Natasha's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2025 10:31:16 -0700 60 Natasha's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Hot Milk 26883528 Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness and her doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.]]> 218 Deborah Levy 1620406691 Natasha 4 3.49 2015 Hot Milk
author: Deborah Levy
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
Certainly reads like a playwright's first novel (though it's maybe her third?) with its overdetermined metaphors and arch dialogue, but I enjoyed for the themes of mother-daughter relationships, illness, and hot weather European vacation....
]]> Lion 212808262 An engrossing work of autobiographical fiction about the relationship between an actress daughter and her larger-than-life father—the astonishingly assured debut novel of Sonya Walger, actress on Lost, For All Mankind, and more.

Lion, as his friends call him, is an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter’s life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina’s greatest earthquake, Lion is like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.

“It is hard to compete with adrenalin when you are a child,â€� his daughter writes, now a mother herself to young children whose settled upbringing prompts her to consider her unconventional youth and the source of its chaos, her, by turns, loving, maddening, and magnetic father. 

Lion is a double portrait told in a perpetual present tense that moves back and forth between present-day Los Angeles, where the narrator lives with her family and works as an actress, and the past of her peripatetic childhood, spent shuttling between her mother in England, boarding school, and her father and his successive wives in Buenos Aires and Lima.

Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.]]> 176 Sonya Walger 1681379031 Natasha 0 to-read 4.48 2025 Lion
author: Sonya Walger
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jacob's Folly 15793557 A luminous novel-funny and moving in equal measure-that shines with the author's unique talents

Jacob's Folly is a rollicking, ingenious, saucy book, brimful of sparkling, unexpected characters, that takes on desire, faith, love, acting-and reincarnation.

In eighteenth-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars, and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can. More than two hundred years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a fly in the Long Island suburbs of twenty-first-century America, his new life twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of insects can influence the turning of the world, and thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same.

Through the unique lens of Jacob's consciousness, Rebecca Miller explores change in all its different guises-personal, spiritual, literal. The hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, the collision of fate and free will: Miller's world-which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit-comes brilliantly to life in the pages of this profoundly original novel.]]> 384 Rebecca Miller 0374178542 Natasha 0 to-read 3.54 2013 Jacob's Folly
author: Rebecca Miller
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moominland Midwinter (The Moomins, #6)]]> 443103 168 Tove Jansson 0713639806 Natasha 5 Perfect. 4.42 1957 Moominland Midwinter (The Moomins, #6)
author: Tove Jansson
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1957
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
Perfect.
]]> A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1622 298 William Shakespeare 0743477545 Natasha 4 3.95 1595 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
author: William Shakespeare
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1595
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:
Re-reading as due diligence as I embark on a very loose TYA adaptation... I was very into the lovers in high school and of course identified with Helena LOL and then I became interested in the rude mechanicals in college with all the play-within-a-play craze around me. I feel much more drawn now to the faeries and their magical world, the way they build atmosphere in such a language-heavy medium... and within that, to Oberon and Titania's relationship, and the way the perils and pains of love are scaled up when they are shared between magical beings.
]]> Fox 8 17620753 A darkly comic short story, a fable about the all too real impact that we humans have on the environment

Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak "Yuman" by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children's bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after "danjer" arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.]]> 21 George Saunders 0812995325 Natasha 5
Respect the foxes please!

*re-read w/ bae <|:-)]]> 4.14 2013 Fox 8
author: George Saunders
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
Yumans are evil foxes are perfect.

Respect the foxes please!

*re-read w/ bae <|:-)
]]> The Crying Book 43835525
Told in short, poetic snippets, The Crying Book delights and surprises, as well as rigorously examines how mental illness can affect a family across generations and how crying can express women’s agency―or lack of agency―in everyday life. Christle’s gift is the freshness of her voice and honesty of her approach, both of which create an intimacy with readers as she explores a human behavior broadly experienced but rarely questioned. A beautiful tribute to the power of crying, and to working through despair to tears of joy.]]> 208 Heather Christle 1948226448 Natasha 2 3.83 2019 The Crying Book
author: Heather Christle
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:
Bleh. Self-aggrandizing and gimmicky.
]]> Cold Enough for Snow 58730649 Cold Enough for Snow questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another's inner world.

Selected from more than 1,500 entries, Cold Enough for Snow won the Novel Prize, a new, biennial award offered by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions (US) and Giramondo (Australia), for any novel written in English that explores and expands the possibilities of the form.]]> 99 Jessica Au 1913097765 Natasha 5 3.79 2022 Cold Enough for Snow
author: Jessica Au
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
review:
Elegant, observant, and full of mystery. Back to my mother/daughter novel grind.
]]> <![CDATA[Kin by Bathsheba Doran (2012-11-30)]]> 132499318 0 Bathsheba Doran Natasha 3 3.00 2011 Kin by Bathsheba Doran (2012-11-30)
author: Bathsheba Doran
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Hypocrite 202102022 From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a novel set between the London stage and Sicily, about a daughter who turns her novelist father’s fall from grace into a play, and a father who increasingly fears his precocious daughter’s voice.

August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might hope, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. The play has been met with rave reviews but Sophia’s father has studiously avoided reading any of them. But when the house lights dim, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of men of his generation.

Set through one staging of the play, The Hypocrite seamlessly and scorchingly shifts through time and perspective, illuminating an argument between a father and his daughter that, with impeccable nuance, examines the fraught inheritances each generation is left to contend with, and the struggle to nurture empathy in a world changing at lightning-speed.]]> 240 Jo Hamya 0593701038 Natasha 3 3.42 2024 The Hypocrite
author: Jo Hamya
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
Irritating in that contemporary British novel way, but some of it hit (a little to close to) home.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country]]> 234705
Etel Adnan, a Lebanese American poet, painter, and essayist, lives in Paris, Beirut, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Among her books, the novel Sitt Marie Rose is considered a classic of Middle Eastern literature. She has been a powerful voice for compassion and empowerment in feminist and antiwar movements.]]> 120 Etel Adnan 0872864464 Natasha 3 4.36 2004 In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country
author: Etel Adnan
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:
It didn't coalesce for me, but it did make me miss California.
]]> <![CDATA[The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself]]> 731697
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 320 Teresa de Ávila 0140440739 Natasha 5 4.16 1565 The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself
author: Teresa de Ávila
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1565
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:
Only read because I was playing a nun but this was Fire.
]]> <![CDATA[Dance Nation (Oberon Modern Plays)]]> 41824300 'Maybe this is the year, this is the moment, this is the dance where your lives will start!'

Somewhere in America, a revolution is coming.

An army of competitive dancers is ready to take over the world, one routine at a time.

With a pre-teen battle for power and perfection raging on and off stage, Dance Nation is a ferocious exploration of youth, ambition and self-discovery.

Winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and The Relentless Award, Dance Nation is Clare Barron’s explosive new play.

]]> 173 Clare Barron 1786824841 Natasha 3 4.09 2018 Dance Nation (Oberon Modern Plays)
author: Clare Barron
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:

]]> The Wood at Midwinter 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 Natasha 2 3.47 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
Pleasant enough but not satisfying at all
]]> Audition 216246684 One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. A mesmerizing Mobius strip of a novel that asks who we are to the people we love.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, and young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In Audition, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day—partner, parent, creator, muse—and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.]]> 205 Katie Kitamura 0593852338 Natasha 0 to-read 3.49 2025 Audition
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finn Family Moomintroll (The Moomins, #3)]]> 79549 176 Tove Jansson 0374423075 Natasha 0 currently-reading 4.34 1948 Finn Family Moomintroll (The Moomins, #3)
author: Tove Jansson
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Interior Castle 2327660
A masterpiece of spiritual literature, this sixteenth-century work was inspired by a mystical vision that came upon the revered St. Teresa of Avila, one of the most gifted and beloved religious figures in history. St. Teresa's vision was of a luminous crystal castle composed of seven chambers, or "mansions," each representing a different stage in the development of the soul.

In her most important and widely read book, St. Teresa describes how, upon entering the castle through prayer and meditation, the human spirit experiences humility, detachment, suffering, and, ultimately, self-knowledge, as it roams from room to room. As the soul progresses further toward the center of the castle, it comes closer to achieving ineffable and perfect peace, and, finally, a divine communion with God.

A set of rare and beautiful teachings for people of all faiths desirous of divine guidance, this meticulous modern translation by E. Allison Peers breathes contemporary life into a religious classic.]]> 169 Teresa de Ávila 0486461459 Natasha 0 currently-reading 4.16 1588 The Interior Castle
author: Teresa de Ávila
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1588
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 12527 288 Annie Dillard 0072434171 Natasha 0 to-read 4.08 1974 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
author: Annie Dillard
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ninth Hour 33931059 A magnificent new novel from one of America’s finest writers—a powerfully affecting story spanning the twentieth century of a widow and her daughter and the nuns who serve their Irish-American community in Brooklyn.

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove—to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife—“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.â€� In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.

We begin deep inside Catholic Brooklyn, in the early part of the twentieth century. Decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence. Yet his suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives and over the decades—testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations.

The characters we meet, from Sally, the unborn baby at the beginning of the novel, who becomes the center of the story, to the nuns whose personalities we come to know and love, to the neighborhood families with whose lives they are entwined, are all rendered with extraordinary sympathy and McDermott’s trademark lucidity and intelligence.

Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement by one of the premiere writers at work in America today.]]> 247 Alice McDermott 0374280142 Natasha 5 3.55 2017 The Ninth Hour
author: Alice McDermott
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Priestdaddy 31920820
When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.]]> 336 Patricia Lockwood 1594633738 Natasha 0 currently-reading 3.84 2017 Priestdaddy
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Mariette in Ecstasy 252669
In 1906, a beautiful seventeen year old postulant enters the convent of the Sisters of the Crucifixion in upstate New York. When she begins to bleed from her hands, feet, and side, the entire community is thrown into turmoil. Is Mariette a cunning sham, or sexually hysterical, or does God stalk her like a pitiless lover?

Mariette in Ecstasy is a stunning immersion into the society of a small convent at the turn of the century, where a mysterious and ultimately harrowing world lies beneath the lovely, placid surface of everyday life. With Mariette In Ecstasy, critically acclaimed author Ron Hansen again powerfully demonstrates his gift for brilliantly recreating time and place. As intriguing as The Name Of The Rose, as sensually hypnotic as Marguerite Duras' The Lover, this is an intimate portrait of a fascinating young woman in the grip of an intractable fate, and it raises provocative questions about the complex nature of passionate faith.

Exquisitely crafted, Mariette in Ecstasy is a spellbinding novel that marks a new level of achievement in one of our most gifted writers.

~ from 1991 hardcover dustjacket]]> 180 Ron Hansen 0060981180 Natasha 3 3.75 1991 Mariette in Ecstasy
author: Ron Hansen
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:
As mysterious as faith itself...
]]> Measure for Measure 91571 Measure for Measure is among the most passionately discussed of Shakespeare’s plays. In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his administration, Angelo, to enforce the laws more rigorously. Angelo chooses as his first victim Claudio, condemning him to death because he impregnated Juliet before their marriage.

Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is entering a convent, pleads for her brother’s life. Angelo attempts to extort sex from her, but Isabella preserves her chastity. The duke, in disguise, eavesdrops as she tells her brother about Angelo’s behavior, then offers to ally himself with her against Angelo.]]> 278 William Shakespeare 0743484908 Natasha 0 Let's go. 3.66 1604 Measure for Measure
author: William Shakespeare
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1604
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:
Let's go.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (World of Beatrix Potter, #14)]]> 19337 Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny are brought together once more in this exciting tale of danger and friendship.

When the cupboard is bare at the Flopsy Bunny's burrow, the family all have to go in search of food. They soon find some old lettuces on Mr. McGregor's rubbish heap, but who can imagine the horrors that await them as they enjoy a nap after lunch!]]> 57 Beatrix Potter 072324779X Natasha 5 My mom has a first edition. 4.17 1909 The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (World of Beatrix Potter, #14)
author: Beatrix Potter
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1909
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
My mom has a first edition.
]]> Lazy City 77265057
Lazy City explores coming of age in a place where everyone is picking up the pieces and belongs to a generation that, at the precipice of climate crisis, isn't going to get the future it was expecting. A startlingly fresh and original voice - jarringly funny, sometimes cranky, often hungover - Rachel Connolly sharply depicts the strange, meandering aftermath that follows disaster.]]> 288 Rachel Connolly 1324094133 Natasha 4 3.48 2023 Lazy City
author: Rachel Connolly
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]> A Visit from the Goon Squad 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Natasha 3 3.70 2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
Ugh. Wanted to like this more because she's the only celebrity author whose house I've been to and she's a really nice lady. But just feels like it's trying so hard to be cool and clever which was just exhausting. I didn't care about any of the characters, whose sorrows were so glamorized, and especially could've done without all the MPDG content. Feels somehow so dated in the way that much Obama-era lit and art does. Three stars still for the safari and Naples stories which I found much more recognizably human, and the powerpoint chapter which is very memorable and cute.
]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Natasha 4 GATZ!! 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:
GATZ!!
]]> I Am One of You Forever 104898 Jess's father is feisty, restless, and fun-loving. His mother is straitlaced and serious but accepts with grace and good humor the antics of the men of the family, a trait she learned from her own mother. Johnson Gibbs is the orphaned teenager who comes to live with them on their mountain farm. Life on the laurel-covered mountain is isolated and at times difficult, but for Jess it is made rich and remarkable through his relationship with his father and, especially, Johnson Gibbs.
Visiting the farm from time to time is a gallery of eccentric relatives who are surely among the most memorable creations in recent fiction. Uncle Luden is a womanizer who left the mountains years ago for a job in California that "paid actual cash money." Uncle Gurton has a spooky way of appearing and disappearing without ever seeming to enter or exit, but it is his flowing beard, which he has apparently never trimmed and which he keeps tucked inside his overalls, that is of most fascination to Jess.
Uncle Zeno is a storyteller. With the words "That puts me in mind of..." everyone around knows that he is about to launch into another of his endless tales. Uncle Runkin, who always brings his handmade coffin to sleep in whenever he visits, spends his time carving intricate designs into the coffin and trying to find just the right epitaph for his tombstone. Aunt Samantha Barefoot stops by for a brief spell, too. A country singer and cousin to Jess's grandmother, she is a woman of uncensored speech (Jess learns a lot from her) and honest emotions. Chappell tells the story of all of these characters in a series of chapters that range from fantasy and near farce to pathos. As notable for its lyrical descriptions of the rural settings as for its finely honed vernacular dialogue, I Am One of You Forever shows us a world full of wit and wisdom and the sadness at the heart of things. As one would expect from a poet like Fred Chappell, every line offers its own pleasures and satisfactions.]]> 184 Fred Chappell 0807114103 Natasha 5 4.13 1985 I Am One of You Forever
author: Fred Chappell
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:
This book is very special. I didn't want it to end... :')
]]> Bel Canto 5826 318 Ann Patchett Natasha 0 currently-reading 3.93 2001 Bel Canto
author: Ann Patchett
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Alphabetical Diaries 127282792
Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries.]]> 224 Sheila Heti 0374610789 Natasha 2 3.95 2024 Alphabetical Diaries
author: Sheila Heti
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves:
review:
Again and again I crawl towards her bourgeois narcissism...
]]> <![CDATA[The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity]]> 615570 The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for a new century.]]> 237 Julia Cameron 1585421464 Natasha 0 currently-reading 3.93 2002 The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
author: Julia Cameron
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Fountain Overflows 103603
Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare.

In The Fountain Overflows, a 1957 best seller, Rebecca West transmuted her own volatile childhood into enduring art. This is an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.]]> 408 Rebecca West 1590170342 Natasha 3 3.94 1956 The Fountain Overflows
author: Rebecca West
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:
A book so boring it put me to bed for nearly a year....... still, it was nice.
]]> <![CDATA[27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays]]> 394425
Only one of these plays ( The Purification ) is written in verse, but in all of them the approach to character is by way of poetic revelation. Whether Williams is writing of derelict roomers in a New Orleans boarding house ( The Lady of Larkspur Lotion ) or the memories of a venerable traveling salesman ( The Last of My Solid Gold Watches ) or of delinquent children ( This Property is Condemned ), his insight into human nature is that of the poet. He can compress the basic meaning of life―its pathos or its tragedy, its bravery or the quality of its love―into one small scene or a few moments of dialogue.

Mr. Williams's views on the role of the little theater in American culture are contained in a stimulating essay, "Something wild...," which serves as an introduction to this collection.]]> 238 Tennessee Williams 0811202259 Natasha 4 3.98 1945 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Veronica 22259 Bad Behavior and Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Veronica is about flesh and spirit, vanity, mortality, and mortal affection. Set mostly in Paris and Manhattan in the desperately glittering 1980s, it has the timeless depth and moral power of a fairy tale.

As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica—an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal “office kitâ€� and a plaque that reads “Still Anal After All These Years.â€� Improbably, the two women become friends. Their friendship will survive not only Alison’s reentry into the seductive nocturnal realm of fashion, but also Veronica’s terrible descent into the then-uncharted realm of AIDS. The memory of their friendship will continue to haunt Alison years later, when she, too, is aging and ill and is questioning the meaning of what she experienced and who she became during that time.

Masterfully layering time and space, thought and sensation, Mary Gaitskill dazzles the reader with psychological insight and a mystical sense of the soul’s hurtling passage through the world. A novel unlike any other, Veronica is a tour de force about the fragility and mystery of human relationships, the failure of love, and love’s abiding power. It shines on every page with depth of feeling and formal beauty.]]> 240 Mary Gaitskill 0375421459 Natasha 5 3.43 2005 Veronica
author: Mary Gaitskill
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> Spring Storm 147303 166 Tennessee Williams 0811214222 Natasha 4 Early whispers of genius.... 3.57 1999 Spring Storm
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
Early whispers of genius....
]]> Água Viva 13082435 88 Clarice Lispector 0811219909 Natasha 2 4.33 1973 Água Viva
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1973
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:
A nice old man wearing a train conductor hat w? "Film Forum Union" pin gave this to me two years ago when I was working a heinously oversold awards event at Center for Fiction. I often find more meaning in the particular than the universal.
]]> The Bee Sting 195790771
From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting , an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.

If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda’s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?

The Bee Sting , Paul Murray’s exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.]]> 656 Paul Murray 1250338255 Natasha 0 to-read 3.89 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1) 28446947 Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819.

How about Autumn 2016?

Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.

Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.

Ali Smith's new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. This first in a seasonal quartet casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearian jeu d'esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s Pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history-making.

Here's where we're living. Here's time at its most contemporaneous and its most cyclic.

From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves.

Here comes Autumn.]]> 264 Ali Smith 0241207002 Natasha 2 3.67 2016 Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1)
author: Ali Smith
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:
Normally I love a novel about intergenerational friendships but this is extremely beige
]]> The Age of Innocence 53835 The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.â€�

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.]]> 293 Edith Wharton 159308143X Natasha 4 3.96 1920 The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
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]]> 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 Natasha 3 DONT EAT TOO MUCH RAW FOOD . 3.56 2022 Berlin
author: Bea Setton
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
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DONT EAT TOO MUCH RAW FOOD .
]]> Quartet in Autumn 227002 186 Barbara Pym 0330326481 Natasha 0 to-read 3.90 1978 Quartet in Autumn
author: Barbara Pym
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bat-Poet 285151
With illustrations by Maurice Sendak, The Bat-Poet—a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book selection—is a collection of the bat's own poems and the bat's own world: the owl who almost eats him; the mockingbird whose irritable genius almost overpowers him; the chipmunk who loves his poems, and the bats who can't make heads or tails of them; the cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and sparrows who fly in and out of Randall Jarrell's funny, lovable, truthful fable.]]> 43 Randall Jarrell 0062050842 Natasha 5 This is best book 4.26 1964 The Bat-Poet
author: Randall Jarrell
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1964
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
review:
This is best book
]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Natasha 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Skunks 199056181
Dear Skunks, I wrote. Then I got stuck. What was there to say about the skunks? Of course there was the smell—the spraying. Everyone’s mind jumped to the spraying. I often forgot about the spraying entirely, which was nice because it made me feel that I wasn’t like other people.

From the outside, Isabel doesn’t seem to have much going on. It’s the summer after college graduation and she’s moved back to her hometown, where she spends her days house-sitting, babysitting, working the front desk at a yoga studio, and hanging out with her childhood friend Ellie. But on the inside, Isabel’s mind is always running, always analyzing, and right now, she’s trying hard to not let her thoughts give weight to boys. So when Isabel spots three baby skunks in the yard, their presence is not only a strangely thrilling break from the expected, it feels like a fortuitous sign from the universe. Skunks. That’s what she should be thinking about.

As the summer unfolds, Isabel becomes increasingly preoccupied with the skunks, while also navigating her various jobs and an ambiguous relationship with Eli, the son of the couple she’s house-sitting for. In her own life and in the imagined inner lives of the skunks, Isabel ponders the nature of existence, love vs. infatuation, and the many small moments that make us animal, make us human. The Skunks is an unforgettable coming-of-age story about the complexities of crushes, desire, friendship, and modern life.]]> 240 Fiona Warnick 1959030612 Natasha 2 3.64 2024 The Skunks
author: Fiona Warnick
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
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Would have enjoyed this 7 years ago :/
]]> The Friend 40164365
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.]]> 212 Sigrid Nunez 0735219451 Natasha 4 3.73 2018 The Friend
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
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The parts about writing annoyed me. The parts about what it means to love a dog moved me to tears.
]]> Oligarchy 43788720
The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraits―featuring a hypnotizing black diamond―hang everywhere. She fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake, and her ghost is said to haunt the dorms. But the girls don’t really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about each other.

Hilariously dark, Oligarchy is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for the digital age. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of privileged teenage girls seeking to be loved and accepted in all their triviality and magnitude. With the help of her diet-obsessed classmates, Tash must try to stay alive―and sane―while she uncovers what’s really going on.]]> Scarlett Thomas Natasha 0 to-read 3.13 2019 Oligarchy
author: Scarlett Thomas
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Letters to a Young Poet 46199 Listy do mlodego poety 80 Rainer Maria Rilke 0486422453 Natasha 5 Yes. 4.32 1929 Letters to a Young Poet
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
Yes.
]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Natasha 5 :0 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
review:
:0
]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Natasha 4 3.53 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves:
review:
3.5? A memorable book to be sure, written in her inimitable style... but didn't cohere for me in the end the way First Bad Man did. Perhaps because this is really straight from her own life, which she is still figuring out... The disappointment of realizing one's idols are just small ordinary people after all.
]]> <![CDATA[The Days Are Just Packed (Calvin and Hobbes, #8)]]> 24818 The Days Are Just Packed.

Calvin, the self-proclaimed "Boy of Destiny," continues to save the universe with his alter egos, Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man, at least until Miss Wormwood or his mother bring him back to reality. Susie, Calvin's nemesis and love interest, remains Calvin's favorite target. And when he's not recovering from a ferocious tiger attack, Calvin creates hideous snowmen, plays a moral cat-and-mouse game with Santa, conducts his infamous Dad polls, and combats the monsters under his bed.]]> 176 Bill Watterson 0836217357 Natasha 0 Research. 4.66 1993 The Days Are Just Packed (Calvin and Hobbes, #8)
author: Bill Watterson
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.66
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves:
review:
Research.
]]> Ice 636223 158 Anna Kavan 0720612683 Natasha 2 3.70 1967 Ice
author: Anna Kavan
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1967
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves:
review:
Supposedly an allegory for heroin use, the book itself is less-than-intoxicating.
]]> <![CDATA[Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America]]> 1869
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.]]> 240 Barbara Ehrenreich 0805063897 Natasha 0 to-read 3.65 2001 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)]]> 15790842
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?]]> 544 Kate Atkinson 0316176486 Natasha 0 to-read 3.76 2013 Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10:04 20613582 10:04 has enjoyed unlikely literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. In a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and social unrest, he must reckon with his own mortality and the prospect of fatherhood in a city that might soon be underwater.

A writer whose work Jonathan Franzen has called "hilarious . . . cracklingly intelligent . . . and original in every sentence," Lerner captures what it's like to be alive now, during the twilight of an empire, when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past.]]> 256 Ben Lerner 0865478104 Natasha 0 to-read 3.78 2014 10:04
author: Ben Lerner
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pastoralia 14295
The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed version of America, where elements of contemporary life have been merged, twisted, and amplified, casting their absurdity—and our humanity—in a startling new light. Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.]]> 188 George Saunders 0747553866 Natasha 0 to-read 4.10 2000 Pastoralia
author: George Saunders
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Beauty 3679 On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.]]> 445 Zadie Smith 0143037749 Natasha 0 to-read 3.79 2005 On Beauty
author: Zadie Smith
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis]]> 6670287 Salon) and “one of the quiet giants . . . of American fictionâ€� (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, for the first time, Davis’s short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee Varieties of Disturbance.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters.]]> 733 Lydia Davis 0374270600 Natasha 0 to-read 4.26 2009 The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
author: Lydia Davis
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories]]> 22929586 A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.]]> 406 Lucia Berlin 0374202397 Natasha 0 to-read 4.23 2015 A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
author: Lucia Berlin
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Netanyahus 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 Natasha 4 3.81 2021 The Netanyahus
author: Joshua Cohen
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/27
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
Unfortunately excellent. I wanna see him kick Ben Lerner's ass at the national high school debate championship
]]> Trout Fishing in America 63913
This new edition includes an introduction by the poet Billy Collins, who first encountered Brautigan's work as a student in California.]]> 112 Richard Brautigan Natasha 4

























mayonnaise.












]]> 3.83 1967 Trout Fishing in America
author: Richard Brautigan
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves:
review:
Spoilter alert :


























mayonnaise.













]]> <![CDATA[The Native Trees of Canada (series test)]]> 8940205
While shopping in the used-book store the Monkey's Paw in Toronto, Leanne Shapton happened upon a 1956 edition of the government reference book The Native Trees of Canada , originally published in 1917 by the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Most people might simply view the book as a dry cataloging of a banal subject; Shapton, however, saw beauty in the technical details and was inspired to create her own interpretation of The Native Trees of Canada.

Shapton distills each image into its simplest form, using vivid colors in lush ink and house paint. She takes the otherwise complex objects of trees, pinecones, and seeds and strips them down into bold, almost abstract shapes and the water birch is represented as two pulsating red bulbs contrasted against a gray backdrop; the eastern white pine is represented by a close-up of its cone against a radiant summer sky.

The author of Was She Pretty? and Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry , Shapton puts forth yet another entirely new facet of her creative artistry.]]> 96 Leanne Shapton 1770460322 Natasha 3 3.80 2010 The Native Trees of Canada (series test)
author: Leanne Shapton
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves:
review:
I've read this book three times today (it is all pictures)
]]> The Seas 332768 193 Samantha Hunt 0312425236 Natasha 3 4.03 2004 The Seas
author: Samantha Hunt
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves:
review:
Wish it had felt less YA, but still a languorously magical summer read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Convent of Pleasure: A Comedy]]> 640114 41 Margaret Cavendish 0952553600 Natasha 3 happy prid :-) 3.59 1995 The Convent of Pleasure: A Comedy
author: Margaret Cavendish
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves:
review:
happy prid :-)
]]> <![CDATA[Little Light (Oberon Modern Plays)]]> 24796179
Reminiscing.
Once a year to tell stories.
To share little bits of our little lives.

A house by the sea. Teddy wants more light. He’s knocked that staircase down. Alison is soaked through. She’s livid. Clarissa’s ready to burst. They can’t keep meeting like this.]]> 124 Alice Birch 1783192097 Natasha 5 Devastating 3.57 2015 Little Light (Oberon Modern Plays)
author: Alice Birch
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves:
review:
Devastating
]]> <![CDATA[Rick Steves Snapshot Sevilla, Granada & AndalucĂ­a]]> 35185641
In this compact guide, Rick Steves covers the best of Granada, Sevilla, CĂłrdoba, AndalucĂ­a, and Spain's southern coast. With Rick's helpful hints, you'll learn how to get a reservation for the Alhambra and where to dance the Flamenco in Sevilla. You'll get Rick's firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.

Rick Steves Snapshot guides consist of excerpted chapters from Rick Steves European country guidebooks. Snapshot guides are a great choice for travelers visiting a specific city or region, rather than multiple European destinations. These slim guides offer all of Rick's up-to-date advice on what sights are worth your time and money. They include good-value hotel and restaurant recommendations, with no introductory information (such as overall trip planning, when to go, and travel practicalities).]]> 350 Rick Steves 1631217011 Natasha 0 4.19 2009 Rick Steves Snapshot Sevilla, Granada & AndalucĂ­a
author: Rick Steves
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Swimming Studies 13585762 336 Leanne Shapton 0399158170 Natasha 4
Fell apart at the end where she is just describing fancy swimming pools at Swiss hotels where she and her husband the editor of Conde Nast stayed...

However, much of this book was a striking meditation on our lifelong relationship with our "Things"—the things we were good at and thus came to define us, and that come to haunt us as we lose success or interest and let go of them in adulthood. A book about meeting the "Thing" again with a different kind of attention, that can become a love that is maybe deeper and more true.

Many of the vignettes, as well as Shapton's simple and lovely paintings interspersed between them, will stay with me for a long time.]]> 3.96 2012 Swimming Studies
author: Leanne Shapton
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves:
review:
Some hard-to-swallow personal resonances so took me a while to finish—though I'm a reluctant re-reader, I know I should return to this from time to time, or at least buy a copy instead of reading on Libby on my phone.

Fell apart at the end where she is just describing fancy swimming pools at Swiss hotels where she and her husband the editor of Conde Nast stayed...

However, much of this book was a striking meditation on our lifelong relationship with our "Things"—the things we were good at and thus came to define us, and that come to haunt us as we lose success or interest and let go of them in adulthood. A book about meeting the "Thing" again with a different kind of attention, that can become a love that is maybe deeper and more true.

Many of the vignettes, as well as Shapton's simple and lovely paintings interspersed between them, will stay with me for a long time.
]]> Nine Stories 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé � with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]> 302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Natasha 4
I liked Laughing Man, De Daumier-Smith, and Before War With Eskimos best because they have a messy mystery about them, leaving things unanswered... perhaps because their subject matter (religion/myth) asks for this kind of storytelling.

The rest of the tales are very of their time and place aka WWII American. Esme and Bananafish do capture this cultural moment quite perfectly (Laughing Man too in a way) so they are valuable for that, though the other four stories just feel a bit dated.

I like how seriously he takes children and their ideas. Also fun that he talks about the Lexington Ave bus so much as you know I be riding that bus today still.]]> 4.20 1953 Nine Stories
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves:
review:
One of first books I've read because formative to loved one that I probably would not have chosen to read myself otherwise. Glad to have had this experience as I think it's an important one.

I liked Laughing Man, De Daumier-Smith, and Before War With Eskimos best because they have a messy mystery about them, leaving things unanswered... perhaps because their subject matter (religion/myth) asks for this kind of storytelling.

The rest of the tales are very of their time and place aka WWII American. Esme and Bananafish do capture this cultural moment quite perfectly (Laughing Man too in a way) so they are valuable for that, though the other four stories just feel a bit dated.

I like how seriously he takes children and their ideas. Also fun that he talks about the Lexington Ave bus so much as you know I be riding that bus today still.
]]> In Morocco 105974 158 Edith Wharton 1426445997 Natasha 2 3.01 1920 In Morocco
author: Edith Wharton
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.01
book published: 1920
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves:
review:
Uncomfortably Orientalist even for its time, but gorgeously sensuous descriptions of sunlight, courtyards, fabrics, and town life. Interesting relic of travel writing to make my way through while in Marrakech, a place that in many ways has maintained the kind of touristic atmosphere Anglo/French visitors sought in colonial days.
]]> <![CDATA[The 500 Hidden Secrets of Lisbon]]> 30106723 256 Miguel JĂșdice 9460581757 Natasha 0 4.15 The 500 Hidden Secrets of Lisbon
author: Miguel JĂșdice
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Parade 195790675
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.

In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.

When a mother dies, her children confront her the stories she told; the roles she assigned to them; the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.

An artist takes on a series of pseudonyms to conceal his work from his mother and father. His brother does the opposite. They share the same parents, but they’ve inherited different things.

Parade is a story that confronts and demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell a true story—about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.]]> 198 Rachel Cusk 0374610045 Natasha 0 to-read 3.55 2024 Parade
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Top 10 Marrakech (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides)]]> 8385111
Dozens of Top 10 lists provide vital information on each destination, as well as insider tips, from uncovering a city's most memorable sights to finding the best restaurants and hotels in each neighborhood. And to save you time and money, there's even a Top 10 list of Things to Avoid.

Each Top 10 contains a pull-out map and guide that includes fold-out maps of city metro systems, useful phone numbers, and 60 great ideas on how to spend your day.]]> 128 D.K. Publishing 0756660858 Natasha 0 4.33 2008 Top 10 Marrakech (Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides)
author: D.K. Publishing
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves:
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]]> Baltasar and Blimunda 2530
When King and Church exercise absolute power what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with strange visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fé where her mother is condemned and sent into exile, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolemeu Lourenço, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the inquisition rages and royalty and religion clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.]]> 346 José Saramago 0156005204 Natasha 0 to-read 3.99 1982 Baltasar and Blimunda
author: José Saramago
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Natasha 0 to-read 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lies and Sorcery 62001844
A heavily abridged English translation of Lies and Sorcery came out in the 1950s under the title of House of Lies. Jenny McPhee’s new translation is the first complete English rendering of the book that Georg Lukács considered the greatest of modern Italian novels.]]> 800 Elsa Morante 1681376849 Natasha 0 to-read 4.02 1948 Lies and Sorcery
author: Elsa Morante
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thirst 174156085 Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America’s feminist Gothic.

It is the twilight of Europe’s bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women—and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.]]> 256 Marina Yuszczuk 0593472063 Natasha 0 to-read 3.43 2020 Thirst
author: Marina Yuszczuk
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Independent People 77287 Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece]]> 482 HalldĂłr Laxness 0679767924 Natasha 5 4.13 1934 Independent People
author: HalldĂłr Laxness
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves:
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What a surprise—it is easy to see that this is one of the greatest novels on human earth.
]]> Inseparable 56197486 A never-before-published novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship

From the moment Sylvie and Andrée meet in their Parisian day school, they see in each other an accomplice with whom to confront the mysteries of girlhood. For the next ten years, the two are the closest of friends and confidantes as they explore life in a post-World War One France, and as Andrée becomes increasingly reckless and rebellious, edging closer to peril.

Sylvie, insightful and observant, sees a France of clashing ideals and religious hypocrisy—and at an early age is determined to form her own opinions. AndrĂ©e, a tempestuous dreamer, is inclined to melodrama and romance. Despite their different natures they rely on each other to safeguard their secrets while entering adulthood in a world that did not pay much attention to the wills and desires of young women.

Deemed too intimate to publish during Simone de Beauvoir’s life, Inseparable offers fresh insight into the groundbreaking feminist’s own coming-of-age; her transformative, tragic friendship with her childhood friend Zaza Lacoin; and how her youthful relationships shaped her philosophy. Sandra Smith’s vibrant translation of the novel will be long cherished by de Beauvoir devotees and first-time readers alike.]]> 176 Simone de Beauvoir 0063075040 Natasha 0 to-read 4.06 2020 Inseparable
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Study for Obedience 123636870
A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. 

Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.

With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.]]> 192 Sarah Bernstein 1039009069 Natasha 0 to-read 3.02 2023 Study for Obedience
author: Sarah Bernstein
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Eastbound 60853075
‘The fever burning through this story, its suspense and its lyrical escapes don’t curb its sensuality, and precision. [Kerangal’s] language has an incredible driving force. It is both like a stone made up of many crystals, mixing registers with fluidity, and juxtaposing the poetic and the trivial. The whole thing has a unique rhythm, a sense of breathless speed: the sort of graceful rockslide that only she can pull off. In flux between interior and exterior, this is the perfect voyage.â€� â€� Le Monde des Livres]]> 140 Maylis de Kerangal Natasha 2 3.94 2012 Eastbound
author: Maylis de Kerangal
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves:
review:
How was this chosen as nyt one of best books of 2023... i have to stop trusting those lists bc this was so unimpressive. imagine managing to write a story set on a train in Russia that is somehow entirely devoid of eroticism, humor, and spirituality. stick to Anna Karenina and Compartment No. 6.
]]> My Life 987670 My Life was written in Moscow in 1921�1922, when Chagall was thirty-five years old. Although long out-of-print, it remains one of the most extraordinarily inventive and beautifully told of all autobiographies. The text is accompanied by twenty plates which Chagall prepared especially to illustrate his life story. Together, the words and pictures paint an incomparable portrait of one of the greatest painters of this century, and of the now vanished milieu which inspired him.]]> 224 Marc Chagall 0306805715 Natasha 4 4.07 1923 My Life
author: Marc Chagall
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1923
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/15
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:
I have not read anything quite like this book! Memoir en medias res, on how to find strength as a young artist when a stranger in one's own land... all in his singular folk style. Thank you Leo for lending to me and I'm sorry I spilled water on it
]]> <![CDATA[The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free]]> 54304210 From award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the remarkable history of New York’s most famous residential hotel and the women who stayed there, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and Joan Didion.

Welcome to New York’s legendary hotel for women, the Barbizon.

Liberated after WWI from home and hearth, women flocked to New York City during the Roaring Twenties. But even as women’s residential hotels became the fashion, the Barbizon stood out; it was designed for young women with artistic aspirations, and included soaring art studios and soundproofed practice rooms. More importantly still, with no men allowed beyond the lobby, the Barbizon signaled respectability, a place where a young woman of a certain class could feel at home.

But as the stock market crashed and the Great Depression set in, the clientele changed, though women’s ambitions did not; the Barbizon Hotel became the go-to destination for any young American woman with a dream to be something more. While Sylvia Plath most famously fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, the Barbizon was also where Titanic survivor Molly Brown sang her last aria; where Grace Kelly danced topless in the hallways; where Joan Didion got her first taste of Manhattan; and where both Ali MacGraw and Jaclyn Smith found their calling as actresses. Students of the prestigious Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School had three floors to themselves, Eileen Ford used the hotel as a guest house for her youngest models, and Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, including a young designer named Betsey Johnson.

The first ever history of this extraordinary hotel, and of the women who arrived in New York City alone from “elsewhereâ€� with a suitcase and a dream, The Barbizon offers readers a multilayered history of New York City in the 20th century, and of the generations of American women torn between their desire for independence and their looming social expiration date. By providing women a room of their own, the Barbizon was the hotel that set them free.]]> 336 Paulina Bren 1982123893 Natasha 2 3.65 2021 The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free
author: Paulina Bren
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/15
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves:
review:
For a book that is ostensibly about women's empowerment why r u saying how tall how much they weigh what shade of blond and how many men "called on them" for al lthese long dead historical figures ?
]]> <![CDATA[Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood]]> 59516880 An innovative psychotherapist tackles the overlooked stage of Quarterlife--the years between adolescence and midlife.



I'm stuck. What's wrong with me? Is this all there is? Satya Doyle Byock hears these refrains regularly in her psychotherapy practice where she works with "Quarterlifers," individuals between the ages of (roughly) sixteen to thirty-six. She understands their frustration. Some clients have done everything "right" graduate, get a job, meet a partner. Yet they are unfulfilled and unclear on what to do next. Byock calls these Quarterlifers "Stability Types." Others are uninterested in this prescribed path, but feel unmoored. She refers to them as "Meaning Types."

While society is quick to label the emotions and behavior of this age group as generational traits, Byock sees things differently. She believes these struggles are part of the developmental journey of Quarterlife, a distinct stage that every person goes through and which has been virtually ignored by popular culture and psychology.

In Quarterlife, Byock utilizes personal storytelling, mythology, Jungian psychology, pop culture, literature, and client case studies to provide guideposts for this period of life. Readers will be able to find themselves on the spectrum between Stability and Meaning Types, and engage with Byock's four pillars of Quarterlife development:
- Separate: Gain independence from the relationships and expectations that no longer serve you
- Listen: Pay close attention to your own wants and needs
- Build: Create, cultivate, and construct tools and practices for the life you want
- Integrate: Take what you've learned and manifest something new

Quarterlife is a defining work that offers a compassionate roadmap toward finding understanding, happiness, and wholeness in adulthood.]]> 240 Satya Doyle Byock 0525511660 Natasha 3 3.98 Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood
author: Satya Doyle Byock
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/09
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves:
review:
Pretty decent as far as this kind of book goes but i expect having to read it more than once if i truuly want to find my self : )
]]> Death Valley 91239751
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.]]> 240 Melissa Broder 1668024845 Natasha 3 3.46 2023 Death Valley
author: Melissa Broder
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
I guess she went hetero after Milk Fed, maybe had a baby? Clumsily self-reflective, but also enjoyably fantastical and ultimately uplifting
]]> The Mayor of Leipzig 57329666
In Rachel Kushner's latest work of fiction, The Mayor of Leipzig, an unnamed artist recounts her travels from New York City to Cologne--where she contemplates German guilt and art-world grifters, and Leipzig--where she encounters live "adult entertainment" in a business hotel. The narrator gossips about everyone, including the author. "Taking a time out from what happened to me in Cologne and in Leipzig," Kushner writes, "I want to let you in on a secret: I personally know the author of this story you're reading. Because she fancies herself an art world type, a hanger-on. Who would do that voluntarily? I mean, it's not like someone held a gun to my head and said, Be an artist. I chose it, but I still can't imagine having anything to do with the art world if you don't have to. Also, people who don't make stuff, who instead try to catalogue, periodize, and understand art, they never understand the first thing. Art is about taste, a sense of humor, and most writers lack both."]]> 71 Rachel Kushner Natasha 0 to-read 3.64 The Mayor of Leipzig
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A Fairly Good Time and Green Water, Green Sky (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 25982711
Mavis Gallant’s novels are as memorable as her renowned short stories. Full of wit and psychological poignancy, A Fairly Good Time , here with  Green Water, Green Sky , encapsulates Gallant’s unparalleled skill as a storyteller. 

Shirley Perrigny (nĂ©e Norrington, then briefly Higgins), the heroine of A Fairly Good Time , is an original. Derided by the Parisians she lives among and chided by her fellow Canadians, this young widow—recently remarried to a French journalist named Philippe—is fond of quoting Jane Austen and Kingsley Amis and of using her myopia as a defense against social aggression. As the fixed points in Shirley’s life begin to recede—Philippe having apparently though not definitively left—her freewheeling, makeshift, and self-abnegating ways come to seem an aspect of devotion to her fellow man. Could this unreliable protagonist be the unwitting heroine of her own story?  

Green Water, Green Sky , Gallant’s first novel, is a darker tale of the fractured family life of Bonnie McCarthy, an American divorcĂ©e, and her daughter, Flor. Uprooted and unmoored, mother and daughter live like itinerants—in Venice, Cannes, and Paris—glamorous and dependent. With little hope of escape, Flor attempts to flee this untidy life and the false notes of her mother.]]> 400 Mavis Gallant 1590179870 Natasha 0 to-read 3.96 2016 A Fairly Good Time and Green Water, Green Sky (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Mavis Gallant
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lament for Julia, and Other Stories]]> 119029466
Susan Taubes’s novella “Lament for Juliaâ€� is the story of a young woman coming of age in the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of a sexless spirit who supposes himself to be charged with her oversight.

What is this spirit? An operator from on high (though hardly holy), a narrative I , and a guiding presence that is more than a bit of a voyeur, who remains entirely unknown to Julia herself. About her, the spirit knows both a good deal and very little, since Julia’s emotional and physical and sexual being are all baffling, if also fascinating, to an entity that is pure mind.

The I and Julia are a mismatched couple, set up for failure from the start, it seems, even if they do somehow manage to deal in their different ways with childhood and Mother and Father Klopps and ugly pink outfits and dances and crushes for a while. After which come love and marriage, not necessarily in that order, at which point things really start to go wrong.

Unpublished during Taubes’s lifetime, “Lament for Juliaâ€� appears here with a selection of her stories. A brilliant metaphorical exploration of a woman’s double consciousness that is also a masterpiece of the grotesque, it is a novel like no other, a book, as Samuel Beckett wrote to his French publisher, “full of erotic touches of an emphatic sort [and] raw language,â€� the product of an “authentic talent,â€� adding, “I shall reread it.”]]> 240 Susan Taubes 1681376946 Natasha 0 to-read 3.90 2015 Lament for Julia, and Other Stories
author: Susan Taubes
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Possessed 175678232 416 Witold Gombrowicz 0802162525 Natasha 0 to-read 3.75 1939 The Possessed
author: Witold Gombrowicz
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Planetarium 260048 246 Nathalie Sarraute 156478410X Natasha 0 to-read 3.68 1959 The Planetarium
author: Nathalie Sarraute
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Martyr! 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Natasha 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mild Vertigo 62043762 Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying inability to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that make up a life confined to the home, where both everything and nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Mavis Gallant and Lucy Ellman, this late-period novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and film and literary critic Mieko Kanai - whose often dark and cynical work occupies something of a cult place within the Japanese canon - is a disconcerting and astute portrait of life in late-stage capitalist society.]]> 176 Mieko Kanai 1804270385 Natasha 0 to-read 3.52 1997 Mild Vertigo
author: Mieko Kanai
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Horse at Night: On Writing 60065627 A Room of One’s Own and William H. Gass’s On Being Blue.

“Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?â€�

A series of essayistic inquiries come together to form a sustained meditation on writers and their works, on the spaces of reading and writing fiction, and how these spaces take shape inside a life. Driven by primary questions of authenticity and freedom in the shadow of ecological and social collapse, A Horse at Night: On Writing moves associatively through a personal canon of authors—including Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante, Renee Gladman, and Virginia Woolf—and topics as timely and various as female friendships, zazen meditation, neighborhood coyotes, landscape painting, book titles, and the politics of excess. Amina Cain’s first nonfiction book is an individual reckoning with the contemporary moment and a quietly brilliant contribution to the lineage of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or William H. Gass’s On Being Blue, books that are virtuosic arguments for—and beautiful demonstrations of—the essential unity of writing and life.]]> 136 Amina Cain 1948980134 Natasha 0 to-read 4.04 2022 A Horse at Night: On Writing
author: Amina Cain
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Creative Act: A Way of Being]]> 60965426 From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment." --Anne Lamott

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." --Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output, it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.]]> 406 Rick Rubin 0593652886 Natasha 1 embarrassed i finished. this 4.00 2023 The Creative Act: A Way of Being
author: Rick Rubin
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves:
review:
embarrassed i finished. this
]]> All's Well That Ends Well 104790 282 William Shakespeare 0743484975 Natasha 2 3.62 1604 All's Well That Ends Well
author: William Shakespeare
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1604
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves:
review:
Not good, but not meaningfully bad, either... ick.
]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Natasha 0 to-read 3.56 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Visitors 59845914
Threatened with the loss of home, livelihood and sanity, C seeks out some aid, if not charity. Her childhood friend V, now a wealthy financier, would happily assist, if only C’s pride and feelings of both attachment and desire would allow her to ask for help. Instead, C paces the city’s streets as protesters gather in a square downtown, her days punctuated by the developing news story of a terrorist threat to take down the national grid, plunging the United States―not to mention this novel―into darkness and chaos. .

With C’s sense of economic, romantic, and artistic potential all thwarted, the boundaries between her strange visitor’s consciousness and C’s own begin to dissipate, until C returns, finally, to her abandoned art for a final, horrifying ‘projectâ€� that will allow her to regain some control over her fate. .

Darkly funny and uncannily percipient, The Visitors looks at our world darkly, presenting a Pynchonesque alternate timeline in which the Occupy protests didn’t sputter out; where terrorists can upload malware directly into your head; where gnomes talk like Don DeLillo. Is this science fiction? Maybe. But it feels altogether right and almost real . . . a witty but sobering message from both the recent past and our impossible future.]]> 224 Jessi Jezewska Stevens 1913505286 Natasha 0 to-read 3.43 2022 The Visitors
author: Jessi Jezewska Stevens
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere]]> 112093865 From “weird, scary, ingeniousâ€� (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems—from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.

In Bamford’s signature voice, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult, brings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.

Singular and inimitable, Bamford’s memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it. In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following).]]> 276 Maria Bamford 1982168560 Natasha 0 to-read 3.71 2023 Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere
author: Maria Bamford
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Postcard 63880836 Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the OpĂ©ra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, EphraĂŻm and Emma, and their children, NoĂ©mie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.]]> 464 Anne Berest Natasha 0 to-read 4.31 2021 The Postcard
author: Anne Berest
name: Natasha
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Oedipus at Colonus (The Theban Plays, #2)]]> 148313 144 Sophocles 0195135040 Natasha 4 3.76 -401 Oedipus at Colonus (The Theban Plays, #2)
author: Sophocles
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.76
book published: -401
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves:
review:
Oft-overlooked middle child of the Theban trilogy. Kind of cool for its depictions of nature, forgiveness, and (non-Oedipal) father-daughter relationships
]]> <![CDATA[Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death]]> 7731 Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a liveable life.]]> 118 Judith Butler 0231118953 Natasha 4 Overwhelming 3.79 2000 Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death
author: Judith Butler
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves:
review:
Overwhelming
]]> Oedipus the King 34439 104 Sophocles 1599869519 Natasha 2 3.67 -429 Oedipus the King
author: Sophocles
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.67
book published: -429
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves:
review:
Something about this makes me uncomfortable
]]> <![CDATA[The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone]]> 130405
In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and masterly touch.]]> 96 Seamus Heaney 0374530076 Natasha 3 3.92 2004 The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone
author: Seamus Heaney
name: Natasha
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/30
date added: 2024/01/30
shelves:
review:
Yet another adaptation... will any of this show up in my Work I don't know but it's a worthwhile dive nonetheless I hope(?). This one takes some liberties that are helpful in revealing truths of the texts, but also is too partial to her (or maybe I just feel that after reading the afterword about the Iraq war lol).
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