Neal Shannacappo provides the artwork. Through his illustrations, he imagines a situation in which a young Indigenous woman does disappear, portraying the reaction of her community, her friends, the police, and media.

-- "Journal"]]> 64 Brianna Jonnie 1459414519 Anita 4 4.49 2019 If I Go Missing
author: Brianna Jonnie
name: Anita
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
It is absolutely harrowing that a young girl felt like she needed to write this letter to the police chief, but I appreciate her bravery and her passion. While the illustrations were not quite my vibe, I think they complimented the words extremely well. The issue of indigenous women and girls being disproportionately more likely to be the subjects of violence is an absolutely horrible one, and it's absolutely important that we listen to their voices.
]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century]]> 121539124
With Amazon’s growing power in both bookselling and publishing, considering where and how we get our books is more important now than ever. The simple act of putting a book in a reader’s hands—what booksellers call handselling—becomes a catalyst for an exploration of the moral, financial, and political pressures all indie bookstores face. From the relationship between bookselling and white supremacy, to censorship and the spread of misinformation, to the consolidation of the publishing industry, veteran bookseller and writer Josh Cook turns a generous yet critical eye to an industry at the heart of American culture, sharing tips and techniques for becoming a better reader and, of course, recommending great books along the way.]]> 300 Josh Cook 177196541X Anita 4
There's a tiny mistake in the section that discusses American Dirt, in which he describes Isabel Allende as Dominican, and also blurbing the book. He might have been thinking about Julia Álvarez, who is indeed Dominican and blurbed the book, while Isabel Allende is Chilean and (as far as I know) didn't blurb American Dirt. Would've ben fine if it wasn't right after a paragraph where he states why would anyone read Cummins if she can't get the details right so... yeah, there's that.]]> 3.78 2023 The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century
author: Josh Cook
name: Anita
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
I used to be a bookseller, so I found a lot of very relatable elements in this book. A passionate defense of bookselling as a profession (just as all retail workers are experts in their respective fields), it also discusses the nuances and complications of selling books in the moder world, and the ways in which independent bookshops can create and sustain communities.

There's a tiny mistake in the section that discusses American Dirt, in which he describes Isabel Allende as Dominican, and also blurbing the book. He might have been thinking about Julia Álvarez, who is indeed Dominican and blurbed the book, while Isabel Allende is Chilean and (as far as I know) didn't blurb American Dirt. Would've ben fine if it wasn't right after a paragraph where he states why would anyone read Cummins if she can't get the details right so... yeah, there's that.
]]> Stories of the Sahara 52392347
Sanmao: author, adventurer, pioneer. Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.

Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.

At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. With an introduction by Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti, this is an essential collection from one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures.
]]> 416 Sanmao 140888187X Anita 5 4.40 1976 Stories of the Sahara
author: Sanmao
name: Anita
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
Sanmao already had my heart before I read this, since she is the Chinese translator for Mafalda, my favourite comic strip in the entire world. But I also thought her life and work sounded fascinating and I wasn't dissappointed. Her wonderings in the desert, and the ways she describes her surroundings and the people there. It's a delightful travel narrative, and also very funny at points.
]]> <![CDATA[To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse]]> 61897930
This is the mesmerizing story of an enigmatic life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense—a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
Ìę
And then there was the bizarre legend about Connie Converse that had become the prevailing narrative of her life: that in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this have been true? Who was Connie Converse, really?
Ìę
Supported by a dozen years of research, travel to everywhere she lived, and hundreds of extensive interviews, Fishman approaches Converse’s story as both a fan and a journalist, and expertly weaves a narrative of her life and music, and of how it has come to speak to him as both an artist and a person. Ultimately, he places her in the canon as a significant outsider artist, a missing link between a now old-fashioned kind of American music and the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever.ÌęÌę
Ìę
But this is also a story of deeply secretive New England traditions, of a woman who fiercely strove for independence and success when the odds were against her; a story that includes suicide, mental illness, statistics, siblings, oil paintings, acoustic guitars, cross-country road trips, 1950s Greenwich Village, an America marching into the Cold War, questions about sexuality, and visionary, forward thinking about race, class, and conflict. It’s a story and subject that is by turn hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling.]]> 576 Howard Fishman 0593187369 Anita 5 4.30 To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse
author: Howard Fishman
name: Anita
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
Like Howard Fishman, I was obsessed with Connie Converse from the moment I first listened to her music. Hearing her raw, unusual songs made me wonder about the woman behind them and her mysterious life. Fishman here does a very good job at trying to figure out who she was and what made her so unique.
]]> Wittgenstein’s Mistress 51506 279 David Markson 1564782115 Anita 0 to-read 3.94 1988 Wittgenstein’s Mistress
author: David Markson
name: Anita
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Flamethrowers 15803141
The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.]]> 383 Rachel Kushner 1439142009 Anita 0 to-read 3.51 2013 The Flamethrowers
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Anita
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Morning Gift 53027698
On arrival in London, Ruth and Quin find that dissolving their marriage is not as simple as they had thought, and neither is keeping it secret. As war approaches, how will Ruth start a new life if she is not able to break away from the past?

A modern classic of unexpected love, independence and belonging by the award-winning Eva Ibbotson, introduced by Sarra Manning.]]> 528 Eva Ibbotson 1529012252 Anita 0 to-read 4.19 1993 The Morning Gift
author: Eva Ibbotson
name: Anita
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Princess Princess Ever After 30025791 "I am no prince!"

When the heroic princess Amira rescues the kind-hearted princess Sadie from her tower prison, neither expects to find a true friend in the bargain. Yet as they adventure across the kingdom, they discover that they bring out the very best in the other person. They'll need to join forces and use all the know-how, kindness, and bravery they have in order to defeat their greatest foe yet: a jealous sorceress, who wants to get rid of Sadie once and for all.

Join Sadie and Amira, two very different princesses with very different strengths, on their journey to figure out what happily ever after really means -- and how they can find it with each other.]]> 53 Kay O'Neill 1620103400 Anita 4 3.97 2014 Princess Princess Ever After
author: Kay O'Neill
name: Anita
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
SO ADORABLE. It's obviously meant for kids, but it is so cute.
]]> Blancura 202333229
Blancura es la Ășltima novela de Jon Fosse. El autor galardonado con el Nobel arrastra al lector en una narraciĂłn enigmĂĄtica, inquietante e hipnĂłtica. Una lectura tan breve como intensa.]]> 96 Jon Fosse 9877693410 Anita 5 3.37 2023 Blancura
author: Jon Fosse
name: Anita
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Una historia surrealista sobre morir (?) en medio de la nieve. Es una novela corta, casi un cuento, en que un hombre se encuentra a sĂ­ mismo perdido en medio de la naturaleza, cuando se encuentra con un resplandor que lo sorprende.
]]> The Piano Tuner 61273564 Ìę
At the heart of the story is the nameless narrator, the piano tuner. In his forties, he is balding and ugly, a loser by any standard. But he was once a musical prodigy. What betrayal and what heartbreak made him walk away from greatness?
Ìę
Long hailed in Taiwan as a “writer’s writer,â€� Chiang-Sheng Kuo delivers a stunningly powerful,Ìęcompact novel inÌęThe Piano Tuner. It’s a book of both of music and of the heart, from Rachmaninoff to Schubert, from Glenn Gould to Sviatoslav Richter, from untapped potential to unrequited love. With a cadence and precision that bring to mind Thomas Mann’sÌęDeath in Venice, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, and Yasunari Kawabata’sÌęSnow Country, this short novel may be a portrait of the artist as a “failure,â€� but it also describes a pursuit of the ultimate beauty in music and in love.]]> 168 Chiang-Sheng Kuo 1956763414 Anita 0 to-read 2.98 2020 The Piano Tuner
author: Chiang-Sheng Kuo
name: Anita
average rating: 2.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me]]> 40864841 All Freddy Riley wants is for Laura Dean to stop breaking up with her.

The day they got together was the best one of Freddy's life, but nothing's made sense since. Laura Dean is popular, funny, and SO CUTE ... but she can be really thoughtless, even mean. Their on-again, off-again relationship has Freddy's head spinning � and Freddy's friends can't understand why she keeps going back.

When Freddy consults the services of a local mystic, the mysterious Seek-Her, she isn't thrilled with the advice she receives. But something's got to give: Freddy's heart is breaking in slow motion, and she may be about to lose her very best friend as well as her last shred of self-respect. Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnist Anna Vice, to help her through being a teenager in love.

Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell bring to life a sweet and spirited tale of young love that asks us to consider what happens when we ditch the toxic relationships we crave to embrace the healthy ones we need.]]> 289 Mariko Tamaki 1250312841 Anita 4 3.86 2019 Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me
author: Mariko Tamaki
name: Anita
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
It's a really good exploration of being young and messy and figuring yourself out. Freddy Riley's journey through love, heartbreak, and learning to establish limits for yourself is very relatable, and the characters felt complicated and honest throughout.
]]> Pet (Pet, #1) 43568395 A thought-provoking and haunting novel about a creature that escapes from an artist's canvas, whose talent is sniffing out monsters in a world that claims they don't exist anymore. Perfect for fans of Akata Witch and Shadowshaper.

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster--and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also uncover the truth, and the answer to the question How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

In their riveting and timely young adult debut, acclaimed novelist Akwaeke Emezi asks difficult questions about what choices you can make when the society around you is in denial.]]> 208 Akwaeke Emezi 0525647074 Anita 3 4.14 2019 Pet (Pet, #1)
author: Akwaeke Emezi
name: Anita
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Most of my issues with the book is that the main character was supposed to be 16, but read to be much younger. There's even a scene in which her mother picks her up to take her to bed, which is a rather weird thing to do with a girl who is two years away from college. Had Jam been written as a twelve o ten-year-old, her character would've been much more believable.
]]> <![CDATA[Rasgos del nuevo radicalismo de derecha]]> 50617488
Veinte años después del final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el NPD, un partido neonazi alemån, obtuvo un éxito sorprendente en las urnas. En ese contexto, Theodor W. Adorno dio una conferencia en la Universidad de Viena, invitado por la Asociación de Estudiantes Socialistas de Austria. Desde nuestra encrucijada actual, el interés de esta charla es mucho mås que histórico.

En ella analizó los objetivos, recursos y tåcticas del nuevo radicalismo de derecha de su época. Contraståndolo con el «viejo» fascismo nazi, expuso las razones para semejante recepción positiva. Este libro de Adorno es como un mensaje en una botella lanzado cincuenta años atrås cuya lectura tiene un inestimable valor en nuestro presente.]]> 96 Theodor W. Adorno 8430622233 Anita 5 4.04 Rasgos del nuevo radicalismo de derecha
author: Theodor W. Adorno
name: Anita
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Es muy estresante que Adorno haya predicho el siglo veinte en 1967 y que, por alguna razĂłn, nos haya tomado por sorpresa. Dicen que los que no conocen su historia estĂĄn condenados a repetirla, pero pareciera que estamos condenados de todas formas.
]]> <![CDATA[The Witch Boy (The Witch Boy, #1)]]> 31193426 In thirteen-year-old Aster's family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while boys grow up to be shapeshifters. Anyone who dares cross those lines is exiled. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn't shifted . . . and he's still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it might be. When a mysterious danger threatens the other boys, Aster knows he can help -- as a witch. It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills. And it will require even more courage to save his family . . . and be truly himself.]]> 224 Molly Knox Ostertag Anita 4 4.21 2017 The Witch Boy (The Witch Boy, #1)
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Anita
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
This was cute, and it worked really well to introduce the world and characters in the series. I might pick up the others in the future when I need a nice, relaxing middle grade graphic novel to pass the time.
]]> A Tall History of Sugar 45837654 Love in the Time of Cholera.

A Tall History of Sugar tells the story of Moshe Fisher, a man who was “born without skin,â€� so that no one is able to tell what race he belongs to; and Arrienne Christie, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty in life to protect Moshe from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance.

The narrative begins with Moshe’s birth in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica’s independence from colonial rule, and ends in the era of what Forbes calls “the fall of empire,â€� the era of Brexit and Donald Trump. The historical trajectory layers but never overwhelms the scintillating love story as the pair fight to establish their own view of loving, against the moral force of the colonial “plantationâ€� and its legacies that continue to affect their lives and the lives of those around them.

Written in lyrical, luminous prose that spans the range of Jamaican Englishes, this remarkable story follows the couple’s mysterious love affair from childhood to adulthood, from the haunted environs of rural Jamaica to the city of Kingston, and then to England—another haunted locale in Forbes’s rendition.

Following on the footsteps of Marlon James’s debut novel, John Crow’s Devil, which Akashic Books published in 2005, we are delighted to introduce another lion of Jamaican literature with the publication of A Tall History of Sugar.]]> 372 Curdella Forbes 1617757519 Anita 3 3.20 2019 A Tall History of Sugar
author: Curdella Forbes
name: Anita
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Felt a bit too meandering at the beginning, so I had a hard time catching the rhythm of the story. The writing was interesting, but the plot couldn't live up to it.
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