Shannon's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 31 Jan 2025 07:09:44 -0800 60 Shannon's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Storyteller 53931 ]]> 245 Mario Vargas Llosa 0312420285 Shannon 0 to-read 3.74 1987 The Storyteller
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beneath a Scarlet Sky 32487617 Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

]]> 509 Mark T. Sullivan 1503943372 Shannon 5 Ó˥️ 4.33 2017 Beneath a Scarlet Sky
author: Mark T. Sullivan
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves:
review:
Ó˥️
]]> The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Shannon 4 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/24
date added: 2024/01/24
shelves:
review:

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

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Shannon 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flight Behavior 13438524 Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.

Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.]]> 436 Barbara Kingsolver 0062124269 Shannon 4 3.79 2012 Flight Behavior
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Shannon 3
The ending was shocking, but the epilogue was just strange, disconnected, fabricated. I loved this book...until the epilogue.]]> 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/11/11
shelves:
review:
Brooks is certainly a wonderful author, a favorite of mine; so why three stars?

The ending was shocking, but the epilogue was just strange, disconnected, fabricated. I loved this book...until the epilogue.
]]> <![CDATA[All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir]]> 61357133
An incredibly thoughtful, disarmingly funny, and intensely vulnerable glimpse into the life and ministry of a woman familiar to many but known by few.

“It’s a peculiar thing, this having lived long enough to take a good look back. We go from knowing each other better than we know ourselves to barely sure if we know each other at all, to precisely sure that we don’t. All my knotted-up life I’ve longed for the sanity and simplicity of knowing who’s good and who’s bad. I’ve wanted to know this about myself as much as anyone. This was not theological. It was strictly relational. God could do what he wanted with eternity. I was just trying to make it here in the meantime. As benevolent as he has been in a myriad of ways, God has remained aloof on this uncomplicated request .� � Beth Moore

New York Times best-selling author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir.

All My Knotted-Up Life

All My Knotted-Up Life is told with surprising candor about some of the personal heartbreaks and behind-the-scenes challenges that have marked Beth’s life. But beyond that, it’s a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.]]> 304 Beth Moore 1496472675 Shannon 4 4.43 2023 All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir
author: Beth Moore
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/05
date added: 2023/07/05
shelves:
review:
Even more respect for this woman.
]]> Crossroads 55881796 Jonathan Franzen's gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless--unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.]]> 592 Jonathan Franzen 0374181179 Shannon 4 4.05 2021 Crossroads
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/05
shelves:
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]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley Shannon 3 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Shannon 5 Another beauty from BK. Ó˥️ 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/23
date added: 2023/02/23
shelves:
review:
Another beauty from BK. Ó˥️
]]> A Moveable Feast 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway Shannon 4 4.04 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/18
date added: 2022/08/18
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1)]]> 32075671 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062498533 can be found here.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice.]]> 454 Angie Thomas 0062498533 Shannon 0 4.46 2017 The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1)
author: Angie Thomas
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> A Farewell to Arms 51038842 287 Ernest Hemingway Shannon 3 Audiobook. Didn’t finish it. 3.91 1929 A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1929
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/07/23
shelves:
review:
Audiobook. Didn’t finish it.
]]> <![CDATA[From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life]]> 58100575
Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs.

What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success?

At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life.

Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.

Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.]]> 270 Arthur C. Brooks 0593191498 Shannon 5 3.94 2022 From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
author: Arthur C. Brooks
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/25
date added: 2022/07/23
shelves:
review:
Short, sweet and encouraging for anyone nearing 50.
]]> The Prince 28862
1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people.
2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him.
3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose.
4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory.
5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression.
6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope.
7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters,
8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure.
9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice
10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.]]> 144 Niccolò Machiavelli 0937832383 Shannon 0 to-read 3.85 1513 The Prince
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Book of Lost Names 52762903 The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named RĂ©my, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and RĂ©my disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.]]> 388 Kristin Harmel 1982131896 Shannon 3 4.41 2020 The Book of Lost Names
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/01
date added: 2022/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time]]> 25944588 240 Jeremie Kubicek 1119111153 Shannon 0 to-read 3.78 2015 The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time
author: Jeremie Kubicek
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Guest List 51933429
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 330 Lucy Foley Shannon 3 3.64 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories]]> 48464
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.]]> 252 Flannery O'Connor 0151365040 Shannon 5 4.19 1955 A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/08
date added: 2022/03/08
shelves:
review:
The best collection of shorts I’ve ever read thus far.
]]> <![CDATA[Valley So Wild (A Folk History)]]> 6260686 382 Alberta Brewer 0941199010 Shannon 0 to-read 4.15 1997 Valley So Wild (A Folk History)
author: Alberta Brewer
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Great Blue Hills of God 52955630
Born with "the gift of hospitality," Kreis Beall helped create one of the South's most enchanting destinations, Blackberry Farm, in Tennessee's Smoky Mountain foothills. For decades, she was a fixture in the entertaining world and on the glossy pages of popular home and design magazines.

But beautiful exteriors and glowing accolades papered over deep inner pain. At the pinnacle of her success, a brain injury left her with devastating hearing loss. That was followed by the collapse of her thirty-six-year marriage to her best friend and business partner, Sandy Beall--and a few years later, the tragic death of her son Sam, the proprietor of Blackberry Farm, at age thirty-nine.

Alone and desolate as her marriage ends, Kreis begins a new journey, to find her faith and find God. After spending years on her exterior life and work, now she must begin the hardest undertaking of all: to reclaim her interior life and soul. Kreis retreats to Blackberry Farm, moving into an unassuming, 300-square foot shed with peeling paint on the exterior walls "where I met myself for the first time." Out of brokenness has come reflection, re-examination, and bit by bit, healing and meaning.

By turns fiercely honest, heartbreaking, and warm, Kreis Beall's story will resonate with anyone who has ever searched to find genuine beauty among their own flaws and scars.]]> 288 Kreis Beall 1984822241 Shannon 4 4.21 2020 Great Blue Hills of God
author: Kreis Beall
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/20
date added: 2022/02/20
shelves:
review:
Ó˥️ This book is her testimony.Ó˥️
]]> <![CDATA[Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital]]> 17704902
After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.

Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.]]> 558 Sheri Fink 0307718964 Shannon 3 The first half of the book (events gathered from statements of patients, family and staff, via testimonies, interviews) was frustratingly subjective. The narrative format contained superfluous information that distracted from the concrete events, leaving holes in the storyline. However the second half described the legal fall-out with precision.
The story itself is a snap shot of systems failing and failing and humans keeping it together for the sake of one another. Bravo to anyone who worked during Katrina in NOLA and shame on the systems that failed them.
]]> 3.91 2013 Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
author: Sheri Fink
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/12
date added: 2022/02/12
shelves:
review:
Whew, how to review this...
The first half of the book (events gathered from statements of patients, family and staff, via testimonies, interviews) was frustratingly subjective. The narrative format contained superfluous information that distracted from the concrete events, leaving holes in the storyline. However the second half described the legal fall-out with precision.
The story itself is a snap shot of systems failing and failing and humans keeping it together for the sake of one another. Bravo to anyone who worked during Katrina in NOLA and shame on the systems that failed them.

]]> Lift 6738760
Written as a letter to her children, Kelly Corrigan's Lift is a tender, intimate, and robust portrait of risk and love; a touchstone for anyone who wants to live more fully. In Lift, Corrigan weaves together three true and unforgettable stories of adults willing to experience emotional hazards in exchange for the gratifications of raising children.

Lift takes its name from hang gliding, a pursuit that requires flying directly into rough air, because turbulence saves a glider from "sinking out." For Corrigan, this wisdom--that to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors, particularly the great flight that is parenting.

Corrigan serves it up straight--how mundanely and fiercely her children have been loved, how close most lives occasionally come to disaster, and how often we fall short as mothers and fathers. Lift is for everyone who has been caught off guard by the pace and vulnerability of raising children, to remind us that our work is important and our time limited.

Like Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, Lift is a meditation on the complexities of a woman's life, and like Corrigan's memoir, The Middle Place, Lift is boisterous and generous, a book readers can't wait to share.]]> 89 Kelly Corrigan 1401341241 Shannon 3 3.78 2010 Lift
author: Kelly Corrigan
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/01
date added: 2022/02/12
shelves:
review:
Little book written by a friend I have never met.
]]> Fever Dream 30763882
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.]]> 183 Samanta Schweblin 0399184597 Shannon 3 3.62 2014 Fever Dream
author: Samanta Schweblin
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/07
date added: 2022/02/12
shelves:
review:
Kept me intrigued, a bit creeped out, then faded into nothing.
]]> <![CDATA[The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures]]> 12609 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.]]> 341 Anne Fadiman 0374525641 Shannon 5 4.20 1997 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
author: Anne Fadiman
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/28
date added: 2022/01/28
shelves:
review:
The topic. The research. The deference and honourable handling of a tragedy. The Hmong culture. Five stars on all.
]]> Ordinary Grace 15803059 “That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.�

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.]]> 307 William Kent Krueger 1451645821 Shannon 3 4.23 2013 Ordinary Grace
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/14
date added: 2022/01/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The True Saint Nicholas: Why He Matters to Christmas]]> 6767731
If you've ever wondered if he is just a commercial invention...

If you've ever thought there is no such person...

You may be surprised to know the true Saint Nicholas.

You'll never again think of Santa Claus in quite the same way.

An instant classic by one of America's most respected thinkers, The True Saint Nicholas is a book to be shared with family and friends every year to evoke the true spirit of Christmas.]]> 128 William J. Bennett 1416567461 Shannon 0 to-read 3.80 2009 The True Saint Nicholas: Why He Matters to Christmas
author: William J. Bennett
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Shannon 3 4.00 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/18
date added: 2021/10/18
shelves:
review:
Alluring beginning, pleasing ending. Under-baked middle.
]]> <![CDATA[Organizing for Life: Declutter Your Mind to Declutter Your World]]> 1174450 Paperback 238 Sandra Felton 0800731859 Shannon 3 3.11 2007 Organizing for Life: Declutter Your Mind to Declutter Your World
author: Sandra Felton
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/03
date added: 2021/09/03
shelves:
review:
Touches the tip of the iceberg on the psychological reasons we can collect clutter. A good start.
]]> The Poet X 33294200 Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.]]> 368 Elizabeth Acevedo Shannon 0 4.37 2018 The Poet X
author: Elizabeth Acevedo
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters]]> 52076947 Irreversible Damage is an exploration of a mystery: Why, in the last decade, has the diagnosis "gender dysphoria," transformed from a vanishingly rare affliction, applying almost exclusively to boys and men, to an epidemic among teenage girls?

Author Abigail Shrier presents shocking statistics and stories from real families to show that America and the West have become fertile ground for a "transgender craze" that has nothing to do with real gender dysphoria and everything to do with our cultural frailty. Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups.

Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it—this book is for you.Ěý]]> 276 Abigail Shrier 1684510317 Shannon 5 And truly, this is less about transgenders and more about the frailty, loneliness and despair in our vulnerable population: Teenage Girls.]]> 4.08 2020 Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
author: Abigail Shrier
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/04
date added: 2021/08/04
shelves:
review:
Every Feminist and GenX parent, teacher, lesbian or transsexual (Buck Angel) should read this book! Amazing how it has sparked controversy at all. Well researched (30+ references/notes). The explosion of teenage girls exhibiting peer contagion (think anorexia/bulimia/The Crucible) and the details of why and how this is supported and promoted by social media (2017), sham providers, politics, activists, our fragile culture,and the cult of transgender (as detransitioners warn of). Shrier interviews influencers, dissidents, parents, adult transgenders, transgenders, detransitioners. She exposes the in group out group hysteria and the asexuality it actually possess. Shrier is brave. You might be brave to read this.
And truly, this is less about transgenders and more about the frailty, loneliness and despair in our vulnerable population: Teenage Girls.
]]> The Broom of the System 6750 467 David Foster Wallace 0142002429 Shannon 0 to-read 3.84 1987 The Broom of the System
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics]]> 36613747 Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness

When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into this extraordinary world and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. How to Change Your Mind is a report from what could very well be the future of human consciousness.]]> 480 Michael Pollan 0241294223 Shannon 5 4.25 2018 How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
author: Michael Pollan
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/08
date added: 2021/07/08
shelves:
review:
Good to know a bunch of college kids were onto something. Psychedelics have a purpose.
]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Shannon 4 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/10
date added: 2021/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> A Place for Us 36840397 A Place for Us unfolds the lives of an Indian-American Muslim family, gathered together in their Californian hometown to celebrate the eldest daughter, Hadia's, wedding - a match of love rather than tradition. It is here, on this momentous day, that Amar, the youngest of the siblings, reunites with his family for the first time in three years. Rafiq and Layla must now contend with the choices and betrayals that lead to their son's estrangement - the reckoning of parents who strove to pass on their cultures and traditions to their children; and of children who in turn struggle to balance authenticity in themselves with loyalty to the home they came from.

In a narrative that spans decades and sees family life through the eyes of each member, A Place For Us charts the crucial moments in the family's past, from the bonds that bring them together to the differences that pull them apart. And as siblings Hadia, Huda, and Amar attempt to carve out a life for themselves, they must reconcile their present culture with their parent's faith, to tread a path between the old world and the new, and learn how the smallest decisions can lead to the deepest of betrayals.

A deeply affecting and resonant story, A Place for Us is truly a book for our times: a moving portrait of what it means to be an American family today, a novel of love, identity and belonging that eloquently examines what it means to be both American and Muslim -- and announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.]]> 385 Fatima Farheen Mirza 1524763551 Shannon 0 to-read 4.17 2018 A Place for Us
author: Fatima Farheen Mirza
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Shannon 5 Beautiful happy endings. 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/11
date added: 2021/05/06
shelves:
review:
Beautiful happy endings.
]]> <![CDATA[The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure]]> 36556202
First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They situate the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.]]> 352 Jonathan Haidt 0735224900 Shannon 5 4.23 2018 The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/16
date added: 2021/03/16
shelves:
review:
If you love, teach,rear, or are a Gen Z; read this.
]]> <![CDATA[Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President]]> 10335318
But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.]]> 339 Candice Millard 0385526261 Shannon 0 to-read 4.19 2011 Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
author: Candice Millard
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family]]> 50088631 The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.]]> 377 Robert Kolker 038554376X Shannon 4 4.13 2020 Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
author: Robert Kolker
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/11
date added: 2021/03/11
shelves:
review:
Great story to examine the history of schizophrenia diagnosis, treatment and development of related drugs.
]]> 1984 40961427 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.]]> 298 George Orwell Shannon 3 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/01
date added: 2021/03/01
shelves:
review:
I hate to give 3/5 stars, but I can’t stop comparing it to Fahrenheit 451. 451 moved me, 1984 seemed dry.
]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future]]> 49512631 From leading scholar James Shapiro, a timely exploration of what Shakespeare's plays reveal about our divided land, from Revolutionary times to the present day

Read at school by almost every student, staged in theaters across the land, and long highly valued by both conservatives and liberals alike, Shakespeare's plays are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries now, Americans of all stripes--presidents and activists, writers and soldiers--have turned to Shakespeare's works to address the nation's political fault lines, such as manifest destiny, race, gender, immigration, and free speech. In a narrative arching across the centuries, James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare's 400-year-old tragedies and comedies in making sense of so many of these issues on which American identity has turned. Reflecting on how Shakespeare has been invoked--and at times weaponized--at pivotal moments in our past, Shapiro takes us from President John Quincy Adams's disgust with Desdemona's interracial marriage to Othello, to Abraham Lincoln's and his assassin John Wilkes Booth's competing obsessions with the plays, up through the fraught debates over marriage and same-sex love at the heart of the celebrated adaptations Kiss Me Kate and Shakespeare in Love. His narrative culminates in the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated.

Extraordinarily researched, Shakespeare in a Divided America shows that no writer has been more closely embraced by Americans, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history. Indeed, it is by better understanding Shakespeare's role in American life, Shapiro argues, that we might begin to mend our bitterly divided land.]]> 286 James Shapiro 0525522298 Shannon 0 to-read 4.09 2020 Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future
author: James Shapiro
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Shannon 0 to-read 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Homeland Elegies 50358133 Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds of 9/11 wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.]]> 368 Ayad Akhtar 0316496421 Shannon 0 to-read 4.11 2020 Homeland Elegies
author: Ayad Akhtar
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Shannon 3 3.90 1915 The Metamorphosis
author: Franz Kafka
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/12
date added: 2021/02/12
shelves:
review:
I read this just to get it off my Should list. Singularly, I found no meaning nor insight. I rather enjoyed the jaunty pace and simple story; until Grete, bitch, ruins it all.
]]> <![CDATA[REVIEW OF MCCONAUGHEY’S GREEN LIGHTS: A Candid and Inspirational Memoir to Spiritual and Personal Discovery]]> 56042951 A green light is an assertion, setting yourself up for progress," he says. "A greenlight can be as basic as placing your espresso in the espresso machine before you head to sleep so tomorrow first thing all you must do is press the catch." Through greenlights, individuals set themselves for simplicity and success later on, he says. At times greenlights come through choices we make, now and again they're offered to us.
The manner in which McConaughey expounds on his family in the book feels fierce, and yet, loaded with adoration.]]> 19 Charles A. Johnson Shannon 4 4.23 REVIEW OF MCCONAUGHEY’S GREEN LIGHTS: A Candid and Inspirational Memoir to Spiritual and Personal Discovery
author: Charles A. Johnson
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/09
date added: 2021/02/09
shelves:
review:
Listened to MM read his book. I like him.
]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Shannon 0 to-read 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Shannon 0 to-read 4.00 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace]]> 40589794 224 Christie Purifoy 031035224X Shannon 3 4.25 2019 Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace
author: Christie Purifoy
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/28
date added: 2021/01/28
shelves:
review:
The angst got old, but the antidotal information was nice, the author-very sweet-and the ending, beautiful. Recommended for young women...4 stars from my 30 year old self.
]]> <![CDATA[The Gulag Archipelago 1918�1956 (Abridged)]]> 70561 The Gulag Archipelago 1918�1956—a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle—has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia.]]> 512 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0060007761 Shannon 0 to-read 4.31 1973 The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unseen Realm 25077593 413 Michael S. Heiser 1577995562 Shannon 4 4.46 2015 The Unseen Realm
author: Michael S. Heiser
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/21
date added: 2021/01/21
shelves:
review:
Whew! It’s a workout. Supernatural might have been a better choice, but all the referencing, cross referencing, highlighting and sighing was worth it. Such a deep dive.
]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Shannon 0 to-read 4.29 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Shannon 3 4.12 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/13
date added: 2021/01/13
shelves:
review:
Ultimately-I liked this book. I do question if I will remember it much in a few years.
]]> The Wonder 28449257
An educated sceptic, Lib expects to expose the fast as a hoax right away. But as she gets to know the girl she becomes more and more unsure. Is Anna a fraud, or a 'living wonder'? Or is something more sinister unfolding right before Lib's eyes?

Written with all the propulsive tension that transported readers of Room, The Wonder asks what lengths we would go to for the love of a child.]]> 291 Emma Donoghue 0316393878 Shannon 3 3.60 2016 The Wonder
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/17
date added: 2020/12/17
shelves:
review:
It’s slow, not boring. Dark, not beautiful. Mysterious and hopeful.
]]> <![CDATA[The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)]]> 13227454
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him - allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.]]> 320 Rachel Joyce 0812993292 Shannon 0 to-read 3.91 2012 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Great Alone 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Shannon 0 to-read 4.44 2018 The Great Alone
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tall Woman 1146301 315 Wilma Dykeman 0030309654 Shannon 0 to-read 4.33 1962 The Tall Woman
author: Wilma Dykeman
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pretense 289745
Marrell, a happily married army wife, adores her family, but throughout her life she’s felt something missing. When she discovers that the void is spiritual, she is afraid to tell her husband. Will he understand that he cannot meet all of her needs, and that she cannot meet all of his?

Covering the lives of Marrell and her two daughters, Mackenzie and Delancey, from the 1970s to the 1990s, Pretense is a character–rich novel written from Lori’s heart that shows the patient love of God and the promise of His forgiveness for all who seek Him.

This bestselling, character-rich novel--now reissued for a brand-new generation of readers--features the Bishop sisters, whose unexpected difficulties threaten their world. Will their life-changing experiences bring them together or tear them apart?

- Publisher

Meet the Bishop sisters -- Two women at the crossroads of life On the outside, the Bishop girls appear as different as sisters can be. Mackenzie is a mahogany-haired beauty who's inherited the determined nature of her Army officer father. Her infectious sense of humor and rare gift of imagination are often hidden by a reserved manner. Radiant, blond Delancey views the world through an artist's eyes, drawing what she sees with wide sweeps of emotion. Her charming and trusting personality easily wins friends and admirers, but also leaves her sensitive heart vulnerable to hurt. As the girls grow, unexpected difficulties threaten their world. Will their life-changing experiences bring them together or tear them apart? Where will they find the love they seek?

- Publisher]]> 708 Lori Wick 0736916881 Shannon 0 to-read 4.09 1998 Pretense
author: Lori Wick
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Frog Music 18295858
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.

In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.]]> 405 Emma Donoghue 031632468X Shannon 0 to-read 3.18 2014 Frog Music
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Shannon 4 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/09
date added: 2020/12/09
shelves:
review:
A portrait of an man. A good man, imperfect, ordinary. No entertainment, just pure, unadulterated, plain spoken literature.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution]]> 50611052 Modern culture is obsessed with identity.

Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends--and yet, no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of self. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman carefully analyzes the roots and development of the sexual revolution as a symptom, rather than the cause, of the human search for identity. This timely exploration of the history of thought behind the sexual revolution teaches readers about the past, brings clarity to the present, and gives guidance for the future as Christians navigate the culture's ever-changing search for identity.]]> 432 Carl R. Trueman 1433556332 Shannon 0 to-read 4.56 2020 The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution
author: Carl R. Trueman
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Midnight Library 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559477 Shannon 3 3.96 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/07
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves:
review:
Great ideas in the book, very uninspiring main character. Life is what you make it.
]]> Silas Marner 54539 262 George Eliot Shannon 0 to-read 3.67 1861 Silas Marner
author: George Eliot
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1861
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Shannon 5 3.82 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
author: Mark Twain
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/01
date added: 2020/12/01
shelves:
review:
How have a never read this? Funny, poignant, obliquely wise. What a wonderfully told story.
]]> Spilled Milk 18858489
When social services jeopardize her safety condemning her to keep her father’s secret, it’s a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that forces her to speak about the cruelty she’s been hiding. In her pursuit for safety and justice Brooke battles a broken system that pushes to keep her father in the home.

When jury members and a love interest congregate to inspire her to fight, she risks losing the support of family and comes to the realization that some people simply do not want to be saved.

Spilled Milk is a novel of shocking narrative, triumph and resiliency.]]> 388 K.L. Randis Shannon 3 4.42 2013 Spilled Milk
author: K.L. Randis
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2020/10/23
date added: 2020/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Restless: Because You Were Made for More]]> 18126602 Do you feel like you're missing something?

What if this feeling wasn't a bad thing? It could be a longing for more of God and a catalyst to living the life that was designed before the foundations of the earth were laid.

A lot of us, if we're honest, are afraid. We hold our dreams close to our chest. But our passions have a purpose—they were engineered for God's greater plan and he intends for us to use them for his glory and purposes.

In Restless, Bible teacher and fellow struggler Jennie Allen explores practical ways to identify the threads of your life and how to intentionally weave them together. She explains how your gifts, passions, places, and relationships aren't random; they're deliberate and meaningful. And your suffering—it's possible it has produced the very thing you want to give back to the world.

Using the story of Joseph, the dreamer, Jennie explains how his suffering, gifts, relationships—all of the threads of his life—fit into the greater story of God and how our stories can do the same. What would happen if God got bigger than your fear and insecurity, and you spent the rest of your life running without reservation after his purposes for you? You were created for more.]]> 221 Jennie Allen 0849947065 Shannon 3 4.16 2014 Restless: Because You Were Made for More
author: Jennie Allen
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2020/10/19
date added: 2020/10/19
shelves:
review:
It’s short, worth the time to gain a bit of sisterhood encouragement.
]]> Water from My Heart 23197553
Charlie Finn had to grow up fast, living alone by age sixteen. Highly intelligent, he earned a life-changing scholarship to Harvard, where he learned how to survive and thrive on the outskirts of privileged society. That skill served him well in the cutthroat business world, as it does in more lucrative but dangerous ventures he now operates off the coast of Miami. Charlie tries to separate relationships from work. But when his choices produce devastating consequences, he sets out to right wrongs, traveling to Central America where he will meet those who have paid for his actions, including a woman and her young daughter. Will their fated encounter present Charlie with a way to seek the redemption he thought was impossible -- and free his heart to love one woman as he never knew he could?]]> 368 Charles Martin 1455554707 Shannon 4 4.41 2015 Water from My Heart
author: Charles Martin
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/12
date added: 2020/10/12
shelves:
review:
This was a tidy 3 star read, until the epilogue. What a lovely author and book. It touched my heart. Ó˥️
]]> <![CDATA[Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked]]> 30962055
In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.

By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.]]> 368 Adam Alter 1594206643 Shannon 0 to-read 3.83 2017 Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
author: Adam Alter
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Pull of the Stars 51824630 THE NEW #1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OFĚýTHE WONDERĚý´ˇ±·¶ŮĚýROOMĚý

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the great flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author ofĚýThe WonderĚýandĚýRoom.Ěý

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.Ěý

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, caregivers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.Ěý

InĚýThe Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.Ěý]]> 304 Emma Donoghue 1443461792 Shannon 0 to-read 3.93 2020 The Pull of the Stars
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts]]> 52780142 You can choose hope in the midst of chaos. The visionary behind the million-strong IF:Gathering challenges you to exercise your God-given power to shift negative thinking patterns and take back control of your thoughts and emotions.

Are your thoughts holding you captive? I’ll never be good enough. Other people have better lives than I do. God couldn’t really love me. Jennie Allen knows what it’s like to swirl in a spiral of destructive thoughts, but she also knows we don’t have to stay stuck in toxic thinking patterns.

As she discovered in her own life, God built a way for us to escape that downward spiral. Freedom comes when we refuse to be victims to our thoughts and realize we have already been equipped with power from God to fight and win the war for our minds.

In Get Out of Your Head, Jennie inspires and equips us to transform our emotions, our outlook, and even our circumstances by taking control of our thoughts. Our enemy is determined to get in our heads to make us feel helpless, overwhelmed, and incapable of making a difference for the kingdom of God. But when we submit our minds to Christ, the promises and goodness of God flood our lives in remarkable ways.

It starts in your head. And from there, the possibilities are endless.]]> 223 Jennie Allen 1601429649 Shannon 5 4.06 2020 Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts
author: Jennie Allen
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2020/07/26
date added: 2020/07/28
shelves:
review:
Audiobook. 5 stars. Good stuff here y’all.
]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Shannon 4 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/03
date added: 2020/07/03
shelves:
review:
The longer you listen, the better it gets. Audiobook must.
]]> Happiness 25874287
Unfortunately, many Christians are taught early on that God doesn’t want us to be happy (he wants us to be holy). In fact, many Christians are laboring under the false notion that God himself is not happy. But nothing could be further from the truth! God does want us to be happy. The Bible is filled with verses that prove that ours is a happy, joy-filled God who not only loves celebrations but also desperately wants his children to be happy. Why else would He go to the lengths He did to ensure our eternal happiness in His presence? We know that we will experience unimaginable joy and happiness in Heaven, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also experience joy and happiness here on earth.

In Happiness, noted theologian Randy Alcorn dispels centuries of misconceptions about happiness and provides indisputable proof that God not only wants us to be happy, He commands it. The most definitive study on the subject of happiness to date, this book is a paradigm-shifting wake-up call for the church and Christians everywhere.]]> 450 Randy Alcorn 1414389345 Shannon 0 to-read 4.23 2015 Happiness
author: Randy Alcorn
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lottery 6219656
“The Lottery� stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery� has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
]]> 30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Shannon 3 4.08 1948 The Lottery
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1948
rating: 3
read at: 2020/06/24
date added: 2020/06/24
shelves:
review:
Best part of this book? The commentary.
]]> <![CDATA[The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel]]> 50437436
In the late 1980s, a spectacular three-year-old female racehorse named Winning Colors was being groomed for success under her famous "Hollywood" trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, and the billionaire owner of the San Diego Chargers pro-football team, Eugene Klein. Meanwhile, three fun-loving gamblers, Miami Paul, Dino Mateo, and Big Bernie believed that Winning Colors could be the unlikely female winner of the 1988 Kentucky Derby.

When the gamblers unknowingly place their longshot bet with members of a suspected drug cartel at a racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, they must figure out how to claim their prize -- without getting killed in the process. In a heart-pounding race of their own across the U.S.-Mexico border, the trio come face-to-face with suspected killers, are arrested by the Border Patrol, and fumble their way through the riskiest bet of their lives.]]> 162 Mark Paul 1949642305 Shannon 0 to-read 4.05 2020 The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel
author: Mark Paul
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stud: Adventures in Breeding 1735376
Every year, on Valentine's Day, the great Thoroughbred farms open their breeding sheds and begin their primary business. For the next one hundred and fifty days, the cries of stallions and the vigorous encouragement of their handlers echo through breeding country, from the gentle hills of Kentucky to the rich valleys of California.

First appearing as an article in The New Yorker , Stud takes you into this strange and seductive world. We move from Lexington's Overbrook Farm, where the world's leading sire, Storm Cat, a lightly raced eighteen-year-old, brings in around thirty million dollars a year; to the auction halls, where sheiks and bookies (known more casually as the Doobie Brothers and the Boys) bid millions for Storm Cat's well-bred offspring. We visit Three Chimneys, where the twenty-seven-year-old Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, a senior citizen by equine standards, makes a rousing return to active duty after spinal surgery, and stroll through Running Horse Farm, on the banks of the Rio Grande, where a nearly unmanageable colt, Devil Begone, has found peace and prosperity servicing desert mares like Patty O'Furniture.

Cheap stud, top stud, old stud, wild stud, from the Hall of Fame horse to the harem stallion with his feral herd, Stud looks at intimate acts in idyllic settings (and the billion-dollar business behind them), providing a voyeuristic glimpse of just how human the equine world can be.]]> 288 Kevin Conley 1582341842 Shannon 0 to-read 4.07 2002 Stud: Adventures in Breeding
author: Kevin Conley
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> American Dirt 45046527
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?]]> 459 Jeanine Cummins Shannon 3 4.32 2020 American Dirt
author: Jeanine Cummins
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/06/08
date added: 2020/06/09
shelves:
review:
It’ll be a movie. Movie might be better than the book.
]]> Invitation to a Beheading 376561 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.]]> 223 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725318 Shannon 0 to-read 3.95 1935 Invitation to a Beheading
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Shannon 0 to-read 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]]> 36529
An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.]]> 158 Frederick Douglass 1580495761 Shannon 4 4.08 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
author: Frederick Douglass
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1845
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/06/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Shannon 3 Sponge cake. 4.08 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2020/05/04
date added: 2020/05/04
shelves:
review:
Sponge cake.
]]> Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1) 25893693
On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.]]> 487 Martha Hall Kelly 1101883073 Shannon 0 to-read 4.27 2016 Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1)
author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hobbit, or There and Back Again]]> 5907 Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]> 366 J.R.R. Tolkien Shannon 3 The movies? 5/5]]> 4.29 1937 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/29
date added: 2020/03/01
shelves:
review:
I wanted to love it, but I liked it. Purely the blame of the reader. My mind cannot conjure what it takes to thoroughly enjoy a book of this composition.
The movies? 5/5
]]> <![CDATA[Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail]]> 18527222 Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful� and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.�

Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.]]> 288 Ben Montgomery 1613747187 Shannon 0 to-read 4.03 2014 Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
author: Ben Montgomery
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Kitchen House 6837103
Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.]]> 369 Kathleen Grissom 1439153663 Shannon 0 to-read 4.21 2010 The Kitchen House
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Shannon 1 Gag. 4.18 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 1
read at: 2020/02/12
date added: 2020/02/12
shelves:
review:
Gag.
]]> <![CDATA[The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store]]> 35488858
In her late twenties, Cait Flanders found herself stuck in the consumerism cycle that grips so many of us: earn more, buy more, want more, rinse, repeat. Even after she worked her way out of nearly $30,000 of consumer debt, her old habits took hold again. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy—only keeping her from meeting her goals—she decided to set herself a challenge:Ěýshe would not shop for an entire year.

The Year of LessĚýdocuments Cait’s life for twelve months during which she bought only consumables: groceries, toiletries, gas for her car. Along the way, she challenged herself to consume less of many other things besides shopping. She decluttered her apartment and got rid of 70 percent of her belongings; learned how to fix things rather than throw them away; researched the zero waste movement; and completed a television ban. At every stage, she learned that the less she consumed, the more fulfilled she felt.

The challenge became a lifeline when, in the course of the year, Cait found herself in situations that turned her life upside down. In the face of hardship, she realized why she had always turned to shopping, alcohol, and food—and what it had cost her. Unable to reach for any of her usual vices, she changed habits she’d spent years perfecting and discovered what truly mattered to her.

Blending Cait’s compelling story with inspiring insight and practical guidance,ĚýThe Year of LessĚýwill leave you questioning what you’re holding on to in your own life—and, quite possibly, lead you to find your own path ofĚýless.]]> 189 Cait Flanders 1401954871 Shannon 2 Another memoir. 3.43 2018 The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store
author: Cait Flanders
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/03
date added: 2020/02/03
shelves:
review:
Another memoir.
]]> <![CDATA[Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God]]> 18669493 Still and Girl Meets God--joins the ranks of luminaries such as Anne Lamott and Barbara Brown Taylor with this exploration of little known--and, so, little used--biblical metaphors for God, metaphors which can open new doorways for our lives and spiritualities.

There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God, Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives.

Exploring the notion of God as clothing, Winner reflects on how we are "clothed with Christ" or how "God fits us like a garment." She then analyzes how clothing functions culturally to shape our ideals and identify our community, and ruminates on how this new metaphor can function to create new possibilities for our lives. For each biblical metaphor--God as the vine/vintner who animates life; the lactation consultant; and the comedian, showing us our follies, for example--Winner surveys the historical, literary, and cultural landscapes in order to revive and heal our souls.]]> 304 Lauren F. Winner 006176812X Shannon 0 to-read 3.96 2014 Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God
author: Lauren F. Winner
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stationery Shop 42201995 A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea—extolled by the Wall Street Journal as a “moving tale of lost love� and by Shelf Awareness as “a powerful, heartbreaking story”—explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.

Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.

Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?]]> 312 Marjan Kamali 1982107480 Shannon 0 to-read 4.22 2019 The Stationery Shop
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333794 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.]]> 718 Donna Tartt 0316248673 Shannon 5 4.01 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2019/12/19
date added: 2019/12/19
shelves:
review:
Wide brush strokes with itty bitty, microscopic, DNA details; searching for truth midst euphoria and despair in every corner, every crevice, every story, every person. Donna Tart. No one like her.
]]> <![CDATA[The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies]]> 32025298 Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II

In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of Elizebeth Smith who played an integral role in our nation's history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma--and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.Fagone unveils America's code-breaking history through the prism of Smith's life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence.]]> 444 Jason Fagone 0062430483 Shannon 0 to-read 4.04 2017 The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies
author: Jason Fagone
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Spirit Took You In: The Romance that Sparked an Epidemic of Fear: A Memoir of the Life and Death of Thomas Eric Duncan, America's First Ebola Victim]]> 25501314 282 Louise Troh Shannon 3 3.85 2015 My Spirit Took You In: The Romance that Sparked an Epidemic of Fear: A Memoir of the Life and Death of Thomas Eric Duncan, America's First Ebola Victim
author: Louise Troh
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2016/12/17
date added: 2019/12/08
shelves:
review:
Interesting story, interesting perspective.
]]> <![CDATA[Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology]]> 26827675 The outspoken actress, talk show host, and reality television star offers up a no-holds-barred memoir, including an eye-opening insider account of her tumultuous and heart-wrenching thirty-year-plus association with the Church of Scientology.

Leah Remini has never been the type to hold her tongue. That willingness to speak her mind, stand her ground, and rattle the occasional cage has enabled this tough-talking girl from Brooklyn to forge an enduring and successful career in Hollywood. But being a troublemaker has come at a cost.

That was never more evident than in 2013, when Remini loudly and publicly broke with the Church of Scientology. Now, in this frank, funny, poignant memoir, the former King of Queens star opens up about that experience for the first time, revealing the in-depth details of her painful split with the church and its controversial practices.

Indoctrinated into the church as a child while living with her mother and sister in New York, Remini eventually moved to Los Angeles, where her dreams of becoming an actress and advancing Scientology's causes grew increasingly intertwined. As an adult, she found the success she'd worked so hard for, and with it a prominent place in the hierarchy of celebrity Scientologists alongside people such as Tom Cruise, Scientology's most high-profile adherent. Remini spent time directly with Cruise and was included among the guests at his 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes.

But when she began to raise questions about some of the church's actions, she found herself a target. In the end, she was declared by the church to be a threat to their organization and therefore a "Suppressive Person," and as a result, all of her fellow parishioners—including members of her own family—were told to disconnect from her. Forever.

Bold, brash, and bravely confessional, Troublemaker chronicles Leah Remini's remarkable journey toward emotional and spiritual freedom, both for herself and for her family. This is a memoir designed to reveal the hard-won truths of a life lived honestly—from an author unafraid of the consequences.]]> 256 Leah Remini 110188696X Shannon 0 to-read 4.02 2015 Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology
author: Leah Remini
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Shannon 0 to-read 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford]]> 27214080
Secret Service agent Clint Hill brings history intimately and vividly to life as he reflects on his seventeen years protecting the most powerful office in the nation. Hill walked alongside Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, seeing them through a long, tumultuous era—the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War; Watergate; and the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard M. Nixon.

Some of his stunning, never-before-revealed anecdotes include:
-Eisenhower’s reaction at Russian Prime Minister Khrushchev’s refusal to talk following the U-2 incident
-The torture of watching himself in the Zapruder film in a Secret Service training
-Johnson’s virtual imprisonment in the White House during violent anti-Vietnam protests
-His decision to place White House files under protection after a midnight phone call about Watergate
-The challenges of protecting Ford after he pardoned Nixon

With a unique insider’s perspective, Hill sheds new light on the character and personality of these five presidents, revealing their humanity in the face of grave decisions.]]> 451 Clint Hill 1476794138 Shannon 3 4.26 2016 Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford
author: Clint Hill
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2019/11/18
date added: 2019/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Braving the Wilderness 34565022 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A timely and important book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK

"True belonging doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are." Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives--experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging.

Brown argues that we're experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, "True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that's rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it's easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it's a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It's a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts." Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, "The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand."]]> 197 Brené Brown 0812995848 Shannon 4 4.11 2017 Braving the Wilderness
author: Brené Brown
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/01
date added: 2019/11/06
shelves:
review:
Love/Hate her. Despite-she calls out the good, hard things.
]]> The Woman in the Window 40389527
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.]]> 455 A.J. Finn Shannon 0 to-read 3.95 2018 The Woman in the Window
author: A.J. Finn
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Deserter (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor)]]> 42299795
An “outstanding� ( Publishers Weekly , starred review) blistering thriller featuring a brilliant and unorthodox Army investigator, his enigmatic female partner, and their hunt for the Army’s most notorious—and dangerous—deserter from #1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille.

When Captain Kyle Mercer of the Army’s elite Delta Force disappeared from his post in Afghanistan, a video released by his Taliban captors made international headlines. But circumstances were Did Mercer desert before he was captured? Then a second video sent to Mercer’s Army commanders leaves no the trained assassin and keeper of classified Army intelligence has willfully disappeared.

When Mercer is spotted a year later in Caracas, Venezuela, by an old Army buddy, top military brass task Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division to fly to Venezuela and bring Mercer back to America—preferably alive. Brodie knows this is a difficult mission, made more difficult by his new partner’s inexperience, by their undeniable chemistry, and by Brodie’s suspicion that Maggie Taylor is reporting to the CIA.

With ripped-from-the-headlines appeal, an exotic and dangerous locale, and the hairpin twists and inimitable humor that are signature DeMille, The Deserter is the first in a timely and thrilling new series from an unbeatable team of True the #1 New York Times bestseller Nelson DeMille and his son, award-winning screenwriter Alex DeMille.]]> 530 Nelson DeMille 1501101757 Shannon 0 to-read 3.98 2019 The Deserter (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor)
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century]]> 44153387

Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.]]> 336 Kirk Wallace Johnson 1101981636 Shannon 4 4.01 2018 The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
author: Kirk Wallace Johnson
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/29
date added: 2019/10/29
shelves:
review:
Great audio book. Interesting, well told, story of Edwin Rist.
]]> Rebecca 12873 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers...

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.]]> 428 Daphne du Maurier 1844080382 Shannon 3 4.19 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1938
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/15
date added: 2019/10/15
shelves:
review:
Audiobook: Narrator made the slow pace, melodrama and stark characters delicious. Ultimately a broadcast network miniseries, book style.
]]> <![CDATA[The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too)]]> 33566873 Better Than Before and The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin reveals the one simple question that will transform what you do at home, at work, and in life.

During her multibook investigation into understanding human nature, Gretchen Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question "How do I respond to expectations?" we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively.

More than 600,000 people have taken her online quiz, and managers, doctors, teachers, spouses, and parents already use the framework to help people make significant, lasting change.

The Four Tendencies hold practical answers if you've ever thought...

· People can rely on me, but I can't rely on myself.
· How can I help someone to follow good advice?
· People say I ask too many questions.
· How do I work with someone who refuses to do what I ask or who keeps telling me what to do?

With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. It's far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.]]> 7 Gretchen Rubin 0525496289 Shannon 3 3.81 2017 The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too)
author: Gretchen Rubin
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/09
date added: 2019/10/09
shelves:
review:
Interesting, not earth shattering. Another tool in the tool box.
]]> The Scarlet Letter 12296 279 Nathaniel Hawthorne 0142437263 Shannon 0 to-read 3.43 1850 The Scarlet Letter
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1850
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>