Curt's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:14:34 -0700 60 Curt's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Sacred and Profane Love Machine]]> 9379962 Iris Murdoch's... novel tackles one of the most well-worn of all subjects: a man and two women, with the man torn by unresolvable conflicts of love and duty and preference.... She handles this theme with such power and authority as to make one feel that one is reading about it for the first time. The depth at which she analyzes character, the unflinching steadiness of her gaze even on horror and obsession, can help us live....]]> 382 Iris Murdoch Curt 0 currently-reading 4.00 1974 The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Life with Picasso 41646828 Françoise Gilot's candid memoir remains the most revealing portrait of Picasso written, and gives fascinating insight into the intense and creative life shared by two modern artists.

Françoise Gilot was in her early twenties when, in 1943, she met the sixty-one-year-old Pablo Picasso. Brought up in upper-middle-class comfort and educated at Cambridge and the Sorbonne in the hopes that she would go into the law, the young woman defied her family’s wishes—and her father’s wrath—and set out to become an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of ten years, during which Gilot bore two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso's muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become.
Life with Picasso, is an indispensable record of his thinking about art, as well as an often very funny account of his relationships with other artists and with dealers and hangers-on. It is also about Francoise Gilot. This is a brilliant self-portrait of a young woman of enormous talent and exacting intelligence figuring out who she wants to be.]]> 344 Françoise Gilot 168137319X Curt 0 currently-reading 4.20 1964 Life with Picasso
author: Françoise Gilot
name: Curt
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard]]> 312239
When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images--cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a--if not the--key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.

In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.
Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard's greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere.]]> 720 Richard Brody 0805068864 Curt 0 currently-reading 4.06 2007 Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
author: Richard Brody
name: Curt
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Anna Karenin 52272280 With Anna Karenin, the psychological novel of the nineteenth century reached its peak.

Acclaimed by many as the world's greatest novel, Anna Karenin provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.

Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay."'

Anna Karenin was published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with editor Mikhail Katkov over political issues that arose in the final installment (Tolstoy's unpopular views of volunteers going to Serbia); therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form in 1878.]]> 853 Leo Tolstoy 0140440410 Curt 4 "... he could not help thinking sorrowfully how mistaken had been his conclusion that his new spiritual condition could all of a sudden alter his character once in contact with reality."]]> 4.32 1878 Anna Karenin
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Curt
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
Kind of summed things up for me, Levin trying hard to change his ways:
"... he could not help thinking sorrowfully how mistaken had been his conclusion that his new spiritual condition could all of a sudden alter his character once in contact with reality."
]]> <![CDATA[The Transmigration of Timothy Archer]]> 106585 The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the final novel in the trilogy that also includes Valis and The Divine Invasion, is an anguished, learned, and very moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief. It is the story of Timothy Archer, an urbane Episcopal bishop haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress - and driven by them into a bizarre quest for the identity of Christ.

]]> 255 Philip K. Dick 0679734449 Curt 0 3.90 1982 The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Curt
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Carnivals: Modern Horrors and the Origins of American Empire]]> 60679081 From Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Get Out, Dark Carnivals tells the panoramic story of the filmmakers and writers who, through their work in the horror genre, asked us to imagine the consequences of unchecked American power dominating the world

With Dark Carnivals, author W. Scott Poole, an expert in horror and its impact on American history, reveals how the horror genre as a way of seeing the world has become one of the most incisive critiques of America and its history and influence around the globe.

Following World War II, America took its place on the world stage, its growing imperial shadow becoming ever more evident. But even as the American empire emerged, propaganda at home convinced ordinary Americans that their country kept its hands clean on the world stage. The nation, enshrined in the aspirational words of its founding documents, found itself enjoying a primal innocence, despite a host of evil forces insidiously growing more rooted each day: racism and violence, deadly viruses and fear of the other.

From the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to Get Out (2017), horror films have long acted as the shadow that reveals uncomfortable political realities and inhuman crimes perpetrated by the United States for the last century with near impunity. In fact, the influence of American horror culture—in films, literature, online forums, and even video games—continues into our contemporary experience, continually challenging the myth of American innocence and exceptionalism, acknowledging our culpability abroad, and, most importantly, our failures at home.]]> 425 W. Scott Poole 1640094369 Curt 0 to-read 3.79 2022 Dark Carnivals: Modern Horrors and the Origins of American Empire
author: W. Scott Poole
name: Curt
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.â€�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 400 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Curt 0 to-read 4.33 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Curt
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947�1959]]> 5037590 An iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today.

Welcome to Mars is an iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today.

Welcome To Mars draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from this unique period when the future first took on a tangible presence. Ken Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed.

Seamlessly interweaving developments in technology, popular culture, politics, changes in home life, the development of the self, collective fantasy and overwhelming paranoia, Hollings has produced an alarming and often hysterically funny vision of the past that would ultimately govern all of our futures.]]> 314 Ken Hollings 0954805488 Curt 3 4.06 2008 Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947–1959
author: Ken Hollings
name: Curt
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
review:
A year-by-year compendium of sci-fi movies, UFOlogist activity, and other odd facts.
]]> Berkeley: A City in History 2273181 240 Charles Wollenberg 0520253078 Curt 4 3.79 2007 Berkeley: A City in History
author: Charles Wollenberg
name: Curt
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson]]> 219527763 The first biography of countercultural novelist and underground philosopher Robert Anton Wilson.

“In Gabriel Kennedy, AKA Prop Anon, Wilson has the kind of biographer he deserves.â€�
-Grant Morrison, comic books legend, author of Arkham Asylum, The Invisibles, and Happy!

Chapel The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson is the first biography of the late countercultural novelist and underground philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson.
Author with Robert Shea of ILLUMINATUS!—one of American literature’s most notorious novels—Wilson’s life and work were infused with magical insight and strange occurrence, fated traumas and puckish tricksterism. His experiences of paranoia, celestial influence, and conspiracy have come to furnish both speculative thought and fiction with a unique repertoire of thought experiments, while his legacy might be recognized in the work of writers as diverse as Alan Moore, Douglas Rushkoff, and Tom Robbins.
In this far-reaching biography, Gabriel Kennedy charts the undergrowth of Wilson’s influence, suggesting that the pulp venues, quack pamphlets, and oddball websites through which his work was usually distributed allowed him to quietly become one of the most prescient American writers of the 20th century, and one of the 21st’s most salient.

�..this book is a masterpiece of insight and scholarship. Gabriel Kennedy has successfully navigated the heights and depths of the late Robert Anton Wilson...[it]...captures both the man and the era he embodied.�
-Jeffrey Mishlove, Host and Producer of New Thinking Allowed

“Gabriel Kennedy's Chapel Perilous is, and will always be, the definitive biography of Robert Anton Wilson, one of the most subversive thinkers of the 20th century. Kennedy deftly unravels the threads of Wilson's complex inner life, shedding light on the inspirations for his revolutionary ideas and assessing RAW's impact on today's popular culture. He also beautifully captures Bob Wilson the man. Standing ovation!â€�
-Richard Metzger, Television Host, Writer, Producer. Creator of Disinformation and Magick Show

“Meticulously well-researched, profoundly comprehensive, and compellingly absorbing, Gabriel Kennedy’s long-awaited biography of Robert Anton Wilson will not disappoint. I couldn’t put it down! Most highly recommended!â€�
�David Jay Brown, author of Dreaming Wide Awake and The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities

“Writing a comprehensive, human, inclusive, biography for someone as complex as Robert Anton Wilson is a big bite for a writer to attempt. Thankfully, Gabriel Kennedy did not bite off more than he could chew. This book is an invaluable source of information about one of the greatest artists and thinkers of our time. It keeps the lasagna flying!â€�
-Joseph Matheny, Multidisciplinary artist. Author of Ong's Hat: The Beginning, The Liminal Cycle ]]> 1013 Gabriel Kennedy Curt 0 to-read 4.73 Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson
author: Gabriel Kennedy
name: Curt
average rating: 4.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Brothers Karamazov 62585959
Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his sons—the eponymous brothers Karamazov—and lead to his violent murder. In the aftermath of the killing, the brothers contend with dilemmas of honor, faith, and reason as the community closes in on the murderer in their midst. Acclaimed translator Michael R. Katz renders this masterpiece’s nuanced and evocative storytelling in a vibrant, signature prose style that captures all the power of Dostoevsky’s original—the clever humor, the rich emotion, the passion and the turmoil—and that will captivate and unsettle a new generation of readers.]]> 928 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1631498193 Curt 0 to-read 4.56 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Curt
average rating: 4.56
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Philosopher's Pupil 11238 560 Iris Murdoch 0140066950 Curt 0 to-read 3.86 1983 The Philosopher's Pupil
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Green Knight 12819 480 Iris Murdoch 0140243372 Curt 0 to-read 3.86 1993 The Green Knight
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Good Apprentice 234069 A sly, witty, and beautifully orchestrated tale about the difficulty of being good

Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: he has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window to his death. Consumed with guilt, Edward experiences a debilitating crisis of conscience. While Edward torments himself for not being good, his stepbrother, Stuart, a brilliant mathematics student, quits his promising scholastic career to live like a monk, devoting himself to the difficult task of becoming good. As Stuart seeks salvation, Edward searches for redemption through a reunion with his famous father, the reclusive painter Jesse Baltram. Funny and compelling, The Good Apprentice, first published in 1986*, is at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world.

*First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1986]]> 522 Iris Murdoch 0141186682 Curt 0 to-read 3.88 1985 The Good Apprentice
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend]]> 77920694
Ray Dalio does not want you to read this book.

Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles . In The Fund , award-winning New York Times journalist Rob Copeland punctures this carefully-constructed narrative of the benevolent business titan, exposing his much-promoted “principlesâ€� as one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory―in practice, they encouraged a toxic culture of paranoia and backstabbing.

The Fund is a page-turning, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. It offers an unflinching look at the pain so often caused by the “radical transparencyâ€� Dalio has described as a core tenet of his recipe for business success and a meaningful life. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm, Copeland takes readers into the room as former FBI director Jim Comey kisses Dalio's ring, recent Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick drinks the Kool-Aid, and a rotating cast of memorable characters grapple with their personal psychological and moral limits―all under the watchful eye of their charismatic leader.

This is a cautionary tale for anyone convinced that the ability to make lots of money has anything at all to do with unlocking the principles of human nature.]]> 352 Rob Copeland 1250276934 Curt 0 3.98 2023 The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend
author: Rob Copeland
name: Curt
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?]]> 18594409 #1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.]]> 228 Roz Chast 1608198065 Curt 5 4.14 2014 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
author: Roz Chast
name: Curt
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism]]> 75560036
Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism. The perfect Christmas gift for the political visionaries in your life.

In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords � replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power.

But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison.

‘An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political powerâ€� Observer

‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computationâ€� CORY DOCTOROW

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR]]> 224 Yanis Varoufakis Curt 0 read-a-bit 4.03 2023 Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
author: Yanis Varoufakis
name: Curt
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> The Overstory 35187203
In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There’s something you need to hear."]]> 502 Richard Powers 039363552X Curt 4 4.14 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Curt
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology]]> 152435
"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

Ìę±Ő±Ő> 533 Gregory Bateson 0226039056 Curt 0 to-read 4.26 1972 Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
author: Gregory Bateson
name: Curt
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Am AI: A Novelette 128614184
Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her behind.]]> 63 Ai Jiang 1959565095 Curt 3 4.01 2023 I Am AI: A Novelette
author: Ai Jiang
name: Curt
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Farthing (Small Change, #1) 183740
Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married � happily � to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates.

But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts� and looking beyond the obvious.
As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out � a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.]]> 319 Jo Walton 0765314215 Curt 3 3.79 2006 Farthing (Small Change, #1)
author: Jo Walton
name: Curt
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:
In the end a realistic view on how fascists wield power.
]]> <![CDATA[Memesthetics: The Eternal September of Art]]> 211632741 244 Valentina Tanni 8880562592 Curt 0 read-a-bit 0.0 2020 Memesthetics: The Eternal September of Art
author: Valentina Tanni
name: Curt
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't]]> 42041926 The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world--which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.]]> 288 Julia Galef 0735217556 Curt 3 4.09 2021 The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
author: Julia Galef
name: Curt
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Hadji MurĂĄd 135060 100 Leo Tolstoy 1602060134 Curt 0 to-read 3.90 1912 Hadji MurĂĄd
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Curt
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1912
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Curt 0 to-read 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Curt
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word]]> 164515 216 Walter J. Ong 0415281296 Curt 0 to-read 4.13 1982 Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
author: Walter J. Ong
name: Curt
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Abandonment 5603935
Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of a young narrator, Caroline, Peter Rock's My Abandonment isÌęa riveting journey intoÌęlife at the margins and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.Ìę±Ő±Ő> 225 Peter Rock 0151014140 Curt 0 3.56 2009 My Abandonment
author: Peter Rock
name: Curt
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Count of 9 38629756 From the world-famous creator of "Perry Mason," Erle Stanley Gardner comes another baffling case for the Cool & Lam detective agency

From the world-famous creator of "Perry Mason," Erle Stanley Gardner - at his death the best-selling American writer of all time - comes another baffling case for the Cool & Lam detective agency: THE COUNT OF 9. Return to the 1950s as Bertha Cool and Donald Lam investigate an impossible murder in a double-locked room...the theft of two precious jade-and ruby Buddhas...and the intertwined fates of a globetrotting explorer, a neglected wife, and a beautiful nude art model. Will Donald go down for the count - or will he come up with a solution by the count of 9...?]]> 223 Erle Stanley Gardner 178565635X Curt 0 4.06 1958 The Count of 9
author: Erle Stanley Gardner
name: Curt
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Plastic: An Autobiography 54359408 Plastic: An Autobiography explores how technology, sprung from desire, draws all beings into its net, and asks how to live justly from within its grasp. Enacted through a process of weaving and entanglement in imitation of the ways past and present create one another, Cobb’s investigations into the story of a certain piece of plastic, found in the stomach of a baby albatross and dated back to WWII, lead her to unravel the interconnections among plastic, climate change, and nuclear technologies.]]> 352 Allison Cobb 164362038X Curt 4 4.23 2015 Plastic: An Autobiography
author: Allison Cobb
name: Curt
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:
A wide-ranging look at Plastic and its impacts on our world and ourselves, packaged in a kind of memoir.
]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Curt 5 3.35 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Curt
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Headshot 174156218 An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writerâ€� (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitorsâ€� pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.

Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivates young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.]]> 224 Rita Bullwinkel 0593654102 Curt 4 3.50 2024 Headshot
author: Rita Bullwinkel
name: Curt
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Sabrina 37533587 How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Rate your overall mood from 1 to 5, 1 being poor. Rate your stress level from 1 to 5, 5 being severe. Are you experiencing depression or thoughts of suicide? Is there anything in your personal life that is affecting your duty?

When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and the boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister, Sandra, struggles to fill her days as she waits in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation shown through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.

The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. Presenting an indictment of our modern state, Drnaso contemplates the dangers of a fake-news climate. Timely and articulate, Sabrina leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.]]> 204 Nick Drnaso 177046316X Curt 0 3.83 2018 Sabrina
author: Nick Drnaso
name: Curt
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Restraint of Beasts 323208 224 Magnus Mills 0684865114 Curt 0 to-read 3.92 1998 The Restraint of Beasts
author: Magnus Mills
name: Curt
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer]]> 119427 Twin Peaks as a beautiful dead girl, wrapped in plastic. Now available in print for the first time in many years (and in e-book for the very first time!), The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer chronicles Laura's life from age 12 to her death at 17, and is filled with secrets, character references, and even clues to the identity of her eventual killer. Fans of the show will love seeing their favorite characters again, and Laura's diary makes compelling reading as she turns from a naive freshman having her first kiss to a "bad girl" experimenting with drugs, sex and the occult.

"As seen by" Jennifer Lynch, creator David Lynch's daughter, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer is authentic, creepy, and a perfect book for anyone who loves supernatural suspense.]]> 184 Jennifer Lynch 067173590X Curt 0 3.74 1990 The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
author: Jennifer Lynch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics)]]> 433443
To give a solid introduction to this burgeoning field, J. R. Pierce has revised his well-received 1961 study of information theory for a second edition. Beginning with the origins of the field, Dr. Pierce follows the brilliant formulations of Claude Shannon and describes such aspects of the subject as encoding and binary digits, entropy, language and meaning, efficient encoding, and the noisy channel. He then goes beyond the strict confines of the topic to explore the ways in which information theory relates to physics, cybernetics, psychology, and art.

Mathematical formulas are introduced at the appropriate points for the benefit of serious students. A glossary of terms and an appendix on mathematical notation are provided to help the less mathematically sophisticated.

J. R. Pierce worked for many years at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he became Director of Research in Communications Principles. His Introduction to Information Theory continues to be the most impressive nontechnical account available and a fascinating introduction to the subject for lay readers.
]]> 306 John R. Pierce 0486240614 Curt 0 currently-reading 3.91 1961 An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics)
author: John R. Pierce
name: Curt
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mathematical Theory of Communication]]> 880735 The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory in the Bell System Technical Journal more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.]]> 125 Claude Shannon 0252725484 Curt 0 to-read 4.38 1949 The Mathematical Theory of Communication
author: Claude Shannon
name: Curt
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age]]> 32919530 The life and times of one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century: Claude Shannon—the neglected architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded.

Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed a fleet of customized unicycles and a flamethrowing trumpet, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age.â€� His discoveries would lead contemporaries to compare him to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. His work anticipated by decades the world we’d be living in today—and gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. It’s the story of a small-town Michigan boy whose career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. It’s the story of the origins of our digital world in the tunnels of MIT and the “idea factoryâ€� of Bell Labs, in the “scientistsâ€� warâ€� with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon’s collaborators and rivals, thinkers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Norbert Wiener.

And it’s the story of Shannon’s life as an often reclusive, always playful genius. With access to Shannon’s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and creative genius to life.]]> 384 Jimmy Soni 1476766681 Curt 4 4.12 2017 A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
author: Jimmy Soni
name: Curt
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
Solid overview of Shannon's life and key work. Math is kept quite simple.
]]> <![CDATA[My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante Curt 4 4.08 2011 My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Curt
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> War and Peace 9141165 1350 Leo Tolstoy 0199232768 Curt 5 4.44 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Curt
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1869
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell]]> 177317626
In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.]]> 443 Ann Powers Curt 0 read-a-bit 3.53 Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
author: Ann Powers
name: Curt
average rating: 3.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysƂaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inÌęGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does MieczysƂaw realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Curt 4 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Curt
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD 130621782 0 Iris Murdoch Curt 4 4.00 1987 THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
A bit less manic than the 70s Murdochs that I've read. Enjoyed it.
]]> The Unicorn 20569945 287 Iris Murdoch Curt 0 read-a-bit 3.71 1963 The Unicorn
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> Fifty Sounds 55856548 Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language that draws together a variety of cultural reflections â€� from conformity and being an outsider, to the gendering of Japanese society, and attitudes towards food and the cult of ‘deliciousnessâ€� â€� alongside probing insights into the transformative powers of language-learning. Candid, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is remarkable work that takes a transparent look at language itself, lifting the lid on the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language.]]> 345 Polly Barton 1913097501 Curt 0 read-a-bit 4.17 2021 Fifty Sounds
author: Polly Barton
name: Curt
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> The Book of Illusions 50618
When the book is published the following year, a letter turns up in Zimmer’s mailbox bearing a return address from a small town in New Mexico inviting him to meet Hector. Zimmer hesitates, until one night a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.]]> 288 Paul Auster 0312990960 Curt 0 to-read 3.91 2002 The Book of Illusions
author: Paul Auster
name: Curt
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> An Accidental Man 12056
Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of.

What is duty here, what is self-interest, what is cowardice? Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man of the title, is accident-prone, also prone to bring disaster to his friend sand relations. He blames fate. But are we not all accidental, one of his victims asks. Fate and accidents make deep moral dilemmas for the characters in the long and complex tale.]]> 448 Iris Murdoch 0140036113 Curt 0 to-read 3.82 1971 An Accidental Man
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sea, the Sea 11229
In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.]]> 528 Iris Murdoch 014118616X Curt 0 to-read 3.95 1978 The Sea, the Sea
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1974: A Personal History 198530961 The first memoir from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose, about the close relationship she developed with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers--and the year when our country changed

During her twenties, Francine Prose lived in San Francisco, where she began an intense and strange relationship with Tony Russo, who had been indicted and tried for working with Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon papers. The narrative is framed around the nights she spent with Russo driving manically around San Francisco, listening to his stories--and the disturbing and dramatic end of that relationship in New York.

What happens to them mirrors the events and preoccupations of that historical moment: the Vietnam war, drugs, women's liberation, the Patty Hearst kidnapping. At once heartfelt and ironic, funny and sad, personal and political, 1974 provides an insightful look at how Francine Prose became a writer and artist during a time when the country, too, was shaping its identity.]]> 272 Francine Prose 0063314096 Curt 3 3.82 2024 1974: A Personal History
author: Francine Prose
name: Curt
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves:
review:
A memoir of the author's relationship with Anthony Russo, who was responsible along with Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon Papers. A view of a time 50 years ago, of youth, of the cost of action and inaction.
]]> <![CDATA[When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s]]> 195790601
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.â€� Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

In When the Clock Broke , the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the “paleo-conâ€� right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserkâ€� took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War–era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the “Middle American Radicalsâ€� whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.

In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.]]> 432 John Ganz 0374605440 Curt 0 to-read 4.09 2024 When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
author: John Ganz
name: Curt
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Julian 8719 This is an alternate cover ed. for ISBN 037572706X.

The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshiping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.]]> 528 Gore Vidal Curt 0 to-read 4.21 1964 Julian
author: Gore Vidal
name: Curt
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: 1963-1965]]> 57615589 The provocative pop artist’s on-screen experiments, newly brought to light in this essential reference work

In the 1960s, Andy Warhol (1928â€�1987) produced hundreds of film and video works—short and long, silent and sound, scripted and improvised. This catalogue raisonnĂ© of the artist’s films, a complement to 2006’s Andy Warhol Screen Tests, focuses on works he produced from 1963 to 1965. Detailed cataloguing of each work is combined with orienting and enlightening essays that cover Warhol’s influences, source material, working methods, and technical innovations, as well as his engagement with the people he filmed and how they came to life on the screen. In addition, rich entries offer detailed summaries and analysis of more than a hundred individual works. The vigorous illustration program includes countless stills and documentary images to further elucidate the film works, including many that have circulated only rarely. Warhol’s dynamic and creative approach to filmmaking redefined the genre, drawing audiences and receiving positive attention along with deep criticism. In 1970, he placed his films in storage for the next 14 years, taking them out of public view and distribution. During that time, critics and audiences could only piece together information about these works from hearsay, verbal accounts, and reviews. Since then, the works have been studied, preserved, and catalogued, culminating in this volume, which illuminates the true significance of Warhol’s radical experiments in film and his mastery of the medium.]]> 512 Bruce Jenkins 0300260113 Curt 0 to-read 5.00 The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: 1963-1965
author: Bruce Jenkins
name: Curt
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Homo rodans and Other Writings]]> 202100210 160 Remedios Varo 1939663911 Curt 0 to-read 4.23 On Homo rodans and Other Writings
author: Remedios Varo
name: Curt
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Colored Television 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,â€� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse contentâ€� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.â€� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Curt 3 3.53 2024 Colored Television
author: Danzy Senna
name: Curt
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Private Citizens 25817440 Private Citizens is a brainy, irreverent debut�This Side of Paradise for a new era.

Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts,ÌęPrivate CitizensÌęembraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire. A gleefully rude comedy of manners. MiddlemarchÌęfor Millennials. The novel's four whip-smart narrators—idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda—are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friendsÌęstagger through the Bay Area’s maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other’s lives once again.Ìę

A wise and searching depiction of a generation grappling with privilege and finding grace in failure, Private Citizens is as expansively intelligent as it is full of heart.]]> 372 Tony Tulathimutte 0062399101 Curt 0 to-read 3.39 2016 Private Citizens
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Curt
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]> 133938338
From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.

Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee’s sophisticated play―and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic―surviving censorship attempts, its creatorsâ€� inexperience, and its starsâ€� own tumultuous marriage―is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema.

Now, acclaimed author Philip Gefter tells that story in full for the first time, tracing Woolf from its hushed origins in Greenwich Village’s bohemian enclave, through its tormented production process, to its explosion onto screens across America and a permanent place in the canon of cinematic marriages. This deliciously entertaining book explores how two couples―one fictional, one all too real―forced a nation to confront its most deeply held myths about relationships, sex, family, and, against all odds, love.]]> 368 Philip Gefter 1635579627 Curt 4 4.00 Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
author: Philip Gefter
name: Curt
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Hard to Watch 125873442 216 Matthew Strohl 1493074342 Curt 4 4.07 Hard to Watch
author: Matthew Strohl
name: Curt
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves:
review:
Strohl makes the case for spending time and mental effort on difficult movies - and provides ideas about developing your cinephilia. Longer takes on Titane, Jeanne Dielman, Muriel or the Time of Return. Not a difficult book however!
]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Curt 0 read-a-bit 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Curt
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> Água Viva 13082435 88 Clarice Lispector 0811219909 Curt 3 4.33 1973 Água Viva
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Curt
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Question 7 179455076
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, literature, place and memory is about how reality is never made by realists and how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.]]> 280 Richard Flanagan 1761343467 Curt 3 4.19 2023 Question 7
author: Richard Flanagan
name: Curt
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
review:
A book of connections, reaching back to HG Wells as an inspiration for the A-bomb, seen by the author's father while a POW slave laborer, before getting back to Tasmania and doing the fathering of the cocky young river guide who nearly died in a kayak. But it's a little too tenuous for me to really feel the ties.
]]> <![CDATA[Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State]]> 61358585 A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America--from the acclaimed author of Thrown

Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections--a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the indelible. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs tells the true story of intelligence specialist Reality Winner, a lone young woman who stuffs a state secret under her skirt and trusts the wrong people to help. After printing five pages of dangerous information she was never supposed to see, Winner finds herself at the mercy of forces more invasive than she could have possibly imagined.

Following Winner's unlikely journey from rural Texas to a federal courtroom, Howley maps a hidden world, drawing in John Walker Lindh, Lady Gaga, Edward Snowden, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do whatever it takes to get her daughter out of jail. Howley's subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures. A soap opera set in the deep state, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a free fall into a world where everything is recorded and nothing is sacred, from a singular writer unafraid to ask essential questions about the strangeness of modern life.]]> 233 Kerry Howley 0525655492 Curt 4 3.76 2023 Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State
author: Kerry Howley
name: Curt
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything]]> 204236707 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk—and the players raising the stakes In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life.ÌęÌęThese professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21stÌęcentury. By embedding within these worlds, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—including the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.]]> 576 Nate Silver 1594204128 Curt 3 3.61 2024 On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
author: Nate Silver
name: Curt
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:
A variety of takes on risk, longer than it needed to be. The opening chapters on poker did not offer much new. Silver did meet with SBF a few times and I found his take more balanced than that of Michael Lewis.
]]> Good Pop, Bad Pop 59578046
We all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions:

Who do you think you are?

Are clothes important?

Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process - writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

This is not a life story. It's a loft story.]]> 256 Jarvis Cocker Curt 4 4.30 2022 Good Pop, Bad Pop
author: Jarvis Cocker
name: Curt
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bridget Riley: Works, 1960-1966]]> 19789041 128 Bridget Riley 1905464584 Curt 0 to-read 4.00 2012 Bridget Riley: Works, 1960-1966
author: Bridget Riley
name: Curt
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Vikings in Britain and Ireland]]> 21083885 144 Jayne Carroll 0714128317 Curt 0 to-read 3.65 2014 The Vikings in Britain and Ireland
author: Jayne Carroll
name: Curt
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Skizzen 2002-2008 Tilo BaumgÀrtel]]> 98830197 0 Lubok Verlag 3941601261 Curt 0 to-read 0.0 Skizzen 2002-2008 Tilo BaumgÀrtel
author: Lubok Verlag
name: Curt
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Extraterrestrial Languages 44512554 If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand?

The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In this book, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings' various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, he poses some not entirely answerable questions: If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand? What languages will they (and we) speak? Is there not only a universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has posited), but also a grammar of the universe?

Oberhaus describes, among other things, a late-nineteenth-century idea to communicate with Martians via Morse code and mirrors; the emergence in the twentieth century of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence), and finally METI (messaging extraterrestrial intelligence); the one-way space voyage of Ella, an artificial intelligence agent that can play cards, tell fortunes, and recite poetry; and the launching of a theremin concert for aliens. He considers media used in attempts at extraterrestrial communication, from microwave systems to plaques on spacecrafts to formal logic, and discusses attempts to formulate a language for our message, including the Astraglossa and two generations of Lincos (lingua cosmica).

The chosen medium for interstellar communication reveals much about the technological sophistication of the civilization that sends it, Oberhaus observes, but even more interesting is the information embedded in the message itself. In Extraterrestrial Languages, he considers how philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, science, and art have informed the design or limited the effectiveness of our interstellar messaging.]]> 264 Daniel Oberhaus 0262043068 Curt 0 to-read 3.57 Extraterrestrial Languages
author: Daniel Oberhaus
name: Curt
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The medium of Leonora Carrington: A feminist haunting in the contemporary arts]]> 62142001
Thinking across contemporary art media, this book demonstrates how Carrington has posthumously become a medium in her own right, critically haunting the creative intellectuals who met or knew her. It explores the work of a remarkable variety of individuals and organisations, including the artists Lucy Skaer, Samantha Sweeting and Lynn Lu, the actress Tilda Swinton, the novelists Chloe Aridjis and Heidi Sopinka and the ensemble Double Edge Theatre.

This long-awaited study provides essential reading for both new and established members of the burgeoning Carrington fan club.]]> 248 Catriona McAra 1526161230 Curt 0 to-read 5.00 The medium of Leonora Carrington: A feminist haunting in the contemporary arts
author: Catriona McAra
name: Curt
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mike Nichols: A Life 53479533 A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges--some of the worst largely unknown until now--by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back

Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends.

Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he and his younger brother were sent to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed.

The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem.

Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.]]> 688 Mark Harris 0399562249 Curt 4 4.47 2021 Mike Nichols: A Life
author: Mark Harris
name: Curt
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves:
review:
Very readable bio of one busy guy - directed many films and theater productions after his start with Elaine May as a comedy team. He had large appetites (food, drugs at times, horses, maybe sex though the author is a little coy on that). Can't help feeling that his biggest successes came early, in the 60s.
]]> <![CDATA[Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us]]> 209527753 228 Anna Bogutskaya 0571385788 Curt 0 to-read 3.99 2024 Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us
author: Anna Bogutskaya
name: Curt
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Berlin 62050489 When Daphne Ferber arrives in Berlin for a fresh start in a thrilling new city, the last thing she expects is to run into more drama than she left behind.

Of course, she knew she'd need to do the usual: make friends, acquire lovers, grapple with German and a whole new way of life. She even expected the long nights gorging alone on family-sized jars of Nutella, and the pitfalls of online dating in another language. The paranoia, the second-guessing of her every choice, the covert behaviours? Probably come with the territory.

But one night, something strange, dangerous and entirely unexpected intervenes, and life in bohemian Kreuzberg suddenly doesn't seem so cool.

Just how much trouble is Daphne in, and who - or what - is out to get her?

Channelling the modern female experience with razor-sharp observation and witty flair, Berlin announces Bea Setton as an electrifying literary voice for her generation.]]> 256 Bea Setton 014313762X Curt 3 3.56 2022 Berlin
author: Bea Setton
name: Curt
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> You Dreamed of Empires 127938747 From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernån Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan � today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

CortĂ©s was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma â€� who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods â€� the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of CortĂ©s’s captains, JazmĂ­n Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.]]> 220 Álvaro Enrigue 059354479X Curt 4 3.75 2022 You Dreamed of Empires
author: Álvaro Enrigue
name: Curt
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Infinite Jest 6759
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.]]> 1088 David Foster Wallace Curt 4 4.26 1996 Infinite Jest
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Curt
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves:
review:
Some amazing set-pieces and troubled characters, a dense work that has its rewards.
]]> The Farewell Party 28638
Translated from the French text prepared by the author himself a quarter century after the novel was originally written, Farewell Waltz sparkles anew with wit, humor, and irony. A valuable addition to HarperFlamingo's impressive Kundera backlist, it offers readers a chance to discover, or rediscover, one of the very best works of a legendary writer.

"It is hard to imagine anything more chilling and profound that Kundera's apparent lightheartedness". -- Elizabeth Pochoda

"Kundera ... remains faithful to this subtle, wily, devious talent for a fiction of 'erotic possibilities". -- New York Times Book Review]]> 224 Milan Kundera 0140096949 Curt 0 to-read 3.74 1972 The Farewell Party
author: Milan Kundera
name: Curt
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,â€� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist â€� an informational topologist with half his mind gone â€� as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them
]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Curt 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Curt
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fugitives 28683164 “A mischievously funny, keenly incisive, and mind-bending outlaw taleâ€� (Booklist, starred review) about love and obsession, loyalty and betrayal, race and identity, and compulsion and free will.Writer Sandy Mulligan is in trouble. To escape his turbulent private life and the scandal that’s maimed his public reputation, he’s retreated from Brooklyn to a quiet Michigan town to finish his long-overdue novel. There, he becomes fascinated by John Salteau, a native Ojibway storyteller who regularly appears at the local library. But Salteau is not what he appears to be—a fact suspected by Kat Danhoff, an ambitious Chicago reporter who arrives to investigate a theft from a local Indian-run casino. Salteau’s possible role in the crime could be the key to the biggest story of her stalled career. Bored, emotionally careless, and sexually reckless, Kat’s sudden appearance in town immediately attracts a restive Sandy. All three are fugitives of one kind or another. And in their growing involvement, each becomes a pawn in the othersâ€� games—all of them just one mistake from losing everything. Moving, funny, tense, and mysterious, The Fugitives is at once a love story, a ghost story, and a crime thriller. It is also a cautionary tale of twenty-first century American life—a meditation on the meaning of identity, on the role storytelling plays in our understanding of ourselves and each other, and on the difficulty of making genuine connections in a world that’s connected in almost every way. Exuberantly satirical, darkly enigmatic, and completely unforgettable, The Fugitives is “an entirely new kind of novel with exceptional interior monologues animated by deception, double-dealing, and a doomed affair that lends an air of existential dread to the storyâ€� (Los Angeles Times).]]> 337 Christopher Sorrentino 1476795762 Curt 4 3.32 2016 The Fugitives
author: Christopher Sorrentino
name: Curt
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology]]> 123012858
Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works—the idea of the genome as a blueprint, of genes as instructions for building an organism, of proteins as precisely tailored molecular machines, of cells as entities with fixed identities, and more—have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong.

In How Life Works , Philip Ball explores the new biology, revealing life to be a far richer, more ingenious affair than we had guessed. Ball explains that there is no unique place to look for an answer to this life is a system of many levels—genes, proteins, cells, tissues, and body modules such as the immune system and the nervous system—each with its own rules and principles. How Life Works explains how these levels operate, interface, and work together (most of the time).

With this knowledge come new possibilities. Today we can redesign and reconfigure living systems, tissues, and organisms. We can reprogram cells, for instance, to carry out new tasks and grow into structures not seen in the natural world. As we discover the conditions that dictate the forms into which cells organize themselves, our ability to guide and select the outcomes becomes ever more extraordinary. Some researchers believe that ultimately we will be able to regenerate limbs and organs, and perhaps even create new life forms that evolution has never imagined.

Incorporating the latest research and insights, How Life Works is a sweeping journey into this new frontier of the life sciences, a realm that will reshape our understanding of life as we know it.]]> 552 Philip Ball 0226826686 Curt 0 read-a-bit 4.24 2023 How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology
author: Philip Ball
name: Curt
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> Our Own Metaphor 2100534 344 Smithsonian Institution 1560980702 Curt 0 to-read 4.17 1972 Our Own Metaphor
author: Smithsonian Institution
name: Curt
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science]]> 145624768
"It was not the Baby BoomersÌęwho ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressedÌętraditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated.ÌęAmerican physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s missionÌęto reshape humanityÌęthrough a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocksÌęan untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, andÌęthe founders of the Information Age.

As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New GuineaÌęto the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story forÌępsychedelic science emerges.]]> 384 Benjamin Breen 1538722372 Curt 4 3.83 2024 Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
author: Benjamin Breen
name: Curt
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves:
review:
Enjoyed this history. Seems like both Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were a bit haunted by the dark activities coming out of WWII, though Bateson tried harder to break free (or Mead was more willing to accept it). Leary comes out looking not great, unsurprisingly.
]]> <![CDATA[God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning]]> 58790242
For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness--i.e., souls--might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence--identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself--urgently require rethinking.

Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.]]> 273 Meghan O'Gieblyn 0385543832 Curt 4 4.35 2021 God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
author: Meghan O'Gieblyn
name: Curt
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/14
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conversations with Ken Kesey (Literary Conversations Series)]]> 24089092 209 Scott F. Parker 1626741220 Curt 5 4.67 2014 Conversations with Ken Kesey (Literary Conversations Series)
author: Scott F. Parker
name: Curt
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2015/08/27
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Chuck Berry: An American Life 60568174
Best known as the groundbreaking artist behind classics like “Johnny B. Goode,â€� “Maybellene,â€� “You Never Can Tellâ€� and “Roll Over Beethoven,â€� Chuck Berry was a man of wild contradictions, whose motives and motivations were often shrouded in mystery. After all, how did a teenage delinquent come to write so many songs that transformed American culture? And, once he achieved fame and recognition, why did he put his career in danger with a lifetime’s worth of reckless personal behavior? Throughout his life, Berry refused to shed light on either the mastery or the missteps, leaving the complexity that encapsulated his life and underscored his music largely unexplored—until now.

In Chuck Berry , biographer RJ Smith crafts a comprehensive portrait of one of the great American entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century, bringing Chuck Berry to life in vivid detail. Based on interviews, archival research, legal documents, and a deep understanding of Berry’s St. Louis (his birthplace, and the place where he died in March 2017), Smith sheds new light on a man few have ever really understood. By placing his life within the context of the American culture he made and eventually withdrew from, we understand how Berry became such a groundbreaking figure in music, erasing racial boundaries, crafting subtle political commentary, and paying a great price for his success. While celebrating his accomplishments, the book also does not shy away from troubling aspects of his public and private life, asking profound questions about how and why we separate the art from the artist.

Berry declined to call himself an artist, shrugging that he was good at what he did. But the man's achievement was the rarest kind, the kind that had social and political resonance, the kind that made America want to get up and dance. At long last, Chuck Berry brings the man and the music together.

Ìę±Ő±Ő> 432 R.J. Smith 0306921634 Curt 4 I think R.J. Smith succeeds.]]> 4.06 2022 Chuck Berry: An American Life
author: R.J. Smith
name: Curt
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves:
review:
"After I'm gone," Berry said, "I want you to just speak the truth. Be it pro, con, bad, good. . . . Whatever it be, I just hope it's real."
I think R.J. Smith succeeds.
]]> The Baron in the Trees 9804
Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy—he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by, and a new century dawn.

The Baron in the Trees exemplifies Calvino’s peerless ability to weave tales that sparkle with enchantment. This new English rendering by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein breathes new life into one of Calvino’s most beloved works.]]> 217 Italo Calvino Curt 0 to-read 4.12 1957 The Baron in the Trees
author: Italo Calvino
name: Curt
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Goodbye, Vitamin 27746288 Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father's career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits - in the absence of a cure - of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become.]]> 208 Rachel Khong 1250109167 Curt 3 3.72 2017 Goodbye, Vitamin
author: Rachel Khong
name: Curt
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Major Pettigrew's Last Stand 6643090
The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?]]> 359 Helen Simonson 1400068932 Curt 3 3.89 2010 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
author: Helen Simonson
name: Curt
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Real Americans 190118193 From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?]]> 610 Rachel Khong 0593537262 Curt 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Real Americans
author: Rachel Khong
name: Curt
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mansei...Mansei... Mansei... 144523522 0 Don DeLillo Curt 5 5.00 Mansei...Mansei... Mansei...
author: Don DeLillo
name: Curt
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves:
review:
A broadside from a 1991 reading in Berkeley, from Mao II.
]]> The Ghost Writer 50696 179 Philip Roth 0099477572 Curt 3 3.83 1979 The Ghost Writer
author: Philip Roth
name: Curt
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves:
review:

]]> American Pastoral 11650 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> 432 Philip Roth Curt 3 3.93 1997 American Pastoral
author: Philip Roth
name: Curt
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
review:
While I like Roth generally, I felt this one's a bit over-rated as it got off to quite a slow start before getting to the meat of the story.
]]> <![CDATA[Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art]]> 200052493 Ìę
Griffinology is a fascinating exploration of the mythical creature’s many depictions in human culture. Drawing on a wealth of historical and literary sources, this book shows how the griffin has captured the imagination of people for over five thousand years, representing power, transcendence, and even divinity. It explores the history and symbolism of griffins in art, from their appearances in ancient Egyptian magic wands to medieval bestiaries, and from medieval coats of arms to modern corporate logos. The use of the griffin as a symbol of power and protection is surveyed throughout history and into modern times, such as in the Harry Potter series. Beautifully illustrated, this book should appeal to all those interested in monsters, magic, and the mystical, as well as art and history.]]> 272 A. L. McClanan 1789148464 Curt 0 to-read 4.60 Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art
author: A. L. McClanan
name: Curt
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Amazon One 3993357 299 Mary F. Beal 0316084662 Curt 0 to-read 3.50 Amazon One
author: Mary F. Beal
name: Curt
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unlimited Dream Company 23442589 223 J.G. Ballard Curt 0 3.70 1979 The Unlimited Dream Company
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Curt
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> A Severed Head 11255 205 Iris Murdoch 0670001406 Curt 4 3.56 1961 A Severed Head
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> The Black Prince 10858211
His failure and its aftermath lead to a violent climax; and to a coda which casts a shifting perspective on all that has gone before.]]> 416 Iris Murdoch Curt 4 4.24 1973 The Black Prince
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Curt
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend]]> 12510874

The Guardians opens with a story from the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press that begins, “An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the station on West 254th Street.â€� Sarah Manguso writes: “The train’s engineer told the police that the man was alone and that he jumped. The police officers pulled the body from the track and found no identification. The train’s 425 passengers were transferred to another train and delayed about twenty minutes.â€�

The Guardians is an elegy for Manguso’s friend Harris, two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and jumped under that train. The narrative contemplates with unrelenting clarity their crowded postcollege apartment, Manguso’s fellowship year in Rome, Harris’s death and the year that followed—the year of mourning and the year of Manguso’s marriage. As Harris is revealed both to the reader and to the narrator, the book becomes a monument to their intimacy and inability to express their love to each other properly, and to the reverberating effects of Harris’s presence in and absence from Manguso’s life. There is grief in the book but also humor, as Manguso marvels at the unexpected details that constitute a friendship. The Guardians explores the insufficiency of explanation and the necessity of the imagination in making sense of anything.

]]> 111 Sarah Manguso 0374167249 Curt 0 to-read 4.00 2012 The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend
author: Sarah Manguso
name: Curt
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class]]> 176444107 The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, The Other Wes Moore, and Someone Has Led This Child to Believe, Rob Henderson vividly recounts growing up in foster care, enlisting in the US Air Force, attending elite universities, and pioneering the concept of “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the less fortunate.

Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met, ultimately shuttling between ten different foster homes in California. When he was adopted into a loving family, he hoped that life would finally be stable and safe. Divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence marked his adolescent and teen years, propelling Henderson to join the military upon completing high school.

An unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Troubled recounts Henderson’s expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with those of his friends who wound up incarcerated or killed. He retreads the steps and missteps he took to escape the drama and disorder of his youth. As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class, Henderson finds that he remains on the outside looking in. His greatest achievements—a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge—feel like hollow measures of success. He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable.]]> 336 Rob Henderson 1982168536 Curt 4 4.10 2024 Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
author: Rob Henderson
name: Curt
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/19
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Prophet Song 158875813
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what � or who � is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]> 259 Paul Lynch Curt 3 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: Curt
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves:
review:

]]> J R 396677 The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece. And J R is a book of comparable magnitude, substance, and humor--a rushing, raucous look at money and its influence, at love and its absence, at success and its failures, in the magnificently orchestrated circus of all its larger- and smaller-than-life characters; a frantic, forlorn comedy about who uses -- and misuses -- whom.

At the center: J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn. Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

The J R Corp and its Boss engulf brokers, lawyers, Congressmen, disaffected school teachers and disenfranchised Indians, drunks, divorcées, second-hand generals, and a fledgling composer hopelessly entangled in a nightmare marriage of business and the arts. Their bullish ventures -- shaky mineral claims and gas leases, cost-plus defense contracts, a string of nursing homes cum funeral parlors, a formula for frozen music -- burgeon into a paper empire ranging from timber to textiles, from matchbooks to (legalized) marijuana, from prostheses to publishing, inadvertently crushing hopes, careers, an entire town, on a collision course with the bigger world . . . the pragmatic Real World where the business of America is business, where the stock market exists as a convenience, and the tax laws make some people more equal than others . . . the world that makes the rules because it plays to win, and plays for keeps.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths -- voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios -- a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, stumble through our words -- through our lives -- while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes J R the extraordinary novel that it is.

--From the first-edition dustjacket]]> 726 William Gaddis 0394495500 Curt 5 4.61 1975 J R
author: William Gaddis
name: Curt
average rating: 4.61
book published: 1975
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:

]]> The Recognitions 1310518 956 William Gaddis 0151759715 Curt 0 read-a-bit 4.28 1955 The Recognitions
author: William Gaddis
name: Curt
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: read-a-bit
review:

]]> Cocaine Nights 70253 328 J.G. Ballard 1582430179 Curt 0 3.59 1996 Cocaine Nights
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Curt
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves:
review:

]]> What Are You Going Through 51152434
A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.

In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.]]> 210 Sigrid Nunez 0593191412 Curt 4 3.73 2020 What Are You Going Through
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Curt
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves:
review:
Everyone's going through a lot, and some will be dying soon.
]]>