en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 19:38:35 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 776573 256 Russell Hoban 0253212340 Jonathan 0 currently-reading 4.03 1980
author: Russell Hoban
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> 211003982 How a new “woke� elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status—without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged

Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is “wokeness� and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.

We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong� things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi’s point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.

A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite’s self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.]]> 432 Musa al-Gharbi 0691232601 Jonathan 4 4.22
author: Musa al-Gharbi
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 4
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]]> 53241562 A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.

You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love.

In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth -- the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries -- from the unpaid intern, to the overworked nurse, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete -- Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work.
As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.]]> 432 Sarah Jaffe 1568589395 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.98 2021
author: Sarah Jaffe
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 38385947
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history.

He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear � a struggle that continues even now.

While the American story has not always � or even often � been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, "The good news is that we have come through such darkness before" � as, time and again, Lincoln's better angels have found a way to prevail.]]> 372 Jon Meacham 039958983X Jonathan 0 to-read 4.26 2018
author: Jon Meacham
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> 50903653 272 Sean Dietrich 0310355753 Jonathan 0 ebook, read-on-kindle 4.48 2020
author: Sean Dietrich
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: ebook, read-on-kindle
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]]> 28387572
You'll lose a lot of sleep.

Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death.

That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his hometown is about to become the new Armageddon.

An evil of unimaginable proportions has found a way in and Ralph has only one chance to beat it. The stakes are high - they always are when you're playing for human souls. With a Joker in the pack... a bald one with a rusty scalpel.]]> 793 Stephen King Jonathan 0 4.17 1994
author: Stephen King
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 40672036
In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction.

Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions.

Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.]]> 302 Cal Newport 052553654X Jonathan 0 read-on-kindle, library 4.06 2019
author: Cal Newport
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 8724626 Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification.

Why is it so hard to say “I made a mistake”—and really believe it? When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat others, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. As a result, we unconsciously create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-justification—how it works, the damage it can cause, and how we can overcome it.]]> 84 Frederic P. Miller 6131661405 Jonathan 0 will-never-read 4.00 2007
author: Frederic P. Miller
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Jonathan 3 own 3.92 2023
author: Paul Murray
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: own
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]]> 32603079
For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them--and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.]]> 845 Chuck Wendig 039918211X Jonathan 0 to-read 3.94 2019
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Jonathan 3 own 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: own
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]]> 62069739
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.Ěý

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 193 BenjamĂ­n Labatut Jonathan 3 read-on-kindle, library 4.10 2020
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.31 1967
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> 8229029
In the past few years, a handful of scientists have been in a race to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only 4 percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every planet, star, and galaxy. The restâ€�96 percent of the universe—is completely unknown. Ěý

Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of how scientists reached this conclusion, and what they’re doing to find this "dark" matter and an even more bizarre substance called dark energy. Based on in-depth, on-site reporting and hundreds of interviews—with everyone from Berkeley’s feisty Saul Perlmutter and Johns Hopkins’s meticulous Adam Riess to the quietly revolutionary Vera Rubin—the book offers an intimate portrait of the bitter rivalries and fruitful collaborations, the eureka moments and blind alleys, that have fueled their search, redefined science, and reinvented the universe.]]> 297 Richard Panek 0618982442 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.94 2010
author: Richard Panek
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 80571
J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets.

In this magisterial biography twenty-five years in the making, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography, the authors capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War.]]> 721 Kai Bird Jonathan 0 to-read 4.27 2005
author: Kai Bird
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2005
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]]> 22514020 Ěý
Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger’s syndrome, whose “little professors� were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences.]]> 477 Steve Silberman 158333467X Jonathan 0 to-read 4.27 2015
author: Steve Silberman
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 40600256 From iconic actor and bestselling author Alan Alda, an indispensable guide to communicating better—based on his experience with acting, improv, science, and storytelling

The acclaimed actor shares fascinating and powerful lessons from the art and science of communication, and teaches readers to improve the way they relate to others using improv games, storytelling, and their own innate ability to read what’s probably going on in the minds of others. With his trademark humor and frankness, Alan Alda explains what makes the out-of-the-box techniques he developed after his years as the host of Scientific American Frontiers so effective. This book reveals what it means to be a true communicator, and how we can communicate better, in every aspect of our lives—with our friends, lovers, and families, with our doctors, in business settings, and beyond.]]> 210 Alan Alda 0812989163 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.87 2017
author: Alan Alda
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 527823 199 Craig Clevenger 1931561486 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.99 2002
author: Craig Clevenger
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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]]> 216670080
A pregnant woman’s sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child’s picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbit hole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, every one holding a disturbing clue, this novel invites readers to piece together the harrowing truth behind each and the overarching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the bestselling international debut from mystery-horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.]]> 236 Uketsu 0063433087 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.05 2022
author: Uketsu
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 27833803 From the author of The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tale and video game into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family
Ěý
When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.
Ěý
On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the “Producer,� the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path.
Ěý
At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.]]> 278 Drew Magary 0399563857 Jonathan 4 3.96 2016
author: Drew Magary
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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]]> 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Leif Enger
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 9598 Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe . . . and who we say we are.]]> 271 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334176 Jonathan 4 ebook, library 3.84 1982
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: ebook, library
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]]> 36442813
With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery, inviting us to imagine a world where time is in us and we are not in time.]]> 224 Carlo Rovelli 073521610X Jonathan 0 to-read 4.14 2017
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> 1337973
Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.]]> 164 YĹŤko Ogawa 0312426836 Jonathan 3 3.75 1990
author: YĹŤko Ogawa
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> 68429
The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler—the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years—has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protégé, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves.

As Kelsier's protégé and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.

Stopping assassins may keep Vin's Mistborn skills sharp, but it's the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn't run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier's crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won't get easier with three armies - one of them composed of ferocious giants - now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler's hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal.

As the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.]]> 590 Brandon Sanderson 0765316889 Jonathan 0 currently-reading, audiobook 4.38 2007
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> 68428 What if the whole world were a dead, blasted wasteland?

Mistborn
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Then Kelsier reveals his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn trust if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale-spinner and author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the Dark Lord? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises that begins with the book in your hands. Fantasy will never be the same again.]]> 541 Brandon Sanderson Jonathan 4 4.48 2006
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Jonathan 5 4.28 1939
author: Agatha Christie
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 61783837 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES 2023 BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR "A smart, savvy road map through the mayhem of the cryptocurrency madness." —RON CHERNOW, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofĚýAlexander Hamilton

From “one of the crypto industry’s unlikely but most prominent criticsâ€� (Washington Post), an entertaining and well-researched account of the rise and fall of cryptocurrency. Ěý At the height of the pandemic, TV star Ben McKenzie was the perfect mark for a dad stuck at home with some cash in his pocket, worried about his family, armed with only the vague notion that people were making heaps of money on something he—despite a degree in economics—didn’t entirely understand. Lured in by grandiose, utopian promises, and sure, a little bit of FOMO, McKenzie dove deep into blockchain, Bitcoin, and the various other coins and exchanges on which they are traded. But after scratching the surface, he had to ask, “Am I crazy, or is this all a total scam?â€� Ěý In Easy Money, McKenzie enlists the help of journalist Jacob Silverman for an investigative adventure into crypto and its remarkable crash. Weaving together stories of average traders and victims, colorful crypto “visionaries,â€� Hollywood’s biggest true believers, anti-crypto whistleblowers, and government operatives, Easy Money is an on-the-ground look at a perfect storm of irresponsibility and criminal fraud. Based on original reporting across the country and abroad, including interviews with Sam Bankman-Fried, Tether cofounder Brock Pierce, Celsius’s Alex Mashinsky, and more, this is the book on cryptocurrency you’ve been waiting for.]]> 304 Ben McKenzie 1419766392 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.93 2023
author: Ben McKenzie
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> 71872910 Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore calls for repentance and renewal in American evangelicalism

American evangelical Christianity has lost its way. While the witness of the church before a watching world is diminished beyond recognition, congregations are torn apart over Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, racial injustice, sexual predation, disgraced leaders, and covered-up scandals. Left behind are millions of believers who counted on the church to be a place of belonging and hope. As greater and greater numbers of younger Americans bleed out from the church, even the most rooted evangelicals are wondering, “Can American Christianity survive?�

In Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore calls his fellow evangelical Christians to conversion over culture wars, to truth over tribalism, to the gospel over politics, to integrity over influence, and to renewal over nostalgia. With both prophetic honesty and pastoral love, Moore offers a word of counsel for how a new generation of disillusioned and exhausted believers can find a path forward after the crisis and confusion of the last several years. Believing the gospel is too important to leave it to hucksters and grifters, he shows how a Christian can avoid both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.

The altar call of the old evangelical revivals was both a call to repentance and the offer of a new start. In the same way, this book invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step out into an uncertain future, first by letting go of the kind of cultural, politicized, status quo Christianity that led us to this moment of reckoning. Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what’s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.]]> 272 Russell D. Moore 0593541782 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.31
author: Russell D. Moore
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> 204236707 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk—and the players raising the stakes In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life.ĚýĚýThese professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21stĚýcentury. By embedding within these worlds, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—including the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.]]> 576 Nate Silver 1594204128 Jonathan 4 ebook 3.61 2024
author: Nate Silver
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: ebook
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]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Jonathan 3
Get in the barrel.
]]> 3.61 2024
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
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This got weird.

Get in the barrel.

]]> 65327
Maybe a wall of silent resentment has shut you off from someone you love. Maybe you listen to an argument in which neither party seems to hear the other. Or maybe your mind drifts to other matters when people talk to you. People Skills is a communication skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these “roadblocks� damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations.

People Skills will show you:

· How to get your needs met using simple assertion techniques

· How body language often speaks louder than words

· How to use silence as a valuable communication tool

· How to de-escalate family disputes, lovers' quarrels, and other heated arguments

Both thought-provoking and practical, People Skills is filled with workable ideas that you can use to improve your communication in meaningful ways, every day.]]> 300 Robert Bolton 067162248X Jonathan 0 to-read 4.02 1979
author: Robert Bolton
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> 198509146 Finding Fortunato, a business-adventure-travel-chocolate memoir that takes readers on an up close and personal journey into the northern Peruvian jungle to watch as last chance entrepreneurs accidentally stumble upon a thought to be extinct variety of cacao.

Dan Pearson was a 62-year-old man coming out of bankruptcy when he started a mining supply distribution company in northern Peru with his son-in-law Brian Horsley. Like almost all of Dan’s previous businesses, the mining supply company soon came to an end and Brian found himself married, with a child, and living in Peru without a job.

Through a series of completely unpredictable lucky breaks, Brian and Dan found a population of cacao growing in a remote canyon of the Peruvian jungle that the USDA called “an unprecedented discovery�. With no job and no other way to earn a living, Brian moved out to the jungle to live with cacao farmers.

With yet another business teetering on the edge of going under, Dan and Brian realize that the only way they can survive and thrive is to completely reconstruct the way chocolate supply chains work. Instead of middlemen eating up all the profits and keeping cacao farmers in relentless poverty that leads to environmental destruction and slavery, Dan and Brian decide to give back as much as they can to their cacao farm partners.

The new approach didn’t only save the business. It provides a blueprint for conducting environmentally sound and ethical direct trade with cacao farmers while also producing more delicious chocolate for chocolate lovers at a better price.]]> 288 Adam Pearson 1637744927 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.00
author: Adam Pearson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.
Ěý
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�
Ěý
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Ěý
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Jonathan 3 4.13 2024
author: Erik Larson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Jonathan 3 ebook, library 3.73 2023
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: ebook, library
review:

]]> 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Jonathan 3 3.77 2022
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 40538681
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]> 538 Adam Higginbotham 1501134612 Jonathan 4 4.35 2019
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
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]]> 6913830
In 2004, two great scientist-explorers are attempting to find the bottom of the world. Bold, heroic American Bill Stone is committed to the vast Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico and deadly even by supercave standards. On the other side of the globe, legendary Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk—Stone’s polar opposite in temperament and style, but every bit his equal in scientific expertise, physical bravery, and sheer determination—has targeted Krubera, a freezing nightmare of a supercave in the Republic of Georgia, where underground dangers are compounded by the horrors of separatist war in this former Soviet republic.]]> 286 James M. Tabor 1400067677 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.68 2010
author: James M. Tabor
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25622227 New Yorker staff writer John Seabrook tells a fascinating story of creativity and commerce that explains how songs have become so addictive.

Over the last two decades a new type of song has emerged. Today’s hits bristle with “hooks,� musical burrs designed to snag your ear every seven seconds. Painstakingly crafted to tweak the brain’s delight in melody, rhythm, and repetition, these songs are industrial-strength products made for malls, casinos, the gym, and the Super Bowl halftime show. The tracks are so catchy, and so potent, that you can’t not listen to them.

Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early �90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today’s charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna, as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.]]> 336 John Seabrook 0393241920 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.88 2015
author: John Seabrook
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7624594
As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.

Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.]]> 329 John Vaillant 0307268934 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.04 2010
author: John Vaillant
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57693457 After several deaths punctuating a series of all-too-brief life spans, a clone reassesses his purpose � and his humanity � in Edward Ashton’s Mickey7, “a unique blend of thought-provoking sci-fi concepts, farcical relationship drama, and exotic body horror� (New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin).

EXPENDABLE \ik’spen-d�-b’l\ n. A human clone utilized for dangerous work on space exploration missions. An Expendable’s personality and memories may be transferred intact to a new body if and when the current host dies.

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable, now on his seventh iteration, living � and dying � among his fellow colonists on the near-uninhabitable ice world of Niflheim. Some consider him immortal. Others believe he’s a soulless monstrosity. For the past nine years, he has been deployed for hazardous assignments and subjected to experiments that test the limits of human endurance, his humanity sacrificed for the greater good.

While on reconnaissance, Mickey7 is injured and left for dead, only to be saved by Niflheim’s native species, thought to be insentient by the colonists. Returning to base, Mickey7 meets his next generation, Mickey8. Neither clone is willing to recycle himself, but if anyone discovers multiple Mickeys exist, they’ll both be executed � and there won’t ever be a Mickey9.

But Mickey7’s premature twin isn’t his only secret. He hasn’t uploaded his memories in a month, leaving his clone in the dark about his near death and close encounter with the planet’s inhabitants. Mickey7 also doesn’t know how all of his previous selves died, and those he remembers have left him traumatized and mistrustful of the colony’s mission. A mission that has Mickey Barnes questioning his moral and mortal existence...again...and again....]]> 296 Edward Ashton 1250275032 Jonathan 0 audiobook 3.74 2022
author: Edward Ashton
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: audiobook
review:

]]> 201319612 The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the drugs upending weight loss as we knew it—from his personal experience on Ozempic to what these drugs mean for our society’s deeply dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodiesIn January 2023, bestselling author Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, the diabetes drug that produces significant weight loss. HeĚýwasn’t alone—credible predictions suggest that in two years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking this class of drug. Proponents say that this is a biological solution to a biological problem. While 95 percent of diets fail, the average person taking one of the new drugs will lose a quarter of their body weight in six months, and keep it off for as long as they take it. Here is a moment of liberation from an illness that massively increases your chances of diabetes, dementia, and cancer, and causes 10 percent of all deaths.ĚýStill, Hari was wildly conflicted. The massive rise in obesity rates around the world in the last half century didn’t happen because something went wrong with human biology. It happened because something went disastrously wrong with our We began to eat food designed to be maximally addictive. We built cities that are impossible to walk or bike around. We became much more stressed, making us seek out more comfort snacks. From this perspective, the new weight loss drugs arrive at a moment of madness. We built a food system that poisons us, then decided en masse to inject ourselves with a different potential poison that puts us off all food.A personal journey through weight loss combined with scientific evidence from experts, Magic Pill explores, as only Hari can, questions How did we get to this point? What does it reveal about our society that we couldn’t solve this problem socially, and instead turned to potentially risky pharmaceutical solutions? And will this free us from social pressure to conform to an ideal body type—or make that pressure even more dangerously intense?]]> 320 Johann Hari 0593728637 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.26 2024
author: Johann Hari
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> 13365267
Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.]]> 247 Jonah Lehrer 0547725833 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.73 2012
author: Jonah Lehrer
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197773418 Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity� is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,� a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.]]> 244 Cal Newport 0593544854 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.65 2024
author: Cal Newport
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6449369 A revolutionary look at how what we pay attention to determines how we experience life Acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher's Rapt makes the radical argument that much of the quality of your life depends not on fame or fortune, beauty or brains, fate or coincidence, but on what you choose to pay attention to. Rapt introduces a diverse cast of characters, from researchers to artists to ranchers, to illustrate the art of living the interested life. As their stories show, by focusing on the most positive and productive elements of any situation, you can shape your inner experience and expand your world. By learning to focus, you can improve your concentration, broaden your inner horizons, and most important, feel what it means to be fully alive.]]> 268 Winifred Gallagher 1101032596 Jonathan 3 paperback-picks, library pay attention, this book is for you.

The book's author doesn't really speak from a position of any authority. By all appearances, the work that went into this book was as follows:

1) Select an area related to attention (EXAMPLES: creativity, relationships).

2) Interview some experts who think about and/or research the subject of attention as it pertains to the selected domain.

3) Write a chapter summarizing the views of the experts, naming and quoting them liberally.

This is not said to put down the author, for Gallagher has done what none of us have time to do: talk to people who know about focus and relate their insights to our daily lives. The book is down-to-earth and practical, rarely making grandiose statements and carefully embellished with disclaimers.

I found much of the book unsurprising, but it's really my own fault: I read Rapt as a chaser after devouring two other works concerning the brain's function in modern life (The Shallows and Your Brain At Work). The fact is that there's some really remarkable research and thinking about the brain going on right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action: these books all cite many of the same recent studies and bring out many of the same points. ]]> 3.83 2009
author: Winifred Gallagher
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/20
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: paperback-picks, library
review:
This is an excellent little book on attention. If you haven't read much about what happens inside your head when you're paying attention, and especially if you aren't sure what it means to pay attention, this book is for you.

The book's author doesn't really speak from a position of any authority. By all appearances, the work that went into this book was as follows:

1) Select an area related to attention (EXAMPLES: creativity, relationships).

2) Interview some experts who think about and/or research the subject of attention as it pertains to the selected domain.

3) Write a chapter summarizing the views of the experts, naming and quoting them liberally.

This is not said to put down the author, for Gallagher has done what none of us have time to do: talk to people who know about focus and relate their insights to our daily lives. The book is down-to-earth and practical, rarely making grandiose statements and carefully embellished with disclaimers.

I found much of the book unsurprising, but it's really my own fault: I read Rapt as a chaser after devouring two other works concerning the brain's function in modern life (The Shallows and Your Brain At Work). The fact is that there's some really remarkable research and thinking about the brain going on right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action: these books all cite many of the same recent studies and bring out many of the same points.
]]> 9303978
Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder and a biologist so spliced with machinery that he can't feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find—but you'd give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them. . . .]]> 388 Peter Watts Jonathan 0 3.97 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2019/11/14
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

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

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

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

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

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

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

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Jonathan 3
Also: it's set in 2082. The idea that the world of 2082 will contain signs and wonders of self-assembling nanotechnology, general AI, antimatter propulsion, human-computer hybrids, and other miracles is so silly that it makes it difficult to suspend disbelief for the entire remainder of the book. Dear author, 2082 is considerably before the completion of the master transportation plan for my metro area, which if I am lucky (I'll be 102) will include light rail.
]]> 4.01 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: ebook, library, read-on-kindle
review:
A unique take on the first-contact genre, but ultimately I had a hard time with it. The writing is smart and fast but also a little overwrought; the plot twists and jabs are disorienting and ultimately made it too hard for this reader to follow what exactly was going on for some chunks of the story. I enjoyed the ride and finished the tale, but I don't think I'll be back to finish the series.

Also: it's set in 2082. The idea that the world of 2082 will contain signs and wonders of self-assembling nanotechnology, general AI, antimatter propulsion, human-computer hybrids, and other miracles is so silly that it makes it difficult to suspend disbelief for the entire remainder of the book. Dear author, 2082 is considerably before the completion of the master transportation plan for my metro area, which if I am lucky (I'll be 102) will include light rail.

]]> 15815342 A dark comic masterpiece—the first solo adult novel in more than a decade from the Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times–bestselling author.

Seth Weinstein knew Tina was way out of his league in pretty much any way you could imagine, which is why it continued to astonish him that he was on the plane now for their destination wedding in Florida. The Groom Posse had already sprung an airport prank on him, and he’d survived it, and if that was the worst of it, everything should be okay. Smooth sailing from now on.

Seth has absolutely no idea what he’s about to get into. In the next several hours, he and his friends will become embroiled with rioters, Russian gangsters, angry strippers, a pimp as big as the Death Star, a very desperate Haitian refugee on the run with her two children from some very bad men, and an eleven-foot albino Burmese python named Blossom. And there’re still two days to go before the wedding.

As it turns out, it’s not smooth sailing, it’s more like a trip on the Titanic. And the water below him is getting deeper every minute. By the end, amid gunfire, high-speed chases, and mayhem of the most unimaginable sort, violent men will fall, heroes will rise, and many lives will change.

Seth’s, not least of all.]]> 341 Dave Barry 0399158685 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.72 2013
author: Dave Barry
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54468020
Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.

Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.

Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?

In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.]]> 256 Calvin Kasulke Jonathan 0 to-read 3.63 2021
author: Calvin Kasulke
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54310999
But when Ava’s new boss—the young and magnetic Mat Putnam—offers Ava a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. Ava remembers how rewarding it can be to open up—and, despite her instincts, she becomes enamored. But Mat isn’t who he claims to be, and the romance takes a sharp turn.

The Very Nice Box is a wryly funny, suspenseful debut—with a shocking twist. It’s at once a send-up of male entitlement and a big-hearted account of grief, friendship, and trust.]]> 320 Laura Blackett Jonathan 0 to-read 3.76 2021
author: Laura Blackett
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8167094 From the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos comes his most expansive and accessible book to date—a book that takes on the grandest question: Is ours the only universe?

There was a time when “universe� meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many. With crystal-clear prose and inspired use of analogy, Brian Greene shows how a range of different “multiverse� proposals emerges from theories developed to explain the most refined observations of both subatomic particles and the dark depths of space: a multiverse in which you have an infinite number of doppelgängers, each reading this sentence in a distant universe; a multiverse comprising a vast ocean of bubble universes, of which ours is but one; a multiverse that endlessly cycles through time, or one that might be hovering millimeters away yet remains invisible; another in which every possibility allowed by quantum physics is brought to life. Or, perhaps strangest of all, a multiverse made purely of math.

Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a captivating exploration of these parallel worlds and reveals how much of reality’s true nature may be deeply hidden within them. And, with his unrivaled ability to make the most challenging of material accessible and entertaining, Greene tackles the core question: How can fundamental science progress if great swaths of reality lie beyond our reach?

Sparked by Greene’s trademark wit and precision, The Hidden Reality is at once a far-reaching survey of cutting-edge physics and a remarkable journey to the very edge of reality—a journey grounded firmly in science and limited only by our imagination.]]> 384 Brian Greene 0307265633 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.10 2011
author: Brian Greene
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 89635 Is the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, the gifted young cosmologist Janna Levin not only announces the central theme of her intriguing and controversial new book but establishes herself as one of the most direct and unorthodox voices in contemporary science. For even as she sets out to determine how big “really big� may be, Levin gives us an intimate look at the day-to-day life of a globe-trotting physicist, complete with jet lag and romantic disturbances.

Nimbly synthesizing geometry, topology, chaos and string theories, Levin shows how the pattern of hot and cold spots left over from the big bang may one day reveal the size and shape of the cosmos. She does so with such originality, lucidity—and even poetry—that How the Universe Got Its Spots becomes a thrilling and deeply personal communication between a scientist and the lay reader.]]> 240 Janna Levin 1400032725 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.98 2002
author: Janna Levin
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.10 2018
author: Richard Powers
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32620349
But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left.]]> 328 Matthew J. Sullivan 1501116843 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.77 2017
author: Matthew J. Sullivan
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.92 1992
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56648660 Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.]]> 251 Bora Chung 1916277187 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.77 2017
author: Bora Chung
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123206645 A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder � from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time � it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder.

We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse � a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered.

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X Jonathan 0 to-read 3.34 2024
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8822819 Remarkable, hilarious and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent " (Jenifer Levin, New York Times Book Review).

Girl with Curious Hair is replete with David Foster Wallace's remarkable and unsettling reimaginations of reality. From the eerily "real," almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, where terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.

This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN: 0393313964/9780393313963]]> 373 David Foster Wallace Jonathan 0 to-read 3.88 1988
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195820708
Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe.

Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruledĚý The Raven Tower.

Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls.

And so much more, inĚýthis masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.Ěý]]> 403 Ann Leckie 0316553573 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Ann Leckie
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62334530 Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

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

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

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.08 2023
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 203110193 362 Owen Cyclops Jonathan 0 to-read 4.58
author: Owen Cyclops
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.58
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57094295 A visionary technothriller about climate change.

Neal Stephenson's sweeping, prescient new novel transports readers to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.

One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as "elemental." But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?

Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?]]> 708 Neal Stephenson 0063028050 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.68 2021
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 68210 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.]]> 247 Marilynne Robinson 031242440X Jonathan 0 3.84 2004
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/22
shelves: ebook, read-on-kindle, library
review:

]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 Jonathan 4 ebook, library 4.26 1989
author: Dan Simmons
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/22
shelves: ebook, library
review:

]]> 24100285
A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.]]> 294 Catherynne M. Valente 1472115074 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.45 2018
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 46266188

Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives, from ensuring the safety of our food and medications and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black- market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences of what happens when the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.]]> 255 Michael Lewis 0393357457 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.09 2018
author: Michael Lewis
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 24731 355 T. Coraghessan Boyle Jonathan 0 to-read 3.65 1995
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34381330
At first, it was a contest, but in time the beasts understood that, with an embrace and the slightest push, they had to lie down on their side and stay until Håkan got up. He did this each time he thought he spied someone on the circular horizon. Had Håkan and his animals ever been spotted, the distant travelers would have taken the vanishing silhouettes for a mirage. But there were no such travelers—the moving shadows he saw almost every day in the distance were illusions. With the double intention of getting away from the trail and the cold, he had traveled south for days.

Hernán Díaz is the author of Borges, Between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury 2012), managing editor of RHM, and associate director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. He lives in New York.]]> 256 Hernan Diaz 1566894883 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.12 2017
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.19 2019
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62981559
Psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke explores why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain ... and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience, Lebke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. Her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption gives us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives.]]> 290 Anna Lembke 1524746746 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.84 2021
author: Anna Lembke
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59803132
“The energy of the narrative never flags. . . . Sancton has produced a thriller.”� The Wall Street Journal

In August 1897, the young Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail for a three-year expedition aboard the good ship Belgica with dreams of glory. His destination was the uncharted end of the the icy continent of Antarctica.

But de Gerlache’s plans to be first to the magnetic South Pole would swiftly go awry. After a series of costly setbacks, the commandant faced two bad turn back in defeat and spare his men the devastating Antarctic winter, or recklessly chase fame by sailing deeper into the freezing waters. De Gerlache sailed on, and soon the Belgica was stuck fast in the icy hold of the Bellingshausen Sea. When the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, the ship’s occupants were condemned to months of endless night. In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness and besieged by monotony, they descended into madness.

In Madhouse at the End of the Earth, Julian Sancton unfolds an epic story of adventure and horror for the ages. As the Belgica’s men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in the expedition’s lone American, Dr. Frederick Cook—half genius, half con man—whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance on the Belgica; and the ship’s first mate, soon-to-be legendary Roald Amundsen, even in his youth the storybook picture of a sailor. Together, they would plan a last-ditch, nearly certain-to-fail escape from the ice—one that would either etch their names in history or doom them to a terrible fate at the ocean’s bottom.

Drawing on the diaries and journals of the Belgica’s crew and with exclusive access to the ship’s logbook, Sancton brings novelistic flair to a story of human extremes, one so remarkable that even today NASA studies it for research on isolation for future missions to Mars. Equal parts maritime thriller and gothic horror, Madhouse at the End of the Earth is an unforgettable journey into the deep.]]> 361 Julian Sancton 1984824341 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.19 2021
author: Julian Sancton
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62711641 Adamura discovers the Anomaly.

On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII:a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide.

Its curve not of nature, but design.

Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why.

But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space.

For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others a risk not worth taking, and for one it is a desperate attempt to find meaning in an uncaring universe.

Each step they take toward the mysterious abyss is more punishing than the last.

And the ghosts of their past follow.]]> 286 Christopher Paolini 1250862485 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.44 2023
author: Christopher Paolini
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43982455 "Who am I becoming?"

That was the question nagging pastor and author John Mark Comer. Outwardly, he appeared successful. But inwardly, things weren't pretty. So he turned to a trusted mentor for guidance and heard these words:

"Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life."

It wasn't the response he expected, but it was--and continues to be--the answer he needs. Too often we treat the symptoms of toxicity in our modern world instead of trying to pinpoint the cause. A growing number of voices are pointing at hurry, or busyness, as a root of much evil.

Within the pages of this book, you'll find a fascinating roadmap to staying emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world.]]> 286 John Mark Comer 0525653090 Jonathan 0 unfinished 4.51 2019
author: John Mark Comer
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: unfinished
review:

]]> 43301737 The mesmerizing adult debut from #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy “Alex� Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 476 Leigh Bardugo 1250313082 Jonathan 0 4.13 2019
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves:
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]]> 7415714
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.]]> 1249 Stephen King Jonathan 0 4.01 2009
author: Stephen King
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/04
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]]> 54659399 A "massive work of dizzying originality" (Boston Globe), XX is an inventive and boldly designed science-fiction epic by acclaimed graphic designer Rian Hughes—now in paperbackThe battle for your mind has already begun.ĚýAt Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, a radio telescope has detected a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin—a message that may be the first communication from an interstellar civilization. Has Humanity made first contact? Is the signal itself a form of alien life? Could it be a threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond?Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert, believes that he and his associates at tech start-up Intelligencia can interpret the message and find a way to step into the realm the signal encodes. What they find is a complex alien network beyond anything mankind has imagined.ĚýDrawing on Dada, punk, and the modernist movements of the 20th century,ĚýXXĚýis assembled from redacted NASA reports, artwork, magazine articles, secret transcripts, and a novel within a novel. Deconstructing layout and language in order to explore how ideas propagate, acclaimed designer and artist Rian Hughes's debut novel presents a compelling vision of humanity's unique place in the universe, and a realistic depiction of what might happen in the wake of the biggest scientific discovery in human history.ĚýPropulsive and boldly designed, XX is a gripping, wildly imaginative, utterly original work.]]> 992 Rian Hughes 1647001196 Jonathan 0 unfinished 3.90 2020
author: Rian Hughes
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: unfinished
review:

]]> 42973186 This thrilling critique of the forces vying for our attention re-defines what we think of as productivity, shows us a new way to connect with our environment, and reveals all that we've been too distracted to see about our selves and our world.

When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as . . . doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.]]> 225 Jenny Odell 1612197507 Jonathan 0 unfinished 3.64 2019
author: Jenny Odell
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: unfinished
review:

]]> 167006698
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?]]> 320 Benjamin Stevenson 006327907X Jonathan 0 to-read 3.82 2023
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57280663
Described as a "fascinating psychological thriller" (The Baltimore Sun), this entrancing novel introduces Isserley, a female driver who picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny--like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she listens to her hitchhikers as they open up to her, revealing clues about who might miss them if they should disappear. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory--our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion. A grotesque and comical allegory, a surreal representation of contemporary society run amok, Under the Skin has been internationally received as the arrival of an exciting talent, rich and assured.]]> 305 Michel Faber Jonathan 4 3.78 2000
author: Michel Faber
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/14
date added: 2023/12/15
shelves:
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]]> 11813510 The Extravaganza of the Seas is a five-thousand-ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money. In the middle of a tropical storm one night, these characters are among the passengers it Fay Benton, a single mom and cocktail waitress desperate for something to go right for once; Johnny and the Contusions, a ship's band with so little talent they are . . . well, the ship's band; Arnold and Phil, two refugees from the Beaux Arts Senior Center; Lou Tarant, a wide, bald man who has killed nine people, though none recently; and an assortment of uglies whose job it is to facilitate the ship's true business, which is money-laundering or drug-smuggling or . . . something.]]> 295 Dave Barry 1101495596 Jonathan 0 4.27 2002
author: Dave Barry
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/11
date added: 2023/12/11
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]]> 62906398 “Satire at the highest level.� [A] godsend of a book.� —Amy Fusselman, Washington Post



A witty, absurdist satire of the last 500 years, Alexandra Petri’s US History is the fake textbook you never knew you needed!


As a columnist for the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri has watched in real time as those who didn’t learn from history have been forced to repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it. If we repeat history one more time, we’re going to fail! Maybe it’s time for a new textbook.


Alexandra Petri’s US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren G. Harding.) Petri’s "historical fan fiction" draws on real events and completely absurd fabrications to create a laugh-out-loud, irreverent takedown of our nation’s complicated past.


On Petri’s deranged timeline, John and Abigail Adams try sexting, the March sisters from Little Women are sixty feet tall, and Susan Sontag goes to summer camp. Nearly eighty short, hilarious pieces span centuries of American history and culture. Ayn Rand rewrites The Little Engine That Could. Nikola Tesla’s friends stage an intervention when he falls in love with a pigeon. The characters from Sesame Street invade Normandy. And Mark Twain—who famously said reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated—offers a detailed account of his undeath, in which he becomes a zombie.


This side-splitting work of historical humor shows why Alexandra Petri has been hailed as a "genius,"* a "national treasure,"� and "one of the funniest writers alive"�.


*Olivia Nuzzi, Katha Pollitt

†Julia Ioffe, Katy Tur, John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Jamil Smith, and Susan Hennessey

‡Randall Munroe]]> 339 Alexandra Petri 1324006447 Jonathan 0 3.62 2023
author: Alexandra Petri
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/12/01
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]]> 6569709
At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 432 Jon Krakauer Jonathan 0 4.09 2003
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/26
date added: 2023/11/30
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]]> 36466858
After receiving an urgent SOS from a work detail on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is dispatched to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission.

MOST ARE DEAD

But when the crew arrives, they find an abandoned site, littered with rotten food, discarded weapons…and dead bodies.

DON’T SET FOOT HERE AGAIN

As they try to piece together who—or what—could have decimated an entire operation, they discover that some things are best left buried—and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.]]> 432 Erin Bowman 0062574183 Jonathan 0 3.94 2018
author: Erin Bowman
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> 40007544 The NixĚý explores—with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness—the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change.

It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as aĚýradical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help.

To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]> 754 Nathan Hill Jonathan 0 4.10 2016
author: Nathan Hill
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
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]]> 6081088
By writing Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own demons and lay to rest some of the painful questions that still surround the event. He takes great pains to provide a balanced picture of the people and events he witnessed and gives due credit to the tireless and dedicated Sherpas. He also avoids blasting easy targets such as Sandy Pittman, the wealthy socialite who brought an espresso maker along on the expedition. Krakauer's highly personal inquiry into the catastrophe provides a great deal of insight into what went wrong. But for Krakauer himself, further interviews and investigations only lead him to the conclusion that his perceived failures were directly responsible for a fellow climber's death. Clearly, Krakauer remains haunted by the disaster, and although he relates a number of incidents in which he acted selflessly and even heroically, he seems unable to view those instances objectively. In the end, despite his evenhanded and even generous assessment of others' actions, he reserves a full measure of vitriol for himself.

This updated trade paperback edition of Into Thin Air includes an extensive new postscript that sheds fascinating light on the acrimonious debate that flared between Krakauer and Everest guide Anatoli Boukreev in the wake of the tragedy. "I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in the postscript, dated August 1999. "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since Into Thin Air's denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored The Climb, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in an avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I.]]> 368 Jon Krakauer Jonathan 0 4.47 1997
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/04
date added: 2023/11/04
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]]> 25837084 Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to Winter, an alien world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants can change their gender whenever they choose. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 320 Ursula K. Le Guin Jonathan 0 4.14 1969
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/04
date added: 2023/11/04
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]]> 62039203
Over seven decades, John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying mountain ranges, bark canoes, experimental aircraft, the Swiss Army, geophysical hot spots, ocean shipping, shad fishing, dissident art in the Soviet Union, and an even wider variety of other subjects, he has consistently written narrative pieces of immaculate design.

In Tabula Rasa, Volume 1 , McPhee looks back at his career from the vantage point of his desk drawer, reflecting wryly upon projects he once planned to do but never got around to―people to profile, regions he meant to portray. There are so many examples that he plans to go on writing these vignettes, an ideal project for an old man, he says, and a “reminiscent montage� from a writing life. This first volume includes, among other things, glimpses of a frosty encounter with Thornton Wilder, interrogative dinners with Henry Luce, the allure of western Spain, criteria in writing about science, fireworks over the East River as seen from Malcolm Forbes’s yacht, the evolving inclinations of the Tower of Pisa, the islands among the river deltas of central California, teaching in a pandemic, and persuading The New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. The result is a fresh survey of McPhee’s singular planet.]]> 192 John McPhee 037460360X Jonathan 0 to-read 3.87
author: John McPhee
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54614599 A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami.

The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like With the Beatles, Cream and On a Stone Pillow ) are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood--Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, Carnaval, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist.']]> 245 Haruki Murakami 0593318072 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.58 2020
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53313009
Cormac McCarthy's masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf.

"A classic American novel of regeneration through violence," declares Michael Herr. "McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers."]]> 370 Cormac McCarthy Jonathan 0 4.02 1985
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/09
date added: 2023/10/09
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]]> 25451852 Winner 2016 Readers' Favourite Award for Epic Fantasy
Winner 2015 LYRA Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Winner 2015 CIPA EVVY Award for Fiction/Fantasy
Winner 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award for Fantasy
Winner 2016 Audible Best Fantasy Audiobook
Runner-up 2016 IPPY Awards and 2015 Great Midwest Book Festival for Sci-Fi/Fantasy
#1 Bestseller in Epic, Historical and Coming of Age Fantasy.

When a high-ranking officer gallops into the quiet Mistyvales, he brings a warning that shakes the countryfolk to their roots. But for Aedan, a scruffy young adventurer with veins full of fire and a head full of ideas, this officer is not what he seems.

The events that follow propel Aedan on a journey that only the foolhardy or desperate would risk, leading him to the gates of the nation’s royal academy � a whole world of secrets in itself.

But this is only the beginning of his discoveries. Something is stirring in the land, something more ominous than the rising threat of hostile nations. Fearful travellers whisper of an ancient power breathing over Thirna, changing it, waking it. In the very heart of these stirrings, Aedan encounters that which defies belief, leaving him speechless with terror � and wonder.]]> 715 Jonathan Renshaw Jonathan 0 to-read 4.35 2015
author: Jonathan Renshaw
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 59807968 In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.]]> 323 Hiron Ennes 125081118X Jonathan 0 to-read 3.57 2022
author: Hiron Ennes
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22130605 Experience one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age: The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

With an introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick, Endurance is the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip. Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the gripping and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.]]> 292 Alfred Lansing 0465058795 Jonathan 0 4.71 1959
author: Alfred Lansing
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.71
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/22
date added: 2023/08/22
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]]> 60144955
When frantic, disheveled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity.

Robin decides that the agency can’t help with this—and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.

Robin and her business partner, Cormoran Strike, become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie’s true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits � and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways . . .]]> 1391 Robert Galbraith 0316473537 Jonathan 0 to-read 4.07 2022
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53780642 A workplace novel of the 22nd century

The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.

The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.

Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before � and what it means to be truly alive.

Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.]]> 136 Olga Ravn Jonathan 3 read-on-kindle, library ]]> 3.69 2018
author: Olga Ravn
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/10
date added: 2023/08/10
shelves: read-on-kindle, library
review:
Oh gosh, this was so weird. There's a ship, and it's the future, and it's the _Six Thousand Ship_, and we don't know what there are Six Thousand of, and some of the people who work on it are humanoids and some are actually humans. Anyway, on the planet _New Discovery_ they have found some Objects, and they are all different, and have names like _The Gift_, because it looks like a Gift, and some ooze in the light and some have eggs and people get very attached to them. Emotionally speaking, they are attached. And then there is some sort of rift between the humans and humanoids (who are experiments, did I mention that), and maybe one or two humans die? Then the committee sends a pulse of radiation to terminate everyone. The end. Oh and the whole thing is only told only in recorded statements and they're out of order. The end for real.

]]> 18775383
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.]]> 245 William Deresiewicz 1476702713 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.85 2014
author: William Deresiewicz
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 32767514 When one reaches the highest degree of human maturity, one has only one question left: How can I be helpful?--TERESA OF AVILA

Beloved author Ronald Rolheiser continues his search for an accessible and penetrating Christian spirituality in this highly anticipated follow-up to the contemporary classic, The Holy Longing. With his trademark acuity, wit, and thoughtfulness, Rolheiser shows how identifying and embracing discipleship will lead to new heights of spiritual awareness and maturity. In this new book, Rolheiser takes us on a journey through the dark night of the senses and of the spirit. Here, we experience the full gamut of human life, pleasure and fervor, disillusionment and boredom. But, as Rolheiser explains, when we embrace the struggle and yearning to know God we can experience too a profound re-understanding to our daily lives.

"What lies beyond the essentials, the basics?" Rolheiser writes. "Where do we go once some of the basic questions in our lives have been answered, or at least brought to enough peace that our focus can shift away from ourselves to others? Where do we go once the basic questions in our lives are no longer the restless questions of youthful insecurity and loneliness? Who am I? Who loves me? How will my life turn out? Where do we go once the basic question in life becomes: How can I give my life away more purely, and more meaningfully? How do I live beyond my own heartaches, headaches, and obsessions so as to help make other peoples' lives more meaningful? The intent of this book is to try to address exactly those questions: How can we live less self- centered, more mature lives? What constitutes deep maturity and how do we reach that place? And, not unimportantly, what constitutes a more adult, Christian discipleship? What constitutes a truly mature following of Jesus?"

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke suggests, "Live the questions now." In Sacred Fire, Rolheiser's deeply affecting prose urges us on in pursuit of the most holy of all passions--a deep and lasting intimacy with God.]]> 344 Ronald Rolheiser 080413944X Jonathan 0 to-read 4.32 2014
author: Ronald Rolheiser
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22009409
As a single mother who's struggling to make ends meet, Karen stumbles into the worst job on earth: transporting souls into the afterlife. To make matters worse, she is contractually bound to continue the job indefinitely, and her difficult employer is none other than Fate. It doesn t take long for Karen to learn that Fate may be fashionable, but she's also heartless.]]> 213 Amy Neftzger 1940894085 Jonathan 0 to-read 3.70 2014
author: Amy Neftzger
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6272289 “Robbins’s comic philosophical musings reveal a flamboyant genius.”—PeopleStill Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.]]> 257 Tom Robbins Jonathan 0 4.04 1980
author: Tom Robbins
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/20
date added: 2023/07/20
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]]> 27274343 I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.�

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, *�*your dread and unease will mount with every passing page� (Entertainment Weekly) of this edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 224 Iain Reid 1501126962 Jonathan 0 3.43 2016
author: Iain Reid
name: Jonathan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/03
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]]> 34019110 Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex� Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies� most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.]]> 484 Leigh Bardugo 1250313112 Jonathan 0 4.20 2023
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Jonathan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/21
date added: 2023/06/25
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]]>