Anne's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 08 May 2025 15:11:22 -0700 60 Anne's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083]]> 608720
Five fourteen–year–olds face this desperate situation on a deadly journey in Antarctica. It is 2083. They are contestants on a reality TV show, Antarctic Survivor, which is set up to re–create Robert F. Scott's 1912 doomed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.

But in 2083 reality TV is not just an act. Contestants literally relive � or die during � the simulations of events. Robert Scott and his team were experienced explorers and scientists, but their attempt to reach the Pole proved fatal. What chance does the Antarctic Survivor team have?

This action–packed, riveting adventure � full of fascinating direct quotes from Scott's journals and other accounts of the expedition � is both a heart–wrenching drama from the past and a disquieting glimpse into the future.

Ages 12+]]> 448 Andrea White 0060554568 Anne 0 to-read 3.77 2005 Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083
author: Andrea White
name: Anne
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 206305528
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride�) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.]]> 404 Bonnie Garmus Anne 0 to-read 4.24 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Anne
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Anne 0 to-read 4.60 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Anne
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Anne 3 reading-to-the-kids 4.57 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Anne
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: reading-to-the-kids
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling Anne 3 reading-to-the-kids 4.42 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Anne
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: reading-to-the-kids
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Knight of the Cape (1) (Definitely Dominguita)]]> 54304114 A new chapter book series featuring a young Cuban American girl who tries to find adventure based on the classics she read with her beloved abuela—can Dominguita become a noble knight?

All Dominguita wants to do is read. Especially the books in Spanish that Abuela gave to her just before she moved away. They were classics that Abuela and Dominguita read together, classics her abuela brought with her all the way from Cuba when she was a young girl. It helps Dominguita feel like Abuela’s still there with her.

One of her favorites, Don Quixote, tells of a brave knight errant who tries to do good deeds. Dominguita decides that she, too, will become a knight and do good deeds around her community, creating a grand adventure for her to share with her abuela. And when the class bully tells Dominguita that girls can’t be knights, Dom is determined to prove him wrong. With a team of new friends, can Dominguita learn how to be the hero of her own story?]]> 144 Terry Catasús Jennings 1534465030 Anne 0 to-read, reading-to-the-kids 3.90 2021 Knight of the Cape (1) (Definitely Dominguita)
author: Terry CatasĂşs Jennings
name: Anne
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read, reading-to-the-kids
review:

]]> Lady Tan’s Circle of Women 62919732
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,� but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus , they tell from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.]]> 352 Lisa See 1982117087 Anne 0 to-read 4.31 2023 Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
author: Lisa See
name: Anne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Anne 3 4.11 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Anne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hardly Strangers: An 831 Stories Romance]]> 213458857
This is the night Shera's been waiting for: She’s at a trendy Silver Lake bar to finally get a drink with the handsome, charming filmmaker she's been pining after for months.

But when Max King—the alluring and mischievous frontman of an Irish punk band—enters the picture, an electric attraction ignites between them.

Shera’s evening begins to unfold in ways she never imagined, and she surprises herself by getting swept up in his energy and daring to feel again after past heartbreak. But how does she know their passionate encounter won't expire in the morning? And is she ready to shed some of her hard-earned armor for this disarming stranger?]]> 160 A.C. Robinson Anne 0 to-read 3.40 Hardly Strangers: An 831 Stories Romance
author: A.C. Robinson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spark Story Bible: Spark A Journey through God's Word]]> 27425691
The most comprehensive and Scripture-based children's storybook Bible available, The Spark Story Bible includes 100 easy-to-read stories with more than 60 stories from the New Testament. The Spark Story Bible provides a true Gospel-centric resource for kids and families to enjoy. This engaging resource touches on Old Testament stories but focuses on the life and times of Jesus, Paul, and the early church.

The rich retellings found within The Spark Story Bible will have children discovering powerful truth found in God's Word. Designed for read-aloud use, the child-friendly illustrations and captivating storytelling make this story Bible perfect for home, school, or church. Fun activities and brief interactive questions help children apply what they have read to their own lives while enjoying Squiggles, an expressive caterpillar who responds to each story. The 100 stories give kids an excellent foundation for a journey through God's message and trigger an interest in more study that your whole family can explore.

With thousands in print, The Spark Story Bible is a perfect kids' Bible beloved by parents, grandparents, pastors, and teachers. This highly recommended illustrated Bible is meant for personal use and does not work in tandem with Spark Sunday School.]]> 456 Peter Grosshauser Anne 0 want-to-read 4.64 2015 The Spark Story Bible: Spark A Journey through God's Word
author: Peter Grosshauser
name: Anne
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: want-to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2)]]> 23492589 Wake up, genius.

The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life—for good, for bad, forever.]]> 434 Stephen King 1501100076 Anne 0 to-read 4.07 2015 Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2)
author: Stephen King
name: Anne
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Out There Screaming 142392376 Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.

A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid.

Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.]]> 387 Jordan Peele 059324379X Anne 2 i-give-up 3.77 2023 Out There Screaming
author: Jordan Peele
name: Anne
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: i-give-up
review:

]]> The Berry Pickers 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Anne 0 to-read 4.04 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Anne 0 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Anne
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lifeform 208209822
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal—but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal? Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.]]> 240 Jenny Slate 0316263931 Anne 0 to-read 3.71 2024 Lifeform
author: Jenny Slate
name: Anne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!)]]> 208840265 A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.

In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.

An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders� assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership� were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.

Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.]]> 303 Bethany Joy Lenz 1668067307 Anne 0 to-read 4.27 2024 Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!)
author: Bethany Joy Lenz
name: Anne
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Anne 3 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Anne
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:
Started and finished beautifully and also quite funny.
]]> Entitlement 209330233 A novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?

Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.]]> 288 Rumaan Alam 0593718461 Anne 0 to-read 2.99 2024 Entitlement
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Anne
average rating: 2.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scaffolding 201826095 The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London. Hence, she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, unaware that they once inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.]]> 388 Lauren Elkin 1529926459 Anne 0 to-read 3.70 2024 Scaffolding
author: Lauren Elkin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum]]> 41005592 166 Michael McCreary 1773212575 Anne 0 to-read 3.73 2019 Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum
author: Michael McCreary
name: Anne
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Slow Dance 198530925
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 400 Rainbow Rowell 0063380196 Anne 0 to-read 3.63 2024 Slow Dance
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Anne 0 to-read 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Anne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Anne 0 to-read 4.23 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Anne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Was a Teenage Slasher 199798522 Lamesa, Texas, July 1989

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA â€� they »ĺ´Ç˛Ô’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself � from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber � for all of Lamesa, Texas.

Be happy you weren’t there.

Be happy you’re only reading about it.]]> 373 Stephen Graham Jones 1668022249 Anne 0 to-read 3.54 2024 I Was a Teenage Slasher
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Anne
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Friday Black 37570595
These stories explore urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and the ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In “The Finkelstein Five,� Adjei-Brenyah reckons with the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In “Zimmer Land,� we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And “Friday Black� and “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by IceKing� show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

Entirely fresh in its style and perspective, and sure to appeal to fans of Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, and George Saunders, Friday Black confronts readers with a complicated, insistent, wrenching chorus of emotions, the final note of which, remarkably, is hope.]]> 194 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 1328911241 Anne 0 to-read 4.06 2018 Friday Black
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Anne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Manhunt 53329296
Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.]]> 296 Gretchen Felker-Martin 1250794641 Anne 0 to-read 3.52 2022 Manhunt
author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cuckoo 61884778 Cuckoo is a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.

Something evil is buried deep in the desert.
It wants your body. It wears your skin.

In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face-to-face with it. They survived � but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.

Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.

The fate of the world depends on it.]]> 342 Gretchen Felker-Martin 1250794668 Anne 5 3.51 2024 Cuckoo
author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/24
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Anne 0 to-read 4.16 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Anne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Heartbroke 58687813
United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California’s Central Valley, the characters of Heartbroke boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to salvage her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny.

Heartbroke brims over with each character’s attempt to salvage—or sabotage—grace where they can find it. Told in bright, snapping prose that reveals a world of loss and love underneath, Chelsea Bieker brilliantly illuminates a golden yet gothic world of longing and abandonment under an unrelenting California sun.]]> 288 Chelsea Bieker 1646221273 Anne 0 to-read 3.97 2022 Heartbroke
author: Chelsea Bieker
name: Anne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Madwoman 204593567 A gripping story of motherhood and motherloss and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, MADWOMAN marks the arrival of a major fiction talent.

The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world�

Clove hasĚýgone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.Ěý

But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As weĚýraceĚýbetween her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced toĚýfinally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?]]> 336 Chelsea Bieker 0316573299 Anne 0 to-read 3.70 2024 Madwoman
author: Chelsea Bieker
name: Anne
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Godshot 41719463
Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mice collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules, and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother, no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.

Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother-loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.]]> 325 Chelsea Bieker 1948226480 Anne 0 to-read 3.77 2020 Godshot
author: Chelsea Bieker
name: Anne
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Anne 3 4.56 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Anne
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)]]> 50794839 Ambition will fuel him.
Competition will drive him.
But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined—every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 528 Suzanne Collins 1338635174 Anne 2 3.88 2020 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Anne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
Did not like the 3rd act. Did not think Lucy was fleshed out at all.
]]> Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Anne 0 to-read 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Anne
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits]]> 56382367 282 Kimberly Harrington 0062993313 Anne 5 3.69 2021 But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits
author: Kimberly Harrington
name: Anne
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/22
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves:
review:
Another great one! I love her writing.
]]> <![CDATA[Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture]]> 35068524 368 Roxane Gay 0062413503 Anne 3 4.43 2018 Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture
author: Roxane Gay
name: Anne
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/02
date added: 2024/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> How to Sell a Haunted House 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses »ĺ´Ç˛Ô’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 Anne 0 to-read 3.65 2023 How to Sell a Haunted House
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Anne
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Camp Damascus 61884782 A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective� gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.]]> 246 Chuck Tingle 1250874629 Anne 0 to-read 3.90 2023 Camp Damascus
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Anne
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 54621096 447 Janice Hallett 1788165292 Anne 0 to-read 3.83 2021 The Appeal (The Appeal, #1)
author: Janice Hallett
name: Anne
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Death Valley 91239751
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.]]> 240 Melissa Broder 1668024845 Anne 0 to-read 3.46 2023 Death Valley
author: Melissa Broder
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hot Springs Drive 122944244
She finds comfort in her best friend Theresa, whose seemingly perfect life she desperately covets. The two navigate the trials of motherhood side by side � Theresa with her quiet, cherubic daughter, and Jacquelyn with her rambunctious, unruly boys. Their bond is tight, but it is not enough to keep Jacquelyn, finally moving through the world in the body she has always wanted, from stealing a bit of Theresa’s perfect life by having an increasingly torrid affair with Theresa’s husband, Adam.

Hot Springs Drive is a dark, heart-pounding exploration of one woman’s deepest desires, and the lives she will destroy to satisfy them. In her third and fiercest novel, acclaimed literary voice Lindsay Hunter deftly peels back the fragile veneer of two suburban families and the secrets roiling between them.]]> 274 Lindsay Hunter 0802161456 Anne 0 to-read 3.43 2023 Hot Springs Drive
author: Lindsay Hunter
name: Anne
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I'm a Fan 60151826 I'm A Fan, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complicated hold we each have on one another. With a clear and unforgiving eye, the narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal hetero-normative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.

In this incredible debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour—Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice.]]> 207 Sheena Patel Anne 0 to-read 3.28 2022 I'm a Fan
author: Sheena Patel
name: Anne
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words]]> 35887212
“Being a mother is a gift.�

Where’s my receipt?

Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. CON: They’re really crappy.�) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways, highlighting this time in the middle—midlife, the middle years of childhood, how women are stuck in the middle of so much. It’s a place of elation, exhaustion, and time whipping past at warp speed. Finally, it’s a quiet space to consider the girl you were, the mother you are, and the woman you are always becoming.



Ěý±Ő±Ő> 320 Kimberly Harrington 0062838741 Anne 5 I love this book!!!! 3.71 Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words
author: Kimberly Harrington
name: Anne
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/22
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:
I love this book!!!!
]]> <![CDATA[Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive]]> 39218350
Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it’s like to be in service to them. “I’d become a nameless ghost,� Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients� lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path.

Her writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not her alone..

An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316505116 can be found here.]]> 289 Stephanie Land Anne 3 3.81 2019 Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
author: Stephanie Land
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education]]> 101160309 From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner—a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid.

When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called “an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor� (People). Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series Maid, which was viewed by 67 million households and was Netflix’s fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Stephanie’s escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions.

Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line—Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties.

Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America’s educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds.]]> 288 Stephanie Land 1982151412 Anne 0 to-read 3.59 2023 Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
author: Stephanie Land
name: Anne
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Farm 41398025
Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines and a struggling single mother, is thrilled to make it through the highly competitive Host selection process at the Farm. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own young daughter's well-being, Jane grows desperate to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery—or worse.

Heartbreaking, suspenseful, provocative, The Farm pushes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit to the extremes, and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.]]> 327 Joanne Ramos 1984853759 Anne 3 3.46 2019 The Farm
author: Joanne Ramos
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/28
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Ex-Wife 2142191
It's 1924, and Peter and Patricia have what looks to be a very modern marriage. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work, Patricia as a head copywriter at a major department store. When it comes to sex with other people, both believe in “the honesty policy.â€� Until they donâ€t. Or, at least, until Peter doesnâ€t—and a shell-shocked, lovesick Patricia finds herself starting out all over again, but this time around as a different kind of single the ex-wife.

An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929, Ex-Wife captures the speakeasies, night clubs, and parties that defined Jazz Age New York—alongside the morning-after aspirin and calisthenics, the lunch-hour visits to the gym, the girl-talk, and the freedoms and anguish of solitude. It also casts a cool eye on the bedrooms and the doctor’s offices where, despite rising hemlines, the men still call the shots. The result is a unique view of what its author Ursula Parrott called “the era of the one-night stand�: an era very much like our own.]]> 224 Ursula Parrott 0452262240 Anne 0 to-read 4.16 1929 Ex-Wife
author: Ursula Parrott
name: Anne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wrong Place Wrong Time 59947696
It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

She doesn’t know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd’s, have been shattered.

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up� it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet—and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd’s terrible crime…and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.]]> 416 Gillian McAllister 0063252341 Anne 0 i-give-up 3.94 2022 Wrong Place Wrong Time
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/17
shelves: i-give-up
review:

]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Anne 4 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Anne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Vulnerables 125930473
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.]]> 256 Sigrid Nunez 0593715519 Anne 0 to-read 3.59 2023 The Vulnerables
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Anne
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Girls 26893819 355 Emma Cline 081299860X Anne 3 3.48 2016 The Girls
author: Emma Cline
name: Anne
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/16
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves:
review:
Ah memories of what its like to be a teenaged girl.
]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Anne 4 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: Anne
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/02
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Misfits: A Personal Manifesto 57748024 A powerful manifesto on how speaking your truth and owning your differences can transform your life.

In this sensational agenda-setting début, Michaela Coel, BAFTA-winning actor and writer of breakout series I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum, makes a compelling case for radical honesty.

Drawing on her unflinching Edinburgh Festival MacTaggart lecture, Misfits recounts deeply personal anecdotes from Coel’s life and work to argue for greater transparency. With insight and wit, it lays bare her journey to reclaiming her creativity and power, inviting readers to reflect on theirs.

Advocating for â€misfitsâ€� everywhere, this timely, necessary book is a rousing and bold case against fitting in.]]> 112 Michaela Coel 1250843456 Anne 0 to-read 4.17 2021 Misfits: A Personal Manifesto
author: Michaela Coel
name: Anne
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Anne 5 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2010/04/19
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Community Board 61193944
Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances?

I went home, of course.

MURBRIDGE COMMUNITY MESSAGE BOARD

FREE: 500 cans of corn. Accidentally ordered them online. I really hate corn. Happy to help load.

REMINDER: use your own goddamn garbage can for your own goddamn pet waste. I’m looking at you Peter Luflin.

REMINDER: monthly Select Board meeting this Friday. Agenda items: 1) sludge removal; 2) upkeep of chime tower; 3) ice rink monitor thank you gift. Questions? Contact Hildegard Hyman.

Darcy Clipper, prodigal daughter, nearly thirty, has returned home to Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her life takes an unwelcome left turn. Murbridge, Darcy is convinced, will welcome her home and provide a safe space in which she can nurse her wounds and harbor grudges, both real and imagined.

But Murbridge, like so much else Darcy thought to be fixed and immutable, has changed. And while Darcy’s first instinct might be to hole herself up in her childhood bedroom, subsisting on Chef Boy-R-Dee and canned chickpeas, it is human nature to do two things: seek out meaningful human connection and respond to anonymous internet postings. As Murbridge begins to take shape around Darcy, both online and in person, Darcy will consider the most fundamental of American questions: What can she ask of her community? And what does she owe it in return?]]> 272 Tara Conklin 0062959379 Anne 1 i-give-up 3.31 2023 Community Board
author: Tara Conklin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2023/06/24
shelves: i-give-up
review:

]]> A Creature Wanting Form 63045224 "In these stories, Luke O'Neil tears the heart out of the dying world and makes us give a fuck that it's still beating. � —Rax King, author of Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer

"Gorgeous, unsettling, infuriating.� —Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

"Rendered with a lyricism that seems to be in awe of the world even as they describe its greatest pains and profound injustices." —Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

"A beautiful disaster.� —Dave Wedge, New York Times bestselling author and journalist




A Creature Wanting Form is a bleakly funny work of fiction from a journalist widely celebrated for his wry, mordant take on life.

Filtered through the lens of a writer and characters who are horrified by the earth’s looming mortality, and their own, but still compelled to carry on, O’Neil interweaves science fiction, allegory, fables, poetry, and reflections on the deeply grounded indignities of modern life. In these pages, climate catastrophe lurks on the horizon; animals voraciously devour each other; your parents only call to tell you who from home has just died; and you want to go for a swim, but there’s a shark in the pool.

In short, A Creature Wanting Form is a book for anyone trying to survive with a shred of humanity in the bleak alienation of America, 2022.]]> 240 Luke O'Neil 1682193837 Anne 0 to-read 4.43 2022 A Creature Wanting Form
author: Luke O'Neil
name: Anne
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drawn Together: Illustrated True Love Stories]]> 57505834 Experience the beauty of romance in this charmingly illustrated book showcasing true stories of true love, in all its magnificence and mess.

From The New Yorker contributor and @drawingolive Instagrammer Olivia de Recat comes a heartwarming look at love, in its many forms. Drawing on interviews with "the best couples she knows"—young and old, from all walks of life—de Recat explores the question: what makes love work? But instead of trying to solve the puzzle of all relationships, ever, Drawn Together simply reflects the world back to itself, with stories of love and belonging, from pet names, to first date anxieties, to the enduring tales of life-long partnership.Ěý

Throughout, Olivia gracefully weaves in her own experiences, exploring how sometimes finding love can mean learning to embrace yourself. A perfect gift for a partner, a couple celebrating an anniversary, or a friend who just went through a break up, Drawn Together is a hopeful, humorous, entertaining book that will inspire even the shiest among us to take a chance on love.]]> Olivia de Recat 1549159461 Anne 0 to-read 4.47 Drawn Together: Illustrated True Love Stories
author: Olivia de Recat
name: Anne
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Make Me a Woman 8589579
It's easy to understand why Vanessa Davis has taken the comics industry by storm and is poised to do the same with the world at large―her comics are pure chutzpah, gorgeously illustrated in watercolors. No story is too painful to tell―like how much she enjoyed fat camp. Nor too off-limits―like her critique of R. Crumb. Nor too personal―like her stories of growing up Jewish in Florida. Using her sweet but biting wit, Davis effortlessly carves out a wholly original and refreshing niche in two well-worn autobio comics and the Jewish identity.

Davis draws strips from her daily diary, centering on her youth, mother, relationships with men, and eventually her longtime boyfriend. Her intimacy, self-deprecation, and candor have deservedly earned her many accolades and awards. Her deft comedic touch, lush color, and immediacy will set Davis apart not only as one of the premier cartoonists, but as one of the leading humorists for her generation, too.]]> 176 Vanessa Davis 1770460217 Anne 0 to-read 3.71 2010 Make Me a Woman
author: Vanessa Davis
name: Anne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Museum of Mistakes: The Official Fart Party Collection 2004-2010]]> 23058187 As these things go, the first volume was so successful, there was a second volume. Both are now out of print, but Museum of Mistakes collects them into one book, plus numerous pages of Julia's early comic work, unpublished and/or previously uncollected comics, short stories, illustrations, process pages, hate mail, sketchbook pages, tear stains and more.]]> 399 Julia Wertz 0978656962 Anne 0 to-read 4.05 2014 Museum of Mistakes: The Official Fart Party Collection 2004-2010
author: Julia Wertz
name: Anne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections]]> 3734250
Julia Wertz has gathered the stars and soon-to-be-stars of the graphic art world, including Peter Bagge, Jesse Reklaw, Tom Hart, Sam Henderson, Laura Park, Emily Flake, Keith Knight, Janelle Hessig, Gabrielle Bell, Aaron Renier, Austin English, Corinne Mucha, Jeffrey Brown, Alec Longstreth, Minty Lewis, Joey Sayers, David Malki, Kazimir Strzepek, Ken Dahl, Shannon Wheeler, Shaenon Garrity, Rodd Perry, Abby Denson, Damien Jay, Sarah Glidden, and dozens more, to interpret these plaintive, hopeful postings in drawings that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disarmingly strange.]]> 192 Julia Wertz 0307408531 Anne 0 to-read 3.52 2009 I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections
author: Julia Wertz
name: Anne
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City]]> 34219893
Here is New York, as you've never seen it before. A perfectly charming, sidesplittingly funny, intellectually entertaining illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, and the guts of New York City, based on Julia Wertz's popular illustrated columns in The New Yorker and Harper's.

In Tenements, Towers & Trash, Julia Wertz takes us behind the New York that you think you know. Not the tourist's New York-the Statue of Liberty makes a brief appearance and the Empire State Building not at all-but the guts, the underbelly, of this city that never sleeps. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Wertz regales us with streetscapes "Then and Now" and little-known tales, such as the lost history of Kim's Video, the complicated and unresolved business of Ray's Pizza, the vintage trash and horse bones that litter the shore of Brooklyn's Bottle Beach, the ludicrous pinball prohibition, Staten Island's secret abandoned boatyard, and the hair-raising legend of the infamous abortionist of Fifth Avenue, Madame Restell. From bars, bakeries, and bookstores to food carts, street cleaners, and apartments both cramped and grand, Tenements, Towers & Trash is a wild ride in a time machine taxi from the present day city to bygone days of yore.]]> 284 Julia Wertz 0316501212 Anne 0 to-read 4.33 2017 Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City
author: Julia Wertz
name: Anne
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Infinite Wait and Other Stories]]> 16006353
The collection’s title, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, intentionally and ironically recalls the vacuous and pretentious book titles of the literary elite, but these stories are the polar opposite of pretension. They are comics born out of illness, but not defined by it, and they are filled with the sometimes messy, heartbreaking and hilarious moments that make up a life.]]> 228 Julia Wertz Anne 0 to-read 4.20 2012 The Infinite Wait and Other Stories
author: Julia Wertz
name: Anne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Drinking at the Movies 8489053 The Fart Party) documents the year she left San Francisco for the unfamiliar streets of New York. Don’t worry—this isn’t the typical redemptive coming-of-age tale of a young woman and her glorious triumph over tragedy or any such nonsense. It’s simply a hilarious—occasionally poignant—book filled with interesting art, absurd humor and plenty of amusing self-deprecation. Box by box, Wertz chronicles four sketchy apartments, seven terrible jobs, family drama, traveling fiascos, and too many whiskey bottles to count.]]> 192 Julia Wertz 0307591832 Anne 0 to-read 3.88 2010 Drinking at the Movies
author: Julia Wertz
name: Anne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays]]> 62585962 304 Kelly McMasters 0393541053 Anne 0 to-read 4.21 2023 The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays
author: Kelly McMasters
name: Anne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Anne 0 to-read 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Anne
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Many Daughters of Afong Moy]]> 59348307
As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.

Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.

As painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period. A stranger who’s loved her through all of her genetic memories. Dorothy endeavors to break the cycle of pain and abandonment, to finally find peace for her daughter, and gain the love that has long been waiting, knowing she may pay the ultimate price.]]> 362 Jamie Ford 1982158212 Anne 0 to-read 3.84 2022 The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
author: Jamie Ford
name: Anne
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (What We Don't Talk About, #1)]]> 42201997 ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

*Most Anticipated Reads of 2019 by Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, The Week, and Elle.com*

Fifteen brilliant writers explore what we »ĺ´Ç˛Ô’t talk to our mothers about, and how it affects us, for better or for worse.

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize what she was actually trying to write: how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers.

While some of the writers in this book are estranged from their mothers, others are extremely close. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything.

As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.� There’s relief in breaking the silence. Acknowledging what we couldn’t say for so long is one way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves.

Contributors include Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.]]> 288 Michele Filgate 1982107340 Anne 0 to-read 3.76 2019 What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (What We Don't Talk About, #1)
author: Michele Filgate
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X Anne 0 to-read 3.75 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: Anne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We All Want Impossible Things 60410002 Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self? Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.'

So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash's world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi's care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night. Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.
]]> 224 Catherine Newman 0063230895 Anne 0 to-read 3.95 2022 We All Want Impossible Things
author: Catherine Newman
name: Anne
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fancy Pants (Jo Jo Makoons, #2)]]> 58782852 Filled with lots of glitter, raised pinkies, and humorous misunderstandings, this second book in the Jo Jo Makoons series--written by Dawn Quigley and illustrated by Tara Audibert--is filled with the joy of a young Ojibwe girl discovering her very own special shine from the inside out.

First grader Jo Jo Makoons knows how to do a lot of things, like how to play jump rope, how to hide her peas in her milk, and how to be helpful in her classroom.

But there's one thing Jo Jo doesn't know how to do: be fancy. She has a lot to learn before her Aunt Annie's wedding!

Favorite purple unicorn notebook in hand, Jo Jo starts exploring her Ojibwe community to find ways to be fancy.

The Heartdrum imprint centers a wide range of intertribal voices, visions, and stories while welcoming all young readers, with an emphasis on the present and future of Indian Country and on the strength of young Native heroes. In partnership with We Need Diverse Books.]]> 96 Dawn Quigley 0063015412 Anne 0 to-read, reading-to-the-kids 3.92 2022 Fancy Pants (Jo Jo Makoons, #2)
author: Dawn Quigley
name: Anne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/01
shelves: to-read, reading-to-the-kids
review:

]]> Love in the Big City 57500766 Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores and went into nine printings. Both award-winning for its unique literary voice and perspective, and particularly resonant with young readers, it has been a phenomenon in Korea and is poised to capture a worldwide readership.

Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

A brilliantly written novel filled with powerful sensory descriptions and both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.]]> 240 Sang Young Park 0802158781 Anne 0 to-read 3.68 2019 Love in the Big City
author: Sang Young Park
name: Anne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Banyan Moon 60127103 336 Thao Thai Anne 0 to-read 4.10 2023 Banyan Moon
author: Thao Thai
name: Anne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kindred 60931 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 288 Octavia E. Butler 0807083690 Anne 0 to-read 4.30 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Anne
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3)]]> 17261147 All These Things I’ve Done, the first novel in the Birthright series,Ěýintroduced us to timeless heroine Anya Balanchine, a plucky sixteen year old with the heart of a girl and the responsibilities of a grown woman. Now eighteen, life has been more bitter than sweet for Anya. She has lost her parents and her grandmother, and has spent the better part of her high school years in trouble with the law. Perhaps hardest of all, her decision to open a nightclub with her old nemesis Charles Delacroix has cost Anya her relationship with Win.

Still, it is Anya’s nature to soldier on. She puts the loss of Win behind her and focuses on her work. Against the odds, the nightclub becomes an enormous success, and Anya feels like she is on her way and that nothing will ever go wrong for her again. But after a terrible misjudgment leaves Anya fighting for her life, she is forced to reckon with her choices and to let people help her for the first time in her life.Ěý
In the Age of Love and Chocolate is the story of growing up and learning what love really is. It showcases the best of Gabrielle Zevin’s writing for young adults: the intricate characterization of Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac and the big-heartedness of Elsewhere. It will make you remember why you loved her writing in the first place.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 286 Gabrielle Zevin 0374380759 Anne 0 to-read 4.00 2013 In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3)
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Because It Is My Blood (Birthright, #2)]]> 13163011 The Godfather

Freed from jail, Anya hopes that things will get back to normal. But life on the outside is even more dangerous than life behind bars. Some of her gangland family want revenge for the crime for which she has done time: the shooting of her uncle. Forced to flee the country, Anya hides out in a cacao plantation in Mexico. There she learns the secrets of the chocolate trade, a trade that is illegal and deadly in her native New York. There too she discovers that seemingly random acts of violence carried out across the world have a single target: her family. As innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire Anya must act fast and decisively to stop it, no matter what the danger to herself.]]> 350 Gabrielle Zevin 0374380740 Anne 0 to-read 3.88 2012 Because It Is My Blood (Birthright, #2)
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Anne 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Anne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/03
date added: 2022/12/03
shelves:
review:
Love love love this book! I was truly emotionally affected by the end of the second act. Sigh…so sad.
]]> Stay True 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 Anne 3 4.00 2022 Stay True
author: Hua Hsu
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2022/11/26
shelves:
review:
Great description- really captures smoking cigs and listening to music and hating on Pearl Jam in the 1990s. Good stuff!
]]> Flight 60254211 240 Lynn Steger Strong 0063135140 Anne 0 to-read 3.37 2022 Flight
author: Lynn Steger Strong
name: Anne
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement � a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and � like millions of readers the world round � you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X Anne 2 3.81 1996 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)
author: Helen Fielding
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2022/11/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman]]> 29340182 260 Lindy West 0316348406 Anne 3 4.16 2016 Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
author: Lindy West
name: Anne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/15
date added: 2022/11/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Captain Dom's Treasure (Definitely Dominguita Book 2)]]> 59144282 In this second book of the charming and heartfelt chapter series that is Judy Moody meets Netflix’s One Day at a Time, will Dominguita find that X marks the spot?

When Dominguita finds an old map in the back of an even older book in her beloved library, she is excited to see a telltale X marking an unknown place. Everyone knows that X marks the spot for treasure—and Dom knows that means a new adventure for her, Pancho, and Steph!

But everyone seems to think that the map, while fun, probably isn’t real. Dom is determined to prove them wrong. And as the trio starts to uncover the mystery of the map, they realize that it has closer ties to the community they love than they could have imagined.]]> 138 Terry Catasús Jennings 1534465073 Anne 0 to-read, want-to-read 3.80 Captain Dom's Treasure (Definitely Dominguita Book 2)
author: Terry CatasĂşs Jennings
name: Anne
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/12
shelves: to-read, want-to-read
review:

]]> The Golden Couple 57693416 The next electrifying novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo behind The Wife Between Us.

Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all—until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn’t stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.]]> 329 Greer Hendricks 125027320X Anne 0 3.94 2022 The Golden Couple
author: Greer Hendricks
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/12
date added: 2022/11/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Easy Beauty 58438546
“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.�

So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations� into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.� The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind� until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself.

From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability, and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.

With its emotional depth, its prodigious, spiky intelligence, its passion and humor, Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.]]> 272 Chloé Cooper Jones 1982151994 Anne 0 to-read 4.10 2022 Easy Beauty
author: Chloé Cooper Jones
name: Anne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Vibes Only (and Other Things I Bring to the Table)]]> 59366247
In essays that revisit her cringey past and anticipate her rapidly approaching, early middle-aged future, McInerny lays bare her own chaos, inviting us to drop the façade of perfection and embrace the that we are all—at best—slightly unhinged. Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Bad Vibes Only is for people who have taken that dictum a bit too far—the overthinkers, the analyzers, the recovering Girl Bosses, and the burned-out personal brand—reminding us that a life worth living is about more than just “good vibes.”]]> 224 Nora McInerny 1982186712 Anne 0 to-read 3.82 2022 Bad Vibes Only (and Other Things I Bring to the Table)
author: Nora McInerny
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Final Girl Support Group 55829194 In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standingĚýwhen the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?

Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix’s latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. FromĚýchainĚýsaws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films—movies like The TexasĚýChainsaw Massacre, AĚýNightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.]]> 352 Grady Hendrix 059320123X Anne 0 i-give-up 3.49 2021 The Final Girl Support Group
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Anne
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/29
shelves: i-give-up
review:

]]> The Furrows 59900679 How do you grieve an absence? A brilliantly inventive novel about loss and belonging, from the award-winning author of The Old Drift.

I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.

Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can't give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children.

As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother's face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But it can't be, of course. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. His name is Wayne.

Namwali Serpell's remarkable new novel captures the uncanny experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful--and sometimes willful--longing for reunion with those we've lost.]]> 288 Namwali Serpell 059344891X Anne 0 to-read 3.20 2022 The Furrows
author: Namwali Serpell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wahala 57797679 An incisive and exhilarating debut novel of female friendship following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group—the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda.

Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one� (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends.

Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be.

Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.� Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not.

When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Hong Kong! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi, and Boo’s close friendship begins to crack.

A sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal, Wahala (trouble) is an unforgettable novel from a brilliant new voice.]]> 384 Nikki May 0063084244 Anne 2 3.59 2022 Wahala
author: Nikki May
name: Anne
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/11
date added: 2022/10/14
shelves:
review:
Was not invested at the time but kept thinking about these women after I finished the book. They felt like real people, human and likeable.
]]> The Great Fire 142975


Arriving in Occupied Japan to record the effects of the bomb at Hiroshima, Leith meets Benedict and Helen Driscoll, the Australian son and daughter of a tyrannical medical administrator. Benedict, at twenty, is doomed by a rare degenerative disease. Helen, still younger, is inseparable from her brother. Precocious, brilliant, sensitive, at home in the books they read together, these two have been, in Leith's words, delivered by literature. The young people capture Leith's sympathy; indeed, he finds himself struggling with his attraction to this girl whose feelings are as intense as his own and from whom he will soon be fatefully parted.

]]> 326 Shirley Hazzard 0312423586 Anne 3 3.46 2003 The Great Fire
author: Shirley Hazzard
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2022/10/03
shelves:
review:
Very well written but had a slower pace than I am accustomed to.
]]> If I Survive You 59808611
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper--himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica--Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.]]> 260 Jonathan Escoffery 037460598X Anne 0 to-read 3.67 2022 If I Survive You
author: Jonathan Escoffery
name: Anne
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Paper Girls, Volume 2 31338724
Collects PAPER GIRLS #6-10]]> 128 Brian K. Vaughan 1632158957 Anne 4 4.10 2016 Paper Girls, Volume 2
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Anne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/12
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Paper Girls, Volume 1 28204534
In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this smash-hit series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.

Collects PAPER GIRLS #1-5.]]> 144 Brian K. Vaughan 1632156741 Anne 4 3.89 2016 Paper Girls, Volume 1
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Anne
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/25
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nothing Like I Imagined [Except For Sometimes]]]> 55581591 118 Mindy Kaling Anne 0 to-read 4.08 2020 Nothing Like I Imagined [Except For Sometimes]
author: Mindy Kaling
name: Anne
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> City of Likes 60853995


Written with Jenny Mollen's signature razor sharp wit, CITY OF LIKES is a compulsively entertaining and unforgettable satire of the seductive allure of social media, as well as an unsettling portrait of female relationships, motherhood, and our "pics or it didn't happen" culture.]]> 264 Jenny Mollen 173738017X Anne 3 Loved the ending! 3.22 2022 City of Likes
author: Jenny Mollen
name: Anne
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/07
date added: 2022/09/07
shelves:
review:
Loved the ending!
]]> Adult Onset 21494400 Adult Onset is a powerful drama about motherhood, the dark undercurrents that break and hold families together, and the power and pressures of love.

Mary-Rose MacKinnon--nicknamed MR or "Mister"--is a successful YA author who has made enough from her writing to semi-retire in her early 40s. She lives in a comfortable Toronto neighbourhood with her partner, Hilary, a busy theatre director, and their 2 young children, Matthew and Maggie, trying valiantly and often hilariously to balance her creative pursuits with domestic demands, and the various challenges that (mostly) solo parenting presents. As a child, Mary-Rose suffered from an illness, long since cured and "filed separately" in her mind. But as her frustrations mount, she experiences a flare-up of forgotten symptoms which compel her to rethink her memories of her own childhood and her relationship with her parents. With her world threatening to unravel, the spectre of domestic violence raises its head with dangerous implications for her life and that of her own children.]]> 400 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0345808274 Anne 3 3.25 2014 Adult Onset
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: Anne
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/09/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design]]> 9576977 Ěý
Undecorate profiles twenty homes from all over the country, revealing their owners� love of imperfection and penchant for surprise and unusual juxtapositions while inspiring readers to follow their own whimsy and practicalities in their personal spaces. An anglophile creates an English manor in Hollywood, mixing British flea-market finds with midcentury furniture. A car fanatic turns a vintage Airstream trailer into a master bedroom and situates it in the middle of a vast industrial loft in downtown Chicago. A couple transforms a log house in Nashville, Tennessee, by blending their modern and eclectic styles with the home’s rustic charm. Though the designs differ widely, the spaces all express an open-minded attitude. Some homes embrace their contexts, while others transcend them. All are shaped by instinct and imagination and share innovative ideas that readers can use to organically and elegantly create their home to match their lifestyle and tastes.
Ěý
Lemieux gets to the essence of the homeownersâ€� distinctive styles, pinpointing the transformative ideas, thoughtful details, and useful solutions that make each home memorable. With more than 200 full-color photographs, Undecorate will both inspire and guide homeowners to a new outlook on home design.Ěý
Ěý±Ő±Ő> 256 Christiane Lemieux 030746315X Anne 4 3.53 2011 Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design
author: Christiane Lemieux
name: Anne
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/09/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta]]> 59227943
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards, and often placed in solitary.

In her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed New York City.ĚýOver a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend, she struggles to reconcile with the son she left behind, to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.

Written with the same astonishing verve ofĚý Delicious Foods , whichĚýdazzled critics and readers alike, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to CarlottaĚý sweeps the reader through seemingly every street of Brooklyn, much as Joyce’s Ulysses does through Dublin. The novel sings with brio and ambition, delivering a fantastically entertaining read and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.]]> 352 James Hannaham 0316285277 Anne 0 to-read 3.97 2022 Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta
author: James Hannaham
name: Anne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> That Kind of Mother 40725259 From the celebrated author ofĚýRich and Pretty, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed.ĚýStruggling to juggleĚýthe demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny.


Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.


Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.]]> 304 Rumaan Alam 0062667629 Anne 2 3.06 2018 That Kind of Mother
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Anne
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2022/08/27
date added: 2022/08/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Rich and Pretty 26890725
As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties.

Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren—beautiful, independent, and unpredictable—is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents� worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies—and is horrified by—particular aspects of the other’s life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes.

Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they’ve been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection—or just force of habit—that keeps them together?

With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives—and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.]]> 304 Rumaan Alam 0062429930 Anne 3 2.72 2016 Rich and Pretty
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Anne
average rating: 2.72
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/23
date added: 2022/08/25
shelves:
review:
Nothing happened in this book but I came to like these people anyway. Great writing and detail.
]]> Leave the World Behind 50358031
Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter.

But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?]]> 241 Rumaan Alam 0062667637 Anne 5 3.13 2020 Leave the World Behind
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Anne
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/14
date added: 2022/08/14
shelves:
review:
This book terrified me for so many reasons. No spoilers, just know that it scared the bejeesus out of this mom.
]]> Talk to Me 40000573 New York Post , Best Book of the Week

By the author of the New York Times bestseller, Love Poems for Married People , and the Thurber Prize-winner Truth in Advertising comes a wry yet tenderhearted look at how one man's public fall from grace leads him back to his family, and back to the man he used to be.

It's a story that Ted Grayson has reported time and time again in his job as a network TV the public downfall of those at the top. He just never imagined that it would happen to him. After his profanity-laced tirade is caught on camera, his reputation and career are destroyed, leaving him without a script for the first time in years.

While American viewers may have loved and trusted Ted for decades, his family certainly didn' His years of constant travel and his big-screen persona have frayed all of his important relationships. At the time of his meltdown, Ted is estranged from his wife, Claire, and his adult daughter, Franny, a writer for a popular website. Franny views her father's disgrace with curiosity and perhaps a bit of smug satisfaction, but when her boss suggests that she confront Ted in an interview, she has to decide whether to use his loss as her career gain. And for Ted, this may be a chance to take a hard look at what got him to this place, and to try to find his way back before it's too late.

Talk to Me is a sharply observed, darkly funny, and ultimately warm story about a man who wakes up too late to the mess he's made of his life... and about our capacity for forgiveness and empathy.]]> 304 John Kenney 0735214379 Anne 2 3.71 2019 Talk to Me
author: John Kenney
name: Anne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2022/08/13
date added: 2022/08/13
shelves:
review:

]]>