en-US Mon, 28 Oct 2024 11:47:58 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Kelly 4 4.37 1928
author: A.A. Milne
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 9677772
Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, The Prose Edda is the source of most of what we know of Norse mythology. Its tales are peopled by giants, dwarves, and elves, superhuman heroes and indomitable warrior queens. Its gods live with the tragic knowledge of their own impending destruction in the cataclysmic battle of Ragnarok. Its time scale spans the eons from the world’s creation to its violent end. This robust new translation captures the magisterial sweep and startling psychological complexity of the Old Icelandic original.]]> 180 Snorri Sturluson 1101487747 Kelly 0 to-read 4.00 1220
author: Snorri Sturluson
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1220
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Kelly 0 to-read 4.05 1892
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Kelly 3 3.95 1872
author: Jules Verne
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 545936 330 Lloyd C. Douglas 0395957745 Kelly 0 to-read 3.84
author: Lloyd C. Douglas
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Kelly 3 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: cocktail-party-conqueror, probably-never-going-to-get-to-it, read-some-of-it, revisited, still-have-not-read-don-t-hit-me
review:

]]> 826300
For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse.

As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can.]]> 401 Kim Edwards 0141030143 Kelly 2 2008 3.42 2005
author: Kim Edwards
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: 2008
review:

]]> 3314635 151 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0451531043 Kelly 0 currently-reading 3.88 1962
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 989041 288 Torgny Lindgren 1860464521 Kelly 3 4.06 1987
author: Torgny Lindgren
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Kelly 3 And unlike quite a few historical novels, Year of Wonders is a speedy read, one you would like to devour in wolfish bites, disgusting the other diners next to you and making them wonder why they ever came to California in the first place. From page 65 though, I was hooked, regardless of the three measly stars it was given. I fell in love with how Anna viewed her world, the deadly plague that threatened to overcome everyone's livelyhood and joy that comes from being somewhere out in God's country. After losing her child to the terrible plague, Anna dissolves in depression and can only hold on to the slim hope that there will be something left of her town after the sickeness has swept through it. But like most things of this world, it gets a heck of a lot worse before it gets any better.

Witch hunts, murderers, sabatoge and a little bit of romance make Year of Wonders a novel that deserves a bit of a refresh read. ]]> 4.00 2001
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves:
review:
When I first caught wind of Geraldine Brooks, I started out with her latest, People of the Book. In all fairness, she is a fantastic writer, but in People of the Book, she drifted from the story, and it left a bland taste in my mouth. But since starting over anew with her first novel, Year of Wonders, I have begun to see her in a different slant of light. Blooming with the scents of a heady fall afternoon, Year of Wonders begins slowly, with one of my least favorite beginnings, "I". But sometimes with some novels, you can overlook a part of prose you have a strong distaste for to enjoy the entire premise at once.
And unlike quite a few historical novels, Year of Wonders is a speedy read, one you would like to devour in wolfish bites, disgusting the other diners next to you and making them wonder why they ever came to California in the first place. From page 65 though, I was hooked, regardless of the three measly stars it was given. I fell in love with how Anna viewed her world, the deadly plague that threatened to overcome everyone's livelyhood and joy that comes from being somewhere out in God's country. After losing her child to the terrible plague, Anna dissolves in depression and can only hold on to the slim hope that there will be something left of her town after the sickeness has swept through it. But like most things of this world, it gets a heck of a lot worse before it gets any better.

Witch hunts, murderers, sabatoge and a little bit of romance make Year of Wonders a novel that deserves a bit of a refresh read.
]]> 219563 240 Suzanne Fisher Staples 0440238560 Kelly 3 indulgences 3.77 1989
author: Suzanne Fisher Staples
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: indulgences
review:

]]> 2707818
When December opens, eleven year old Isabelle hasn’t spoken a word in nearly a year. Four psychiatrists have abandoned her, declaring her silence to be impenetrable. Her parents are at once mystified and terrified by their daughter’s withdrawal, and by their own gradually loosening hold on the world as they’ve always known it. Isabelle’s private school, which has until now taken the extraordinary step of allowing her to complete her assignments from home, is on the verge of expelling her, forcing her parents to confront the possibility that what once seemed a quirk of adolescence, a phase, is perhaps a lifelong transformation, a swift and total retreat from which their daughter may never emerge. December paints an unforgettable picture of a family reckoning with a bewildering crisis, and of a critical month in the life of a bright, fascinating girl, locked into an isolation of her own making and from which only she can decide to break free.

Compulsively readable and deeply affecting, December is a work of marvelous originality and emotional power from a prodigiously gifted young writer.]]> 256 Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop 0307268306 Kelly 2 3.11 2008
author: Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves:
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]]> 168646 Ěý
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Ěý
Slaughterhouse-Five , an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.� George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.�

More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 215 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0440180295 Kelly 3 4.08 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/06/04
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]]> 328166 Contents:
Introduction by Marilynne Robinson
The Awakening
Beyond the Bayou
Ma'ame PĂ©lagie
Désirée's Baby
A Respectable Woman
The Kiss
A Pair of Silk Stockings
The Locket
A Reflection
Bibliography

]]> 210 Kate Chopin 055321330X Kelly 4 dis-over-my-dead-body, 2006
Dismally short, The Awakening entwines it's quiet mist of anxiety around our hearts when we first meet Mrs. Edna Pontieller. A beautiful, twenty-eight year old, she is adored by many, but a romantic cast-off of her husband (good thing there were so many cuties around). When she begins with some art, just a little dabble and taste, Edna's senses are becoming steadily and creepily wild. Nature and her seductive caresses are pulling at her heart and body, and this time, she does not refuse.

Reminding me of something my own uncivilized Cherokee grandmother (proud to the end of her) would have done if she had stayed married to one of her many husbands. Freeing the soul had a price in Edna's world though. Why, if a woman left her home now and went off with some hunk the husband wouldn't have banished her out of his life forever because of social issues. He would have taken her back because the neighbors had better things to gossip about. Like Desperate Housewives, or Glee.

A personally touching writer, Chopin entered my hand, and in my train of thought. Now Beyond the Bayou, The Story of an Hour, and The Awakening will follow me into the crevices I will one day make that silent dissent into (my coffin is going to be Sunflower yellow, woot!). She even found a way into a dedication.]]> 3.66 1899
author: Kate Chopin
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1899
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/08
date added: 2022/07/14
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body, 2006
review:


Dismally short, The Awakening entwines it's quiet mist of anxiety around our hearts when we first meet Mrs. Edna Pontieller. A beautiful, twenty-eight year old, she is adored by many, but a romantic cast-off of her husband (good thing there were so many cuties around). When she begins with some art, just a little dabble and taste, Edna's senses are becoming steadily and creepily wild. Nature and her seductive caresses are pulling at her heart and body, and this time, she does not refuse.

Reminding me of something my own uncivilized Cherokee grandmother (proud to the end of her) would have done if she had stayed married to one of her many husbands. Freeing the soul had a price in Edna's world though. Why, if a woman left her home now and went off with some hunk the husband wouldn't have banished her out of his life forever because of social issues. He would have taken her back because the neighbors had better things to gossip about. Like Desperate Housewives, or Glee.

A personally touching writer, Chopin entered my hand, and in my train of thought. Now Beyond the Bayou, The Story of an Hour, and The Awakening will follow me into the crevices I will one day make that silent dissent into (my coffin is going to be Sunflower yellow, woot!). She even found a way into a dedication.
]]> 361124
True Stories of Law & Order reveals the fascinating and shocking facts behind 25 of the hit show's most popular episodes-from the incredible account of how a woman's repressed memory leads to the solving of a 30-year-old cold case to the high-profile investigation of transvestite millionaire Robert Durst. And just like in Law & Order , the actual crime is just the beginning, as you follow these cases from the initial stages of the investigation through the trial and up to the often controversial verdicts.

Part of the reason millions of fans tune in to Law & Order is the gritty realism of its storytelling. The monumentally popular show has included many episodes inspired by actual cases ripped from the headlines-true crimes that are often stranger and more chilling than fiction.

This book was not authorized, prepared, approved, licensed, or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing the Law & Order television series .]]> 260 Kevin Dwyer 0425211908 Kelly 3 3.66 2007
author: Kevin Dwyer
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/18
date added: 2021/10/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 6659140 Springtime in Styria. And that means war.

There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, and behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

First Law Trilogy
The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
Last Argument of Kings

Novels in the First Law world
Best Served Cold
The Heroes
Red Country]]> 664 Joe Abercrombie Kelly 0 to-read 4.20 2009
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1713270 Daddy-Long- Legs (1912) follows the adventures of an orphan named Judy Abbott, whose letters to her anonymous male benefactor trace her development as an independent thinker and writer. Its sequel, Dear Enemy (1915), also told in letters, follows the progress of Judy's former orphanage now run by her friend Sallie McBride, who struggles to give her young charges hope and a new life. Full of irrepressible female characters that both recall Alcott's Jo March and anticipate the popular heroines of contemporary literature, Webster's novels are witty, heartfelt, and delightfully modern.]]> 357 Jean Webster 0553241435 Kelly 0 to-read 4.07
author: Jean Webster
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 348914 Alternate cover edition for ISBN: 9780141439556.

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.]]> 359 Emily Brontë Kelly 3 Shakespearean novels would be nothing without it's language that we taunted in high school. And the elegant Victorians would be no where without a certain Bronte chic and her hemmorhagic Heathcliff, that strangely loveable beast.
]]> 3.84 1847
author: Emily Brontë
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1847
rating: 3
read at: 2010/05/06
date added: 2020/12/19
shelves:
review:

Shakespearean novels would be nothing without it's language that we taunted in high school. And the elegant Victorians would be no where without a certain Bronte chic and her hemmorhagic Heathcliff, that strangely loveable beast.

]]> 271276 853 George Eliot 0141439548 Kelly 0 4.19 1872
author: George Eliot
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/28
shelves: to-read, still-have-not-read-don-t-hit-me
review:

]]> 83565
The story begins with a lonely boy named Bastian and the strange book that draws him into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica. Only a human can save this enchanted place - by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. But the journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monsters, and magic - and once Bastian begins his quest, he may never return. As he is drawn deeper into Fantastica, he must find the mysteries of his own heart.

Readers, too, can travel to the wonderous, unforgettable world of Fantastica if they will just turn the page...]]> 396 Michael Ende Kelly 5 3.96 1979
author: Michael Ende
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/10/27
shelves: chamomile, indulgences, bombs-and-broomsticks, dis-over-my-dead-body
review:

]]> 240126 288 Jeannette Walls 0743247531 Kelly 3 2008 4.28 2005
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/06/14
shelves: 2008
review:

]]> 88179
Tinderbox --
Little Claus and big Claus --
Princess on the pea --
Thumbelina --
Traveling companion --
Little mermaid --
Emperor's new clothes --
Steadfast tin soldier --
Wild swans --
Flying trunk --
Nightingale --
Sweethearts --
Ugly duckling --
Fir tree --
Snow queen --
Red shoes --
Shepherdess and the chimney sweep --
Shadow --
Old house --
Little match girl --
Story of a mother --
Collar --
Bell --
Marsh King's daughter --
Wind tells of Valdemar Daae and his daughters --
Snowman --
Ice maiden --
Wood nymph --
Most incredible thing --
Auntie toothache.]]> 437 Hans Christian Andersen 0143039520 Kelly 0 4.24 1835
author: Hans Christian Andersen
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1835
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/28
shelves: to-read, bombs-and-broomsticks, chamomile, to-buy
review:

]]> 1124884
Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.

She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .

But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.

That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king’s troop is assembled: “The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”]]> 246 Robin McKinley 0141309814 Kelly 0 to-read 4.15 1984
author: Robin McKinley
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2011/05/12
date added: 2019/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1601100 Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.
(back cover)]]> 480 Ian McEwan 0307388840 Kelly 3 3.77 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/08
date added: 2019/05/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 6640020 A new selection for the NEA’s Big Read program

A compact selection of Poe’s greatest stories and poems, chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts for their Big Read program.

This selection of eleven stories and seven poems contains such famously chilling masterpieces of the storyteller’s art as “The Tell-tale Heart,� “The Fall of the House of Usher,� “The Cask of Amontillado,� and “The Pit and the Pendulum,� and such unforgettable poems as “The Raven,� “The Bells,� and “Annabel Lee.� Poe is widely credited with pioneering the detective story, represented here by “The Purloined Letter,� “The Mystery of Marie Roget,� and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.�

Also included is his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,� in which he lays out his theory of how good writers write, describing how he constructed “The Raven� as an example.]]> 256 Edgar Allan Poe 0307474771 Kelly 4 4.07 1966
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/02/15
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body, cocktail-party-conqueror
review:

]]> 1786160 1590 Anonymous 1592975046 Kelly 4 4.35 1611
author: Anonymous
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1611
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/10/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 176972 Annotated Alice, first published in 1959, has over half a million copies in print around the world and is beloved by both families and scholars—for it was Gardner who first decoded many of the mathematical riddles and wordplay that lay ingeniously embedded in Carroll's two classic stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Forty years after this groundbreaking publication, Norton is proud to publish the Definitive Edition of The Annotated Alice, a work that combines the notes of Gardner's 1959 edition with his 1990 volume, More Annotated Alice, as well as additional discoveries drawn from Gardner's encyclopedic knowledge of the texts. Illustrated with John Tenniel's classic, beloved art—along with many recently discovered Tenniel pencil sketches�The Annotated Alice will be Gardner's most beautiful and enduring tribute to Carroll's masterpieces yet.]]> 312 Lewis Carroll 0393048470 Kelly 4 dis-over-my-dead-body 4.43 1871
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1871
rating: 4
read at: 2011/02/14
date added: 2018/04/04
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body
review:

]]> 695601 The future changes in the blink of an eye . . . or does it?


Miriam is a Saudi princess promised to another, a pawn in a political struggle that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East.


Seth is a certified genius with a head full of numbers, a life full of baggage, and an attitude born on the waves of the Pacific.


Cultures collide when they find themselves thrown together as fugitives in a high-stakes chase across Southern California. A growing attraction and a search for answers fuel their fight to survive . . .Ěýbut with no sleep and a massive manhunt steadily closing in, their chances of surviving any future are razor thin.]]> 386 Ted Dekker 1595542876 Kelly 3
I just could not place my finger on it. But the first time I ever laid eyes on one of Dekker's novels, I knew that my perspective would be changed. Blink (as it was titled later on), was an astounding novel with almost perfect turn abouts in plot, and the characters were perhaps a TEENSY bit overdone, but the whole turn out of the work was a miracle by my fourteen year old standards in 2004. Dekker has written MANY novels, and I have not been "faithful" to his work, and hiw works alone, but I still find the time each month, or year as the case has been as I got older, to turn to his stuff once again for comfort and guidance when I am down. ]]> 3.97 2002
author: Ted Dekker
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves:
review:
Ok, let's face it. There are not too many Christian novels out there that are exciting, interesting, sucks you in type are there? And all this time I have been reading (almost fourteen years) I was starting to get annoyed with the total lack of curious endevours, that you always see in fiction, in Christian works.

I just could not place my finger on it. But the first time I ever laid eyes on one of Dekker's novels, I knew that my perspective would be changed. Blink (as it was titled later on), was an astounding novel with almost perfect turn abouts in plot, and the characters were perhaps a TEENSY bit overdone, but the whole turn out of the work was a miracle by my fourteen year old standards in 2004. Dekker has written MANY novels, and I have not been "faithful" to his work, and hiw works alone, but I still find the time each month, or year as the case has been as I got older, to turn to his stuff once again for comfort and guidance when I am down.
]]> 7287573 A heart-stopping novel of psychological suspense from the internationally bestselling author of The Wrong Mother and The Other Woman’s House

Ruth Bussey once did something wrong � horribly wrong � and was nearly destroyed by her punishment. Now, she has tentatively rebuilt her life and unexpectedly found love with a man named Aidan Seed. But Aidan also has a secret, and one day he confides in Ruth: years ago, he killed a woman named Mary Trelease. Ruth's initial horror turns to confusion when she realizes that she knows Mary Trelease, and Mary is very much alive. So why does Aidan insist that she’s dead?

The fourth book in Sophie Hannah’s beloved Zailer and Waterhouse series, The Dead Lie Down is a sophisticated, addictive page-turner that will appeal to fans of Laura Lippman and Tana French.]]> 481 Sophie Hannah 0143117491 Kelly 2 3.33 2009
author: Sophie Hannah
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2010/09/15
date added: 2017/08/23
shelves: nappings-killings-and-psychos, read-some-of-it
review:
It would have never occured to me in my younger days that great writers were not all that great. And I was readily reminded of this trying to get through Sophie Hannah's latest. There was no surprises, it seemed, and everything was as predictable as an amateur mystery writer's novel. Where is the Hannah we have come to know and love?
]]> 9714223
And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.]]> 354 Edmund de Waal 0312569378 Kelly 0 to-read 3.97 2010
author: Edmund de Waal
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32581 Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation. With an introduction by Martin Amis.]]> 335 Vladimir Nabokov 0679410430 Kelly 3 to-burn
Should be shelved under: to-burn-with-delight. But ever so rarely does an author get his/her own mock shelf. Nabokov and his twisted mental mechanism are no different to me. Frighteningly, he was on the verge of four stars. Four! the utter lawlessness of it all! Good thing my morals put a damper on my excitement over an author who really could wield his pen when it came to flowery words. Took advantage of my doting on the Thesarus he did, the scoundrel. It was a pedeophile profile well done, but it was again, a lot of things. Perhaps the reason why I barely made it to the end was my immortal soul. It's a good reason to stop reading if something of yours is at stake here, or at least a good excuse (who am I to say I will or won't go anywhere when I kick it? though that is another matter entirely).

"Nymphet I could coach in French, and fondle in Humbertish." There is nothing I quite like so well as a psychopath who is full of himself in a quickly crumbling situation. They know themselves not to be on steady ground, but they endevour to imagine it.
That must have been what was so odiously endearing about little hairy Humby. His sheer love of himself (or as far as I could find anyway). I was more than a tad doleful as I recognized the enjoyment I was getting out of his scapades throughout Lolita. I was thinking a lot about lines though. Crossing them mostly, in leaps and bounds when it came to literature. There is not much that people are sensitive about (to be perfectly polite), but don't you dare mess with their hardcore form of entertainment. Let alone create a new stem of gossip for the tongue-waggers. I spent hours going over essays that I had found about Lolita before I actually worked up the guts to pick it up. Reading through other's eyes I had been getting a grossly misinterpreted filter of the book. A how-to guide in seducing children, indeed! Trying to find out this accusation will constiute another round with the devil, I suppose.

]]> 4.01 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1955
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/14
date added: 2017/03/06
shelves: to-burn
review:

Should be shelved under: to-burn-with-delight. But ever so rarely does an author get his/her own mock shelf. Nabokov and his twisted mental mechanism are no different to me. Frighteningly, he was on the verge of four stars. Four! the utter lawlessness of it all! Good thing my morals put a damper on my excitement over an author who really could wield his pen when it came to flowery words. Took advantage of my doting on the Thesarus he did, the scoundrel. It was a pedeophile profile well done, but it was again, a lot of things. Perhaps the reason why I barely made it to the end was my immortal soul. It's a good reason to stop reading if something of yours is at stake here, or at least a good excuse (who am I to say I will or won't go anywhere when I kick it? though that is another matter entirely).

"Nymphet I could coach in French, and fondle in Humbertish." There is nothing I quite like so well as a psychopath who is full of himself in a quickly crumbling situation. They know themselves not to be on steady ground, but they endevour to imagine it.
That must have been what was so odiously endearing about little hairy Humby. His sheer love of himself (or as far as I could find anyway). I was more than a tad doleful as I recognized the enjoyment I was getting out of his scapades throughout Lolita. I was thinking a lot about lines though. Crossing them mostly, in leaps and bounds when it came to literature. There is not much that people are sensitive about (to be perfectly polite), but don't you dare mess with their hardcore form of entertainment. Let alone create a new stem of gossip for the tongue-waggers. I spent hours going over essays that I had found about Lolita before I actually worked up the guts to pick it up. Reading through other's eyes I had been getting a grossly misinterpreted filter of the book. A how-to guide in seducing children, indeed! Trying to find out this accusation will constiute another round with the devil, I suppose.


]]> 2781953
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.]]> 339 Jane Austen 0143105426 Kelly 0 4.41 1813
author: Jane Austen
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1813
rating: 0
read at: 2011/03/18
date added: 2017/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 1886 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780141439518

Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.]]> 367 Jane Austen Kelly 4 her society. If not for her delightful deliacies of a novel, I should have a festering dislike of her. There is nothing so troublesome as an author who dains to conceal her personal life. It is more than a busy-body like me can bear!

Many, many, many days later:
I do so wonder why Lizzie never accepted Mr.Collins. Why, her father would then be delighted all the time. Him knowing that Mr.Collins was exactly as he imagined, such a delicious little note on Austen's part. And for some reason it was the little suggestives that I always pay the most attention to. Not even bothering to get caught up in the "romance" between the two usual suspects. If you could call it that anyway. Reciprocated abuse and torment more like (I have a very hard time believing it was happily ever after. Lizzie is not exactly a Jane Eyre). ]]> 4.29 1813
author: Jane Austen
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1813
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/02/14
shelves: indulgences, chamomile, revisited, dis-over-my-dead-body
review:
As of page 125: Jane Austen is all but invisible. In all probability the best author in known existence, but utterly untraceable. I have yet to know about her comings and goings as an actual person. What she favored in eating, what she disliked about her society. If not for her delightful deliacies of a novel, I should have a festering dislike of her. There is nothing so troublesome as an author who dains to conceal her personal life. It is more than a busy-body like me can bear!

Many, many, many days later:
I do so wonder why Lizzie never accepted Mr.Collins. Why, her father would then be delighted all the time. Him knowing that Mr.Collins was exactly as he imagined, such a delicious little note on Austen's part. And for some reason it was the little suggestives that I always pay the most attention to. Not even bothering to get caught up in the "romance" between the two usual suspects. If you could call it that anyway. Reciprocated abuse and torment more like (I have a very hard time believing it was happily ever after. Lizzie is not exactly a Jane Eyre).
]]> 159069 It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

Winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]> 247 Madeleine L'Engle 0312367546 Kelly 4 And once I got over my obsession with pink rhinos and popcorn in milk (Little House series) I began to have my own little exploration of totalitarian government versus the weakling child, hence another pick-up of L'Engle and a few others I have yet to remember as of now. And how interesting is it that there are few books that we really remember backward and forward, but those that we do, signify a turning point, or disaster. Hm. Maybe that is just my rotten luck.

]]> 3.90 1962
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2010/10/05
date added: 2016/10/12
shelves: bombs-and-broomsticks, chamomile
review:
This book must be the reason why I enjoy being a Selick/Del Toro girl when it came to movies, and a Melville/Gaiman/Caroll drone. But for some reason, I had completely forgotten what this book was even about(could have something to do with me being attached via umbilical cord to the reader at the time).
And once I got over my obsession with pink rhinos and popcorn in milk (Little House series) I began to have my own little exploration of totalitarian government versus the weakling child, hence another pick-up of L'Engle and a few others I have yet to remember as of now. And how interesting is it that there are few books that we really remember backward and forward, but those that we do, signify a turning point, or disaster. Hm. Maybe that is just my rotten luck.


]]> 17893 176 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140444556 Kelly 3 3.88 1849
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1849
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/07/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 395040 The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.]]> 244 Sylvia Plath Kelly 3 4.07 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2011/09/20
date added: 2016/04/22
shelves: indulgences, cocktail-party-conqueror, 2006, to-buy, my-dear-friend
review:
on vacation: had to take book back from flirty kid who thought that I was a kid but was ticked off by my not being a kid. Huh. Wasted wooing. Greater sorrows in life..
]]> 82467 166 Wendy Orr 0440227739 Kelly 3 3.66 1996
author: Wendy Orr
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 3433956
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.]]> 21 Tana French 0143142186 Kelly 3 3.61 2007
author: Tana French
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/15
date added: 2016/04/14
shelves:
review:
Tana French is one of those few kind of authors that would most likely stun gun you if you hugged her for being fabulous. Her voice jumps out at me like an obscene word, gesture. It's violent, beautiful and I hate her at the same time for being so brilliantly talented with the genre of psychological suspense.
]]> 1084907
This handsome edition is designed and illustrated by Barry Moser. There are thirteen two-color wood engravings.

"A masterpiece. . . . This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Maclean's special gift for calling the reader's attention to arts of all kinds—the arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing." —Kenneth M. Pierce, Village Voice

Norman Maclean (1902�'90), woodsman, scholar, teacher, and storyteller, grew up in the Western Rocky Mountains of Montana and worked for many years in logging camps and for the United States Forestry Service before beginning his academic career. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1973.]]> 217 Norman Maclean 0226500578 Kelly 0 to-read 4.14 1976
author: Norman Maclean
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2011/08/07
date added: 2016/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8465248 195 Daniel Woodrell 031613161X Kelly 4 dis-over-my-dead-body [image error]

[image error]
By far, the best shiner I have recieved reading a book this year. What took me so long to read this little gem anyway? Fear, most probably. When being a yellow-bellied snivler was done and over with, it had been the most fun I have had all week. All 125 minutes and 45 seconds of it. The short executive work I was prepared to make of this so-called 'hick' novel was hijacked by none other than puppy love. It was rather disgusting how quickly I surrendered to the sheer adorable nature of the Dollys. Their problem solving and deduction is contagious, my own heritage is made up of the stuff. Broken collar bones make you grow faster, inside and out. A few swallowed words never broke no teeth. A pride broken was a skin saved. Simple truths that have unfortunately haunted my parents throughout their lives, and unwillingly trickled down to their hick broodlings.

It reminded me of the time when I was first jumped. It was like something out of The Outsiders. Everyone's gotta make fun of the kid with huge eyes right? I guess them being a shade over a 'tad bit' green made it a tad bit worse. No knives, nothing dramatic like that. Just spit, nails and fists. Happy to report though, I was the only one who walked away without broken teeth or broken pride (don't worry, I was to do some good eatin' much later). It reminded me of my first encounter with the power of words spitten. It began a certain fascination with short fuses and imperviousness to physical pain. I had, up until that point lived by the phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword." I took whoever's words as the law of fighting. The wakeup call was slow in coming, but the realization was a pretty quick slap from nuanced thinking. Or wishful thinking.

The avoidance of family came to an abrupt stop for Ree Dolly when her father skipped out on her family. She went through some fast gut-tensing to track the numbskull down before the law did. And sometimes you ask hard questions of flint-skinned people and you get a good hearty smack in the chewbox. This should not have been the delicious turning point, but as toe-clenching as it was for me, I took great pleasure in applauding Ree of her "dysfunctional" hearing.
[image error]
]]> 3.83 2006
author: Daniel Woodrell
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2011/02/14
date added: 2016/01/28
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body
review:
[image error]

[image error]
By far, the best shiner I have recieved reading a book this year. What took me so long to read this little gem anyway? Fear, most probably. When being a yellow-bellied snivler was done and over with, it had been the most fun I have had all week. All 125 minutes and 45 seconds of it. The short executive work I was prepared to make of this so-called 'hick' novel was hijacked by none other than puppy love. It was rather disgusting how quickly I surrendered to the sheer adorable nature of the Dollys. Their problem solving and deduction is contagious, my own heritage is made up of the stuff. Broken collar bones make you grow faster, inside and out. A few swallowed words never broke no teeth. A pride broken was a skin saved. Simple truths that have unfortunately haunted my parents throughout their lives, and unwillingly trickled down to their hick broodlings.

It reminded me of the time when I was first jumped. It was like something out of The Outsiders. Everyone's gotta make fun of the kid with huge eyes right? I guess them being a shade over a 'tad bit' green made it a tad bit worse. No knives, nothing dramatic like that. Just spit, nails and fists. Happy to report though, I was the only one who walked away without broken teeth or broken pride (don't worry, I was to do some good eatin' much later). It reminded me of my first encounter with the power of words spitten. It began a certain fascination with short fuses and imperviousness to physical pain. I had, up until that point lived by the phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword." I took whoever's words as the law of fighting. The wakeup call was slow in coming, but the realization was a pretty quick slap from nuanced thinking. Or wishful thinking.

The avoidance of family came to an abrupt stop for Ree Dolly when her father skipped out on her family. She went through some fast gut-tensing to track the numbskull down before the law did. And sometimes you ask hard questions of flint-skinned people and you get a good hearty smack in the chewbox. This should not have been the delicious turning point, but as toe-clenching as it was for me, I took great pleasure in applauding Ree of her "dysfunctional" hearing.
[image error]

]]> 6632916 Soon to be an NBC event series directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Uma Thurman, Peter Sarsgaard, and Zachary Quinto.

In this powerful and riveting novel, literary phenomenon Christos Tsiolkas unflinchingly exposes the inner workings of domestic life, friendship, and parenthood in the twenty-first century, and reminds us of the passions and malice that family loyalty can provoke. When a man slaps another couple’s child at a neighborhood barbecue, the event send unforeseeable shock waves through the lives of all who are witness to it. Told from the points of view of eight people who were present, The Slap shows how a single action can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever.]]> 496 Christos Tsiolkas 0143117149 Kelly 1 3.12 2008
author: Christos Tsiolkas
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2008
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2015/07/24
shelves:
review:
The Slap...in the face. Deemed one of the worst this year by far. Such small matters such as slapping a child in the face SPOILER ALERT (oops too late) and having novel utterly devoted to the beginning and end of the occurance rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry, but I'll stick to my Romanian 90's novelists.
]]> 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Kelly 4 4.21 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 505483 A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.

Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever.ĚýĚýThe play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun."

"The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times.ĚýĚý"It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."ĚýĚýThis Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.]]> 151 Lorraine Hansberry 0679755330 Kelly 3 3.89 1959
author: Lorraine Hansberry
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/03/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 7018208
With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.
]]> 305 Robert Goolrick 1565129776 Kelly 2 What Catherine Land did not realize that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own.



Is it just me, or did Ralph axe her after the book was over? For someone who struck me as a

Catherine did not get what was coming to her. Perhaps I missed it. But besides repetitive story telling, this was what irked me the most.

And woah Nelly Time Out NY. I'm no authority on 'Hitchcock,' but this is a hell of crap example of 'weighty.' Perhaps my view of Ralph as an egocentric hyper-sexualized manic is too spiteful, maybe not. It is still, nonetheless, a frisbee book.
Well. The critics got very few things right on this one besides it steaming up your rear view mirrors. And remember class, never read fluff and drive.
]]> 3.16 2009
author: Robert Goolrick
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2011/01/19
date added: 2015/02/15
shelves:
review:
What Catherine Land did not realize that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own.



Is it just me, or did Ralph axe her after the book was over? For someone who struck me as a

Catherine did not get what was coming to her. Perhaps I missed it. But besides repetitive story telling, this was what irked me the most.

And woah Nelly Time Out NY. I'm no authority on 'Hitchcock,' but this is a hell of crap example of 'weighty.' Perhaps my view of Ralph as an egocentric hyper-sexualized manic is too spiteful, maybe not. It is still, nonetheless, a frisbee book.
Well. The critics got very few things right on this one besides it steaming up your rear view mirrors. And remember class, never read fluff and drive.

]]> 232096 33 Margery Williams Bianco 0385077254 Kelly 4 dis-over-my-dead-body Amidst many of our coddled childhoods, we were bombarded with sappy short tales of pretty princes and handsome princesses. Bianco showed up those stories with her another animal tale, but one that is close to The Children of the Green Knowe on my list. The rule of Velveteen's world is simple, the unloved toys get sat on, spit on, and puked on. But the real toys, the toys that put a shine in their master's eyes, become REAL. Tee hee. I always wanted my V.B. Crumpet(very baggy elephant) to hog my cheerios.]]> 4.42 1922
author: Margery Williams Bianco
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/01/07
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body
review:

Amidst many of our coddled childhoods, we were bombarded with sappy short tales of pretty princes and handsome princesses. Bianco showed up those stories with her another animal tale, but one that is close to The Children of the Green Knowe on my list. The rule of Velveteen's world is simple, the unloved toys get sat on, spit on, and puked on. But the real toys, the toys that put a shine in their master's eyes, become REAL. Tee hee. I always wanted my V.B. Crumpet(very baggy elephant) to hog my cheerios.
]]> 291378
But the old culture of totems and potlatch is being replaces by a new culture of prefab housing and alcoholism. Kingcome's younger generation is disenchanted and alienated from its heritage. And now, coming upriver is a young vicar, Mark Brian, on a journey of discovery that can teach him—and us—about life, death, and the transforming power of love.]]> 159 Margaret Craven 0440343690 Kelly 0 3.93 1967
author: Margaret Craven
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at: 2011/07/17
date added: 2014/12/09
shelves: 2006, it-seemed-appropriate-at-the-time, to-read
review:

]]> 18245
Includes an introduction, note on the translation, cast of characters, maps, notes on the major battles depicted, and chapter summaries]]> 1424 Leo Tolstoy 0143039997 Kelly 0 4.42 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/10
shelves: to-read, still-have-not-read-don-t-hit-me
review:

]]> 49348 They said she came in with the ice�

Lenore Featherjohn found the girl, frozen against a snow bank behind Lenore’s bed-and-breakfast. Some said she was a ghost, others said an angel.

Lenore knows better. Fearing that the police might look to her sons as murderers, she hires Jake Rikker and his crusty business partner, May, to investigate the suspicious circumstances surrounding her undesirable discovery. Their search leads them not to the strange girl–or to Earth’s final days, as many in the town suspect–but to Amy McLaren, the wife of a local minister. As Jake and May get closer to the truth, the tension between Lenore and Amy rises, forcing each woman to face the secrets they’ve hidden far too long.

Return to Fog Point in Black Ice, a gripping novel that asks, is any faith strong enough to survive the coldest seasons of life?]]> 339 Linda Hall 1578569559 Kelly 1 2008 3.60
author: Linda Hall
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2014/09/28
shelves: 2008
review:

]]> 1621222 143 Time-Life Books 0809477238 Kelly 3 3.50 1992
author: Time-Life Books
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/07/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 2660 One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century.]]> 284 Harper Lee 044508376X Kelly 4
]]> 4.30 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1960
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/30
date added: 2014/05/16
shelves:
review:
There are still few who can match the rhythm and beat that Harper Lee set out on a dented silver tray for the world to see back in my parent's time. They were the lucky ones. They got to hear her voice (was is melancholy, crackly with mischief?) and see her on talk shows perhaps. But the most I envy of any person is to be able to have said, "I knew Capote, and I knew his well. Enough to dog a case!" I could have gone for days on end firing questions away at her. But it would have arose in a hernia no doubt, but there is something about these country women that makes them last like Twinkies.


]]> 95325 The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that captured John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelist. This tale of obsessive love- the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the beautiful young art student who is his ultimate quarry- remains unparalleled in its power to startle and mesmerize.]]> 305 John Fowles 0316290238 Kelly 3
TBC]]> 3.93 1963
author: John Fowles
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/02
date added: 2014/05/07
shelves:
review:
I am never reading a book alone on a dark night again. I don't even care if it is about unicorns.

TBC
]]> 640821
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 199 Mark Twain 0140436693 Kelly 3 revisited 3.64 1881
author: Mark Twain
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1881
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/05/01
shelves: revisited
review:

]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Kelly 2 4.57 2005
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, ĚýI wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never lookedĚýthroughĚýthem for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain Kelly 3 3.92 1876
author: Mark Twain
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 1251027
At the center of Walker and Daughter is the shop's owner, Georgia, who is overwhelmed with juggling the store and single-handedly raising her teenage daughter. Happy to escape the demands of her life, she looks forward to her Friday Night Knitting Club, where she and her friends—Anita, Peri, Darwin, Lucie, and K.C.—exchange knitting tips, jokes, and their deepest secrets. But when the man who once broke Georgia's heart suddenly shows up, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her world is shattered.

Luckily, Georgia's friends are there for encouragement, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood.]]> 372 Kate Jacobs 0425219097 Kelly 2 3.44 2008
author: Kate Jacobs
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 678967
Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near-hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.

A trail of present-day murders takes the reader deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems, or memory stones, whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.

The question of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were, according to the author. Rose attempts to answer that question based on her own reincarnation research and on the writings of others, spanning thousands of years.]]> 451 M.J. Rose 0778324206 Kelly 2 3.44 1999
author: M.J. Rose
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/03/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 1179713
According to ancient Japanese protocol, foreigners deigning to approach the emperor did so only with fear and trembling. Terror and self-abasement conveyed respect. Amélie, our well-intentioned and eager young Western heroine, goes to Japan to spend a year working at the Yumimoto Corporation. Returning to the land where she was born is the fulfillment of a dream for Amélie; working there turns into comic nightmare.]]> 144 Amélie Nothomb 0312288573 Kelly 2 3.68 1999
author: Amélie Nothomb
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 6756991
Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work.

A wave of similar murders is on the horizon. An emerging pattern suggests that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands, and the five-pointed devil's star is key to solving the riddle.]]> 452 Jo Nesbø 0061133973 Kelly 3 Stars used to give me a smiley feeling, no longer.

Nesbo is at it again with his illustrious bad guy-cracking-drinks-like-a-fish detective, Harry Hole. Poor, poor Harry. He is in the slough of relationship despair, and to add to it his drinking habits have hit the rock bottom. There was not much time for me to pity this somewhat irritating if not meeeeoww sort of a guy. Pretty soon bodies start showing up, and the cult-conspiracies take a bit longer to drag their feet in.

God knows where I would have been without that body in the waterbed scene. God knows.

]]> 3.93 2003
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/04
date added: 2014/01/01
shelves: nappings-killings-and-psychos, chamomile
review:
*Spoiler Alert?*
Stars used to give me a smiley feeling, no longer.

Nesbo is at it again with his illustrious bad guy-cracking-drinks-like-a-fish detective, Harry Hole. Poor, poor Harry. He is in the slough of relationship despair, and to add to it his drinking habits have hit the rock bottom. There was not much time for me to pity this somewhat irritating if not meeeeoww sort of a guy. Pretty soon bodies start showing up, and the cult-conspiracies take a bit longer to drag their feet in.

God knows where I would have been without that body in the waterbed scene. God knows.


]]> 16304 322 Agatha Christie 0425200450 Kelly 4
[The latter by the way still fascinates me because all this time I thought the English authors meant our muffins, when they actually were referring to our english muffins. There's a twister in the scheme for you.:]

Of course I could just feel that Agatha was smiling when she was writing about anything to do with her axes. But this time I spent a lot of my reading hours, or half hours considering the length of this darn thing, to be used up in hating Periot. Always thought the jewel was ugly enough, but then it's used as a name for a infamously ugly and brilliant mystery-cracka-lackin' detective. And just when my defenses were down with her Miss Marple!]]> 4.16 1934
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/12/26
shelves:
review:
All I could hear during this book was pipe-stem chewing, whistling teapots with sweet orange tea, and the 'pouchy' mouths of hundreds of Englishmen chewing their morning muffins.

[The latter by the way still fascinates me because all this time I thought the English authors meant our muffins, when they actually were referring to our english muffins. There's a twister in the scheme for you.:]

Of course I could just feel that Agatha was smiling when she was writing about anything to do with her axes. But this time I spent a lot of my reading hours, or half hours considering the length of this darn thing, to be used up in hating Periot. Always thought the jewel was ugly enough, but then it's used as a name for a infamously ugly and brilliant mystery-cracka-lackin' detective. And just when my defenses were down with her Miss Marple!
]]> 791098 A Gentle Madness astounded and delighted readers with stories about the lengths of passion, expense, and more that collectors will go in pursuit of the book. Written before the emergence of the Internet but newly updated for the twenty-first century reader, A Gentle Madness captures that last moment in time when collectors frequented dusty bookshops, street stalls, and high-stakes auctions, conducting themselves with the subterfuge befitting a true bibliomaniac. A Gentle Madness is vividly anecdotal and thoroughly researched. Nicholas A. Basbanes brings an investigative reporter’s heart and instincts to the task of chronicling collectors past and present in pursuit of bibliomania. Now a classic of collecting, A Gentle Madness is a book lover’s delight.]]> 638 Nicholas A. Basbanes 0805061762 Kelly 4
Unfortunately, this book reminded me of my pathetic gracelessness in which I exercised my teen years. Day in, day out (I am so glad that is over). On the flip side, it renewed my intellectual vigor for book cover art and the literary processes of forgotten years. Hi ho Gutenberg!

[image error]]]> 4.03 1995
author: Nicholas A. Basbanes
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2011/01/24
date added: 2013/12/11
shelves:
review:
A teetering tower of books with a filmy clothed girl of perhaps 14 sitting on top. A few choice beasts winding their way around the stacks. Description of...what? Well, only a picture I wish I could draw. But when I think of bibliophilia, I think of that. This not me coming out as a closeted book pervert. Quite the opposite. These children, in history and literature, were supposed to represent the innocent and quiet nature of learning, or knowledge. At least, that is how I have seen it widely interpreted. Yet, it was my fantasy to look exactly like that. Willowy figure, exuberant eyes. Instead of the elephantine adolescent that I was.

Unfortunately, this book reminded me of my pathetic gracelessness in which I exercised my teen years. Day in, day out (I am so glad that is over). On the flip side, it renewed my intellectual vigor for book cover art and the literary processes of forgotten years. Hi ho Gutenberg!

[image error]
]]> 635518 333 Patricia Riley 068811850X Kelly 3 3.56 1993
author: Patricia Riley
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 564309 730 Jacob Grimm 0760703353 Kelly 4 4.28 1812
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1812
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/08/10
shelves: nappings-killings-and-psychos, indulgences, the-faeries-drink-whiskey, dis-over-my-dead-body
review:

]]> 871261 Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Bloomsbury Poetry Classics are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere. In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic, and biographer Ian Hamilton.
]]> 352 Elizabeth Barrett Browning 0801837545 Kelly 3 4.09 1902
author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1902
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/06/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 1672021 336 National Geographic Society 0792269365 Kelly 4 indulgences I'll keep this to a minimum...
Foudroyant
Agrarian
Calamitous
Beautous ]]> 4.27 1994
author: National Geographic Society
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/04/07
shelves: indulgences
review:

I'll keep this to a minimum...
Foudroyant
Agrarian
Calamitous
Beautous
]]> 198968
As Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign, Alfred Lord Tennyson's spellbinding poetry epitomized the Victorian age.ĚýThe works in this volume trace nearly sixty years of his literary careerand show the wide variety of poetic forms he mastered. This selection gives some of Tennyson's most famous works in full, including Maud , depicting a tragic love affair, and In Memoriam , a profound tribute to his dearest friend. Excerpts from Idylls of the King show a lifelong passion for Arthurian legend, also seen in the dream-like The Lady of Shalot and in Morte d'Arthur . Other works respond to contemporary events, such as Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington , written in Tennyson's official role as Poet Laureate, or the patriotic Charge of the Light Brigade , while Locksley Hall provides a Utopian vision of the future, and the late poem Crossing the Bar is a haunting meditation on his own mortality.

Selected Poems Ěýis edited with an introduction and notes by Christopher Ricks.ĚýIn his introduction, Ricks discusses aspects of Tennyson's life and works, his revisions of his poems, and his friendship with Arthur Hallam. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading and notes.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 384 Alfred Tennyson 0140424431 Kelly 0 3.92 1870
author: Alfred Tennyson
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1870
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/03/17
shelves: to-read, cocktail-party-conqueror
review:

]]> 785787 256 Arthur Cotterell 0831773243 Kelly 0 to-read 4.14 1997
author: Arthur Cotterell
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 857916 48 Janet Schulman 0689860749 Kelly 4 [image error]
There is something in the Northern air of Europe that spins tragedy, of this I am most certain (take a gander at Larssen, Hoeg...etc). Salten was given to me on a sensitive day, and instead of making it worse, he made it better. Yes. I am too far gone. So far as to crack jokes in a resturaunt where the nearby table was just served venison, rare, with a light bisque. ]]> 4.04 1999
author: Janet Schulman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/01/13
shelves:
review:
[image error]
There is something in the Northern air of Europe that spins tragedy, of this I am most certain (take a gander at Larssen, Hoeg...etc). Salten was given to me on a sensitive day, and instead of making it worse, he made it better. Yes. I am too far gone. So far as to crack jokes in a resturaunt where the nearby table was just served venison, rare, with a light bisque.
]]> 779021 96 Oscar Wilde 0679444734 Kelly 4 4.16 1888
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1888
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 7826215 Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.

Aleksandar Ferdinand, a Clanker, and Deryn Sharp, a Darwinist, are on opposite sides of the war. But their paths cross in the most unexpected way, taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure�.One that will change both their lives forever.]]> 440 Scott Westerfeld 1416971742 Kelly 3 3.94 2009
author: Scott Westerfeld
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/12/17
date added: 2013/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 761903 The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.]]> 358 Amy Tan 0375701524 Kelly 2 3.87 1995
author: Amy Tan
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1995
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 6771443
Elsewhere in this collection, a sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who ever owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living. From the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous, Coraline & Other Stories is a journey into the dark, magical world of Neil Gaiman.

All other stories in this collection beside Coraline were originally published as M is for Magic.]]> 278 Neil Gaiman 1408803453 Kelly 0 to-read 4.11 2009
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1396008 Alternate cover edition for The Once and Future King

The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel. It was first published in 1958, and is mostly a composite of earlier works written between 1938 and 1941. The central theme is an exploration of human nature regarding power and justice, as the boy Arthur becomes king and attempts to quell the prevalent "might makes right" attitude with his idea of chivalry.

Includes:
The Sword in the Stone
The Queen of Air and Darkness
The Ill-Made Knight
The Candle in the Wind]]> 640 T.H. White Kelly 4 dis-over-my-dead-body, 2005 3.97 1958
author: T.H. White
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/10/06
shelves: dis-over-my-dead-body, 2005
review:

]]> 6482046 114 Nancy Butler 078513915X Kelly 3 [image error]
In checking Google trends...
[image error]
The popularity of e-books made me laugh. And only because I have some hyena pack over here that was doomin' and gloomin' on my literary parade. The book world is destructing under our very eyes! What a world, what a world! Could I...could I just..
[image error]
Okay. I'm good.
Penguin...up 128%
Random House...up 300%
Apple...

I believe in your cause , I truly do. But it's time to get sneaky with those reluctant classics readers! Dooo it... ]]> 3.84 2010
author: Nancy Butler
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/05/31
date added: 2012/09/24
shelves:
review:
I think we both know what needs to happen here..
[image error]
In checking Google trends...
[image error]
The popularity of e-books made me laugh. And only because I have some hyena pack over here that was doomin' and gloomin' on my literary parade. The book world is destructing under our very eyes! What a world, what a world! Could I...could I just..
[image error]
Okay. I'm good.
Penguin...up 128%
Random House...up 300%
Apple...

I believe in your cause , I truly do. But it's time to get sneaky with those reluctant classics readers! Dooo it...
]]> 22914 The Annotated Brothers Grimm celebrates the powerful cultural legacy of the stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm —tales that have enchanted children and adults alike for generations. The volume includes over forty of the Grimms' most beloved stories, including:

Rapunzel * Hansel and Gretel * The Brave Little Tailor * Cinderella * Little Red Riding Hood * The Robber Bridegroom * Briar Rose * Snow White * Rumplestilskin * The Golden Goose * The Singing, Soaring Lark * The Frog King * The Juniper Tree * and Mother Holle

With over 150 paintings and drawings from the most celebrated fairy tale illustrators, including George Cruikshank, Paul Hey, Walter Crane, Warwick Goble, Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham.]]> 462 Jacob Grimm 0393058484 Kelly 0 to-read 4.45 2004
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 449940 32 Ruth Sanderson 0316770620 Kelly 3 4.31 1990
author: Ruth Sanderson
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 119239 864 Lord Byron 0140424504 Kelly 0 4.07 1848
author: Lord Byron
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1848
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/07/24
shelves: to-read, cocktail-party-conqueror, you-bodice-ripper-you
review:

]]> 159424 435 Anne Rice 034538475X Kelly 2 3.67 1992
author: Anne Rice
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/06/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 44450
For this new twenty-first-century edition, devoted admirers can be sure to find their favorite verse and stories. But a variety of fresh material has also been added to create a fuller, more authentic picture of her life's work. There are some stories new to the Portable, "Such a Pretty Little Picture," along with a selection of articles written for such disparate publications as Vogue, McCall's, House & Garden, and New Masses. Two of these pieces concern home decorating, a subject not usually associated with Mrs. Parker. At the heart of her serious work lies her political writings—racial, labor, international—and so "Soldiers of the Republic" is joined by reprints of "Not Enough" and "Sophisticated Poetry—And the Hell With It," both of which first appeared in New Masses. "A Dorothy Parker Sampler" blends the sublime and the silly with the terrifying, a sort of tasting menu of verse, stories, essays, political journalism, a speech on writing, plus a catchy off-the-cuff rhyme she never thought to write down.

The introduction of two new sections is intended to provide the richest possible sense of Parker herself. "Self-Portrait" reprints an interview she did in 1956 with The Paris Review, part of a famed ongoing series of conversations ("Writers at Work") that the literary journal conducted with the best of twentieth-century writers. What makes the interviews so interesting is that they were permitted to edit their transcripts before publication, resulting in miniature autobiographies.

"Letters: 1905-1962," which might be subtitled "Mrs. Parker Completely Uncensored," presents correspondence written over the period of a half century, beginning in 1905 when twelve-year-old Dottie wrote her father during a summer vacation on Long Island, and concluding with a 1962 missive from Hollywood describing her fondness for Marilyn Monroe.

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps, rough front, and luxurious packaging. Features an introduction from Marion Meade andĚýcover illustrations byĚýrenowned graphic artist Seth, creator of the comic series Palooka-ville.]]> 626 Dorothy Parker 0143039539 Kelly 0 to-read 4.29 1944
author: Dorothy Parker
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 663318
Within these captivating tales we meet witches, trolls, and ogres; sly foxes and great, mysterious bears; beautiful princesses and country-lads-turned-heroes. Collected here in a sparkling contemporary translation by Pat Shaw Iversen and Carl Norman, these tales brim with the matchless vitality and power of their original telling. Included also are the wonderfully evocative original illustrations of Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen.]]> 192 Peter Christen Asbjørnsen Kelly 0 4.00 1868
author: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1868
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: to-read, bombs-and-broomsticks
review:

]]> 1832006
In this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that in fact an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of captains. A few were smuggled aboard by officers or seaman. A number of cases have come to light of young women dressing in men’s clothes and working alongside the sailors for months, and sometimes years. In the U.S. and Britsh navies, it was not uncommon for the wives of bosuns, carpenters, and cooks to go to sea on warships. Cordingly’s tremendous research shows that there was indeed a thriving female population � from female pirates to the sirens of legend � on and around the high seas. A landmark work of women’s history disguised as a spectacularly entertaining yarn, Women’s Sailors and Sailor’s Women will surprise and delight readers.]]> 304 David Cordingly 0375500413 Kelly 3 3.50 2001
author: David Cordingly
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 1807609 143 Sorche Nic Leodhas 0370010663 Kelly 3 to-read 3.84 1962
author: Sorche Nic Leodhas
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8694389
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.]]> 352 Catherynne M. Valente 0765326302 Kelly 0 to-read 3.96 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7501962
In the first major biography of Bonhoeffer in forty years, "New York Times" best-selling author Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer's life―the theologian and the spy―to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil. In a deeply moving narrative, Metaxas uses previously unavailable documents―including personal letters, detailed journal entries, and firsthand personal accounts―to reveal dimensions of Bonhoeffer's life and theology never before seen.

In "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy"�"A Righteous Gentile vs the Third Reich," Metaxas presents the fullest accounting of Bonhoeffer's heart-wrenching 1939 decision to leave the safe haven of America for Hitler's Germany, and using extended excerpts from love letters and coded messages written to and from Bonhoeffer's Cell 92, Metaxas tells for the first time the full story of Bonhoeffer's passionate and tragic romance.

Readers will discover fresh insights and revelations about his life-changing months at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and about his radical position on why Christians are obliged to stand up for the Jews. Metaxas also sheds new light on Bonhoeffer's reaction to Kristallnacht, his involvement in the famous Valkyrie plot and in "Operation 7," the effort to smuggle Jews into neutral Switzerland.

"Bonhoeffer" gives witness to one man's extraordinary faith and to the tortured fate of the nation he sought to deliver from the curse of Nazism. It brings the reader face to face with a man determined to do the will of God radically, courageously, and joyfully―even to the point of death. "Bonhoeffer" is the story of a life framed by a passion for truth and a commitment to justice on behalf of those who face implacable evil.]]> 608 Eric Metaxas 1595551387 Kelly 0 to-read 4.20 2010
author: Eric Metaxas
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5544
In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric glory—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.]]> 350 Richard P. Feynman 0393316041 Kelly 0 to-read 4.27 1985
author: Richard P. Feynman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10884 675 Walter Isaacson 0743264738 Kelly 0 to-read 4.16 2007
author: Walter Isaacson
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Kelly 0 4.45 2010
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: my-dear-friend, to-read, indulgences
review:

]]> 9845802 272 Amy Stewart 1565129601 Kelly 0 to-read 3.77 2011
author: Amy Stewart
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6408862 It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him.

This is my story.

A letter from nowhere.

Sixteen-year-old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back?

The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist—almost.]]> 304 Lucy Christopher 1906427135 Kelly 3 3.90 2009
author: Lucy Christopher
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2012/01/16
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 7155569 From the best-selling author of Leviathan comes this sweeping narrative of one of America’s most historically rich industries.

Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade, driven by the demands of fashion, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among the European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. The trade in beaver, buffalo, sea otter, and other animal skins spurred the exploration and the settlement of the vast American continent, while it alternately enriched and gravely damaged the lives of America’s native peoples. Populated by a larger-than-life cast—including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson�Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. 16 pages of color and 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations, as well as a two-page, endpaper map of the American fur trade beyond the Mississippi.

Starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

"Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric Western-type characters. Dolin's research is prodigious. Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur trade industry with such brilliance. Highly recommended!" -- Douglas Brinkley, Author, Cronkite and The Wilderness Warrior

"Fur, Fortune, and Empire is no melancholy affair. The book bursts with colorful characters, venal corporations, and violent confrontations, all presented with sharp-eyed clarity in a narrative that clips right along. . . . One of the great pleasures of Eric Jay Dolin's work in both Leviathan and Fur, Fortune, and Empire comes in discovering centuries old antecedents of the economic and natural resource issues that we struggle with today. . . . there are plenty of insights as well as much reading pleasure to be had here." Bruce Barcott, Audubon Magazine

"A superb one-volume examination of an era when American ingenuity and its competitive spirit began to flourish. . . Dolin describes in marvelous detail . . . colorful figures of the American fur trades' western expansion. . . . at last, we now have a book that properly accounts for America's rise as a fur-trade power." -- Michael Taube, The Wall Street Journal

"Though guns, germs and steel certainly played their parts, Dolin's "Fur, Fortune, and Empire" leaves little doubt that the trade in pelts "was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 1600s through the late 1800s, playing a major role in the settlement and evolution of the colonies, and in the growth of the United States." Dolin puts forth a compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics as the Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Swedes, Russians and the American colonists fought for a slice of the profit." -- Art Winslow, The Los Angeles Times]]> 442 Eric Jay Dolin 0393067106 Kelly 0 to-read 3.84 2010
author: Eric Jay Dolin
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3302841 How can a boring girl become more popular, a careless young woman become more sensible, or a cut-glass bowl destroy a married woman's life?
What does a young man do to save the girl that he likes from an evil ghost, or to forget old feelings for a woman when she marries another man?
Read this collection of short stories by one of America's finest storytellers to find out.]]> 464 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0143105493 Kelly 3
]]> 3.57 1922
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1922
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/12/23
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review:
All I can remember of this Roaring Twenties pufferfish was that he was not the type of writer that was worth the last two quaggas in the world, him and his vivacious strumpets, if they ever existed. But at 15 I was certain...of pretty much everything.


]]> 2645574 320 Joan Lowery Nixon 2081621878 Kelly 3 3.67 1988
author: Joan Lowery Nixon
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/11/28
shelves:
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]]> 9303574 A field guide to the visionaries—and the fans—who are reinventing the art of storytelling.

Not long ago we were spectators, passive consumers of mass media. Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. And while we watch more television than ever before, how we watch it is changing in ways we have barely slowed down to register. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach television shows, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate—as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will. Wired contributing editor Frank Rose introduces us to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world—people like Will Wright (The Sims), James Cameron (Avatar), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and dozens of others whose ideas are changing how we play, how we chill, and even how we think. The Art of Immersion is an eye-opening look at the shifting shape of entertainment today.]]> 354 Frank Rose 0393076016 Kelly 4 3.85 2011
author: Frank Rose
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/11/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 9378733
The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.]]> 288 Jon Ronson 1594488010 Kelly 0 3.87 2011
author: Jon Ronson
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/11/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 13912 The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up—only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.

Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees).]]> 461 Sylvia Nasar 0571212921 Kelly 0 to-read 4.14 1998
author: Sylvia Nasar
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 232109 186 Beverly Cleary 0380709244 Kelly 3 3.96 1965
author: Beverly Cleary
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1965
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/10/14
shelves:
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]]> 340793 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 0156787334.

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister. A sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have some money and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create.]]> 114 Virginia Woolf Kelly 4 currently-reading
Yes, yes he is. But let's not talk about him. I want to be left fat and happy before breakfast on your misconstrued murmur. I was scarce two paragraphs in before my own cheeks were aglow with firey color, from laughter. It made me envy your studied willow trees, I missed my own hair hanging about my shoulders.

It would have provided a mask so I wouldn't have to explain my delight. So then I could continue to have you all to myself. Even the beadles that would be crunched underneath your feet. Your patience is admirable, how could they not see that! Being chased off a lawn as if you were a loitering animal, a wayward hound that scented something on the table promising only to swatted away.

TBC....few pages left and my hated life interrupts. Really?]]> 4.07 1929
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2011/08/08
date added: 2011/09/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:
Good morning, Virginia Woolf. Will you kindly assist me in making the world go away? Let me indulge in the warm butter-yellow of the morning sun, exchanging the low rumbling of my pervy neighbor's low rider for the mockingbirds up ahead? [Yes, that's much better. He's quite the squib isn't he?]

Yes, yes he is. But let's not talk about him. I want to be left fat and happy before breakfast on your misconstrued murmur. I was scarce two paragraphs in before my own cheeks were aglow with firey color, from laughter. It made me envy your studied willow trees, I missed my own hair hanging about my shoulders.

It would have provided a mask so I wouldn't have to explain my delight. So then I could continue to have you all to myself. Even the beadles that would be crunched underneath your feet. Your patience is admirable, how could they not see that! Being chased off a lawn as if you were a loitering animal, a wayward hound that scented something on the table promising only to swatted away.

TBC....few pages left and my hated life interrupts. Really?
]]> 7150397 New Yorker writer and author of the breakout debut bestseller The Lost City of Z, David Grann offers a collection of spellbinding narrative journalism.

Whether he's reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone-tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling stories that explore the nature of obsession and that piece together true and unforgettable mysteries.

Each of the dozen stories in this collection reveals a hidden and often dangerous world and, like Into Thin Air and The Orchid Thief, pivots around the gravitational pull of obsession and the captivating personalities of those caught in its grip. There is the world's foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes who is found dead in mysterious circumstances; an arson sleuth trying to prove that a man about to be executed is innocent, and sandhogs racing to complete the brutally dangerous job of building New York City's water tunnels before the old system collapses. Throughout, Grann's hypnotic accounts display the power-and often the willful perversity-of the human spirit.

Compulsively readable, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant mosaic of ambition, madness, passion, and folly.]]> 338 David Grann 0385517920 Kelly 3 3.78 2010
author: David Grann
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/09/27
date added: 2011/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 512710 'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill-workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fused individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

In her introduction, Patricia Ingham examines geographical, economic and class differences, and male and female roles in North and South. This edition also includes a list for further reading, notes and a glossary.]]> 496 Elizabeth Gaskell 0140434240 Kelly 0 to-read 4.18 1855
author: Elizabeth Gaskell
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1855
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 331024 352 Margaret Visser 0802136516 Kelly 0 3.89 1986
author: Margaret Visser
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/27
shelves: microhistories, read-some-of-it, to-read, 2006
review:

]]> 6687247 Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!� a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,� it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.]]> 600 Andrew Ross Sorkin 0670021253 Kelly 0 to-read 4.14 2009
author: Andrew Ross Sorkin
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>