Elianna's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 03 Apr 2019 23:50:09 -0700 60 Elianna's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Nightingale 21853621 Der Weltbestseller � die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]>
564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Elianna 0 to-read 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/04/03
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All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]>
544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Elianna 0 to-read 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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The Interestings 15815333
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules's now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.]]>
468 Meg Wolitzer 1594488398 Elianna 0 currently-reading 3.58 2013 The Interestings
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/11
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<![CDATA[If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend]]> 309065 287 Alison Pace 0425200248 Elianna 4 3.71 2005 If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend
author: Alison Pace
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/06
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<![CDATA[I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban]]> 17851885 I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.]]>
327 Malala Yousafzai 0316322407 Elianna 4 4.15 2012 I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
author: Malala Yousafzai
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/12/28
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<![CDATA[The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.]]> 16045140
In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man--one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is a tale of one young man's search for happiness--and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.]]>
256 Adelle Waldman 0805097457 Elianna 0 to-read 3.28 2013 The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
author: Adelle Waldman
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/07
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<![CDATA[The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese]]> 16127243 349 Michael Paterniti 0385337000 Elianna 0 to-read 3.26 2013 The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese
author: Michael Paterniti
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/07
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<![CDATA[Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America]]> 13425592 Devil in the Grove is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.�

And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,� into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terror� at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”]]>
434 Gilbert King 0062097717 Elianna 0 to-read 4.38 2012 Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
author: Gilbert King
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]>
592 Markus Zusak Elianna 5 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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Defending Jacob 11367726
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.]]>
421 William Landay 0385344228 Elianna 5 3.99 2012 Defending Jacob
author: William Landay
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2013/11/18
date added: 2013/11/18
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The Kitchen House 6837103
Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.]]>
369 Kathleen Grissom 1439153663 Elianna 0 to-read 4.21 2010 The Kitchen House
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption]]> 8664353
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.]]>
475 Laura Hillenbrand 1400064163 Elianna 0 to-read 4.38 2010 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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The Light Between Oceans 13158800 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman's mesmerizing, beautifully written debut novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel's decision to keep this "gift from God." And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss.]]>
362 M.L. Stedman 1451681739 Elianna 0 to-read 4.02 2012 The Light Between Oceans
author: M.L. Stedman
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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The Husband's Secret 17465450
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all - she's an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything - and not just for her. There are other women who barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they, too, are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband's secret.]]>
418 Liane Moriarty Elianna 0 to-read 3.89 2013 The Husband's Secret
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/11/12
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The Circle (The Circle, #1) 18302455 alternate cover for ISBN 9780385351393

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users� personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.]]>
493 Dave Eggers Elianna 4 3.41 2013 The Circle (The Circle, #1)
author: Dave Eggers
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1)]]> 375802
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.]]>
324 Orson Scott Card 0812550706 Elianna 5 4.31 1985 Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1)
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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Where'd You Go, Bernadette 13526165
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.]]>
330 Maria Semple 0316204277 Elianna 5 3.87 2012 Where'd You Go, Bernadette
author: Maria Semple
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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Lucky Jim 395182 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers back in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.� Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”]]>
296 Kingsley Amis 0140186301 Elianna 0 to-read 3.77 1954 Lucky Jim
author: Kingsley Amis
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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And the Mountains Echoed 16115612 404 Khaled Hosseini 159463176X Elianna 0 currently-reading 4.06 2012 And the Mountains Echoed
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/04
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The Art of Racing in the Rain 3153910
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life ... as only a dog could tell it.]]>
336 Garth Stein 1554681723 Elianna 0 to-read 4.22 2008 The Art of Racing in the Rain
author: Garth Stein
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/03
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The Happiness Project 6398634
In this lively and compelling account, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.]]>
301 Gretchen Rubin 0061583251 Elianna 0 to-read 3.65 2009 The Happiness Project
author: Gretchen Rubin
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa]]> 144214
WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN is a stirring memoir of the disintegration of a family set against the collapse of a country. But it is also a vivid portrait of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love.]]>
344 Peter Godwin 0316158941 Elianna 0 to-read 4.15 2006 When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
author: Peter Godwin
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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Steve Jobs 11084145 630 Walter Isaacson 1451648537 Elianna 0 to-read 4.15 2011 Steve Jobs
author: Walter Isaacson
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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Thinking, Fast and Slow 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]>
499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Elianna 1 4.17 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 1
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The Dinner 15797938
Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act - an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. When the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner is an internationally bestselling phenomenon that will leave you breathless.]]>
292 Herman Koch 0770437850 Elianna 0 to-read 3.18 2009 The Dinner
author: Herman Koch
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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The Marriage Plot 10964693
As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.]]>
406 Jeffrey Eugenides 0374203059 Elianna 4 3.46 2011 The Marriage Plot
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots]]> 13547241 New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.

As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.]]>
262 Deborah Feldman 1439187010 Elianna 0 to-read 3.97 2012 Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
author: Deborah Feldman
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater]]> 12315579 270 Gail Simmons 1401324509 Elianna 0 to-read 3.50 2012 Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater
author: Gail Simmons
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Elianna 0 to-read 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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Bossypants 9418327
She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.]]>
283 Tina Fey Elianna 4 3.97 2011 Bossypants
author: Tina Fey
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead]]> 16071764 Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour � of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg � Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business � draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.]]> 217 Sheryl Sandberg 0385349947 Elianna 5 3.94 2013 Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
author: Sheryl Sandberg
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)]]> 10335308
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you've come to the right book, mostly!

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door - not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.]]>
222 Mindy Kaling 0307886263 Elianna 3 3.86 2011 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
author: Mindy Kaling
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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Sarah's Key 556602
Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France's past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel' d'Hiv' to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.
(front flap)]]>
294 Tatiana de Rosnay 0312370830 Elianna 5 4.18 2006 Sarah's Key
author: Tatiana de Rosnay
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Elianna 5 3.88 2013 The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]>
399 Gillian Flynn Elianna 5 3.93 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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City of Women 13593526
It is 1943 - the height of the Second World War - and Berlin has essentially become a city of women.

Sigrid Schröder is, for all intents and purposes, the model German soldier's wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime. But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. Her lover is a Jew.

But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets.

A high ranking SS officer and his family move down the hall and Sigrid finds herself pulled into their orbit. A young woman doing her duty-year is out of excuses before Sigrid can even ask her any questions. And then there's the blind man selling pencils on the corner, whose eyes Sigrid can feel following her from behind the darkness of his goggles.

Soon Sigrid is embroiled in a world she knew nothing about, and as her eyes open to the reality around her, the carefully constructed fortress of solitude she has built over the years begins to collapse. She must choose to act on what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two.

In this page-turning novel, David Gillham explores what happens to ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death.]]>
392 David R. Gillham 039915776X Elianna 4 3.77 2012 City of Women
author: David R. Gillham
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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City of Thieves 1971304
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.]]>
258 David Benioff 0670018708 Elianna 5 4.28 2008 City of Thieves
author: David Benioff
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society]]> 2728527
“Treat yourself to this book, please - I can’t recommend it highly enough.� (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love)

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.�

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb....

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island - boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

“A jewel... Poignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends.� (People)

“A book-lover’s delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary.� (Chicago Sun-Times)

“A sparkling epistolary novel radiating wit, lightly worn erudition and written with great assurance and aplomb.� (The Sunday Times [London])

“Cooked perfectly à point: subtle and elegant in flavour, yet emotionally satisfying to the finish.� (The Times [London])]]>
277 Mary Ann Shaffer 0385340990 Elianna 5 4.13 2008 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
author: Mary Ann Shaffer
name: Elianna
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise]]> 80642 Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl reveals the comic absurdity, artifice, and excellence to be found in the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world and gives us--along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews--her remarkable reflections on how one's outer appearance can influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites, not to mention the quality of service one receives.]]> 333 Ruth Reichl 0143036610 Elianna 5 3.93 2005 Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Elianna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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