Sarah's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 22 Apr 2025 09:17:28 -0700 60 Sarah's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence]]> 217215449 What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic and others don’t, Ludwig reveals gun violence in America to be more comprehensible—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches suggest.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald’s,� Unforgiving Places is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.]]> 352 Jens Ludwig 0226828131 Sarah 0 to-read 4.20 Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
author: Jens Ludwig
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)]]> 14061955 Alternative Cover Edition #1

Darkness never dies.

Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land, all while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. But she can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her—or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.]]> 435 Leigh Bardugo Sarah 3 3.81 2013 Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1]]> 123984985 A major collection of essays and speeches from pioneering freedom fighter Angela Y. Davis

For over fifty years, Angela Y. Davis has been at the forefront of collective movements for abolition and feminism and the fight against state violence and oppression. Politics, Practices, Promises, the first of two important new volumes, brings together an essential collection of Davis’s essays, and speeches over the years, showing how her thinking has sharpened and evolved even as she has remained uncompromising in her commitment to collective liberation. In pieces that address the history of abolitionist practice and thought in the United States and globally, the unique contributions of women to abolitionist struggles, and stories and lessons of organizing inside and beyond the prison walls, Davis is always curious, always incisive, and always learning.

Rich and rewarding, Politics, Practices, Promises will appeal to fans of Davis, to students and scholars reflecting on her life and work, and to readers new to feminism, abolition, and struggles for liberation.]]> 347 Angela Y. Davis Sarah 0 currently-reading 4.55 Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1
author: Angela Y. Davis
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Sarah 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred Years� War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917�2017]]> 41812831
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.� Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.]]> 336 Rashid Khalidi 1627798552 Sarah 0 to-read 4.50 2020 The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017
author: Rashid Khalidi
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News]]> 206303786 From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters“Copaganda,� as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda that affects who and what we fear and what kinds of social investments we support to address our fears. At a time when the United States incarcerates five times more people per capita than its own historical average and five to ten times more people per capita than other countries, its vast punishment bureaucracy spends huge amounts of time and money manipulating the rest of us to see the world from its point of view.

As a result, we see a grossly distorted version of crime, punishment, and safety in our newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets. The news generates fear by focusing on crimes committed by the most marginalized people while ignoring far more serious threats to our collective well-being, from wage theft by corporations to environmental crimes to the deaths that result from cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison). And it falsely suggests that the best way to respond to our fear is to increase government repression through police, prosecution, and prisons as opposed to addressing the root causes of interpersonal harm.

In the spirit of such classics as Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on “What Is News?,� “Public Relations Spending by the Police,� “Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News,� “How the News Uses Experts,� “How to Smuggle Ideology into the News,� and “Academic Copaganda.�

Already called “one of the most prominent voices on [copaganda]� (Teen Vogue), with a huge following on social media and appearances discussing copaganda on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings a legal eye, humor, gripping personal stories, and a keen ability to read between the lines to a topic at the forefront of one of the most pressing public debates in our society.]]> 432 Alec Karakatsanis 1620978539 Sarah 0 to-read 4.80 Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
author: Alec Karakatsanis
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth]]> 217432723 304 Zoë Schlanger 0063073862 Sarah 0 to-read 3.80 2024 The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
author: Zoë Schlanger
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paris Novel 195430688
Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual a one-way plane ticket and a note reading Go to Paris . But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and, for the first time in her life, Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress and together they embark on an adventure.

Her first iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters, and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces her to a veritable who’s who of the 1980s Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed� at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.]]> 288 Ruth Reichl 0812996305 Sarah 0 to-read 3.67 2024 The Paris Novel
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wandering Stars 220687890 A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK � The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.]]> 336 Tommy Orange 0593311442 Sarah 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Wandering Stars
author: Tommy Orange
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Canopy Keepers (The Scorched Earth, #1)]]> 168433913 What happens when nature will no longer stand by and accept its destruction? A female fire chief discovers an ancient world rooted with secrets that can save—or destroy—in the newest fantasy by Veronica G. Henry, author of Bacchanal.

Beneath the forest floor, they watch�

Syrah Carthan doesn’t know why she accepted a job as the first female fire chief at Sequoia National Park, where, decades earlier, a forest fire killed her parents. That day, her brother, Romelo, disappeared, as if pulled into the scorched earth itself. Syrah has always had an uncanny affinity for the natural wonders of the park she protects, but after she sanctions a prescribed burn that goes terribly wrong, she quits her position in disgrace.

However, when another devastating wildfire breaks out, Syrah, reluctantly pulled back into action, discovers an unknown world that has existed underground since the beginning of time. This secret society, built around the forest’s complex root system, is now divided into two factions. One is ruled by the Keeper, the giant sequoias� benevolent caretaker. The other by a mysterious undoer, who’s determined to wage war on humanity. Through him, nature can retaliate and wipe out the earth’s careless ravagers for good.

Torn between human loyalty and preserving the delicate balance of nature, Syrah must make a choice—one that will change both her destiny and that of the world above and below forever.]]> 363 Veronica G. Henry 1662503792 Sarah 3 3.77 2024 The Canopy Keepers (The Scorched Earth, #1)
author: Veronica G. Henry
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Leslie F*cking Jones 123027172
Now, I’m gonna be honest: Some of the details might be vague because a b*tch is fifty-five and she’s smoked a ton of weed. But while bits might be a touch hazy, I can promise you the underlying truth is REAL. Whether I’m talking about my childhood growing up in the South, my early stand-up days driving from gig to gig through the darkest parts of our country and praying I wouldn’t get murdered, what Chris Rock told Lorne Michaels, that time I wanted to shoot Whoopi Goldberg on SNL, and yeah, I’ll tell you all about Ghostbusters and the nudes and Supermarket Sweep and The Daily Show . . . I’m sharing it all in these pages. It’s not easy being a woman in comedy, especially when you’re a tall-*ss Black woman with a trumpet voice. I have to fight so that no one takes me for granted, and no one takes advantage. These are the stories that explain why. (Cue the Law & Order theme.)]]> 288 Leslie Jones 1538706490 Sarah 0 to-read 4.09 2023 Leslie F*cking Jones
author: Leslie Jones
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine]]> 131121289 Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book.� —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times- bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.]]> 304 Uché Blackstock Sarah 0 to-read 4.44 2024 Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
author: Uché Blackstock
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color]]> 53260224 This explosive book of history and cultural criticism argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and all colonized women. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Taking us from the slave era—when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves—through the centuries of colonialism—when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics—to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars

Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.]]> 284 Ruby Hamad 194822674X Sarah 0 to-read 4.56 2020 White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
author: Ruby Hamad
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice]]> 123279482 Renowned journalist and author of The Heart is a Shifting Sea Elizabeth Flock investigates what few dare to confront, or even imagine: the role and necessity of female-led violence in response to systems built against women.

In The Furies, Elizabeth Flock examines how three real-life women have used violence to fight back, and how views of women who defend their lives are often distorted by their depictions in media and pop culture. These three immersive narratives follow Brittany Smith, a young woman from Stevenson, Alabama, who killed a man she said raped her but was denied the protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, leader of a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a fighter in a thousands-strong all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. Each woman chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—utterly failed to do so. Each woman has been criticized for their actions by those who believe that violence is never the answer.

Through Flock’s propulsive prose and remarkable research on the ground—embedded with families, communities, and organizations in America, India, and Syria�The Furies examines, with exquisite nuance, whether the fight for women’s safety is fully possible without force. Do these women’s acts of vengeance help or hurt them, and ultimately, all women? Did they create lasting change in entrenched misogynistic and paternalistic systems? And ultimately, what would societies in which women have real power look like?

Across mythologies and throughout history, the stories of women’s lives frequently end with their bodies as sites of violence. But there are also celebrated tales of women, real and fictional, who have fought back. The novelistic accounts of these three women provoke questions about how to achieve true gender equality, and offer profound insights in the quest for answers.]]> 304 Elizabeth Flock 0063048809 Sarah 0 to-read 3.91 2024 The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice
author: Elizabeth Flock
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger]]> 38532207 A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.

Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.

Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help� and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.

We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.

Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.]]> 364 Soraya Chemaly 1501189557 Sarah 0 to-read 4.35 2018 Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
author: Soraya Chemaly
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom]]> 211003829 Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom.

When Nancy Reddy had her first child she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from mid-century researchers, yet their bad ideas about so-called “good� motherhood have seeped pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one illustration of a father interacting with his child. Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.]]> 256 Nancy Reddy 1250336643 Sarah 0 to-read 3.67 2025 The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom
author: Nancy Reddy
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City Beyond the Sea (Greenwild, #2)]]> 216470371 Daisy Thistledown's epic adventure continues in the spellbinding sequel to New York Times bestseller The World Behind the Door by Pari Thomson.In a land ruled by water, treachery runs deep . . . Daisy Thistledown and the Five O'Clock Club might have defeated a terrifying foe, but their journey to find the missing Botanists is only just beginning.Desperate to join the long-awaited expedition to the heart of the Amazon, Daisy and her friends abandon the safety of magical Mallowmarsh –only to fall face-first into danger on the high seas when they find themselves pursued across the waves by Grim Reapers. Their only to find the legendary Iffenwild, a mysterious pocket of the Greenwild hidden and lost to time.But beneath the waves, a strange botanical magic stirs. And it will take all of Daisy's courage and determination � and the trust of an unexpected new friend � if she is to discover the truth that haunts Iffenwild, and save the Greenwild from a terrible fate.]]> 400 Pari Thomson 1250894557 Sarah 0 to-read 4.43 2024 The City Beyond the Sea (Greenwild, #2)
author: Pari Thomson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West]]> 205848968 The first study of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, an institution that played a critical role in fusing the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and public health in the American West.

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a supposed rise in drug use reached a fevered pitch, the emergence of the nation’s first “narcotic farms� in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addiction. Rehab on the Range is the first in-depth history of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm and its impacts on the American West. Throughout its operation from the 1930s to the 1970s, the institution was the only federally funded drug treatment center west of the Mississippi River. Designed to blend psychiatric treatment, physical rehabilitation, and vocational training, the Narcotic Farm, its proponents argued, would transform American treatment policies for the better. The reality was decidedly more complicated.

Holly M. Karibo tells the story of how this institution—once framed as revolutionary for addiction care—ultimately contributed to the turn towards incarceration as the solution to the nation’s drug problem. Blending an intellectual history of addiction and imprisonment with a social history of addicts� experiences, Rehab on the Range provides a nuanced picture of the Narcotic Farm and its cultural impacts. In doing so, it offers crucial historical context that can help us better understand our current debates over addiction, drug policy, and the rise of mass incarceration.]]> 272 Holly M. Karibo 1477330348 Sarah 0 to-read 0.0 2024 Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West
author: Holly M. Karibo
name: Sarah
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]> 259 Paul Lynch Sarah 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Sarah 0 to-read 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons (Justice, Power, and Politics)]]> 210689384 Among many shocking discoveries, Friedman shows that, beginning in the 1950s, California prison officials declared war on imprisoned Black people and sought to identify Black militants as a key problem, creating a strategy for the management, segregation, and elimination of these individuals from the prison population that continues into the present day. Carceral Apartheid delves into how the California Department of Corrections deployed various official, clandestine, and at times extralegal control techniques—including officer alliances with imprisoned white supremacists—to suppress Black political movements, revealing the broader themes of deception, empire, corruption, and white supremacy in American mass incarceration. Drawing from original interviews with founders of Black political movements such as the Black Guerilla Family, white supremacists, and a swath of little-known archival data, Friedman uncovers how the US domestic war against imprisoned Black people models and perpetuates genocide, imprisonment, and torture abroad.]]> 230 Brittany Friedman 1469683393 Sarah 0 to-read, racial-justice 5.00 Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons (Justice, Power, and Politics)
author: Brittany Friedman
name: Sarah
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read, racial-justice
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin]]> 111171671 288 Greg Beets 1477328130 Sarah 0 currently-reading 4.50 A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin
author: Greg Beets
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Underground Abductor (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, #5)]]> 23167768 128 Nathan Hale 1419715364 Sarah 5 4.39 2015 The Underground Abductor (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, #5)
author: Nathan Hale
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the �90s]]> 212923973
In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: “It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.� This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures.

PRETEND WE’RE DEAD seeks to answer two big questions: First, where did all these wildly different, politically conscious, and supremely talented women in rock come from in the 1990s? And second, after their unprecedented breakout, why did they vanish from the mainstream by the early aughts? Along with analysis and narrative, PRETEND WE’RE DEAD is built on exclusive interviews with the unfiltered voices of legends including: Shirley Manson, Melissa Auf der Maur, Patty Schemel, Kate Schellenbach, Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Josephine Wiggs, Tanya Donelly, Kristin Hersh, Tracy Bonham, Donita Sparks, Liz Phair, Zia McCabe, Tracy Bonham, Lori Barbero, Josephine Wiggs, and Jill Emery. Through thought-provoking conversations, these women explore how they fell in love with music and started bands; fought labels, their coverage in the media, and sexism; and wrote deeply political and feminist music. Readers also learn about the effects of Woodstock �99, the corporatization of the music industry, the rise of Clear Channel and its ties to the Bush administration, and finally the nationalist sentiment after 9/11.

While sonically diverse, these musicians all wrote fierce, socially conscious, feminist lyrics, and PRETEND WE’RE DEAD commemorates and celebrates the overlooked contributions of true trailblazers.]]> 256 Tanya Pearson 0306833379 Sarah 5
Please check out the rest of my review at Louder Than War: ]]> 3.94 2025 Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s
author: Tanya Pearson
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:
Women rockers frequently graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Spin, and other American music magazines throughout the 1990s � Liz Phair, Courtney Love and Melissa Auf der Maur of Hole, Tanya Donelly of Belly, Kim Deal of The Pixies and The Breeders, Ani DiFranco, Shirley Manson of Garbage, all of L7, the list goes on. They snarled, crooned, belted, warbled, serenaded, and harmonized out of boombox speakers and car radios as alternative and college stations put them on constant rotation. And then, as if someone yanked out an amp power cord, they were � gone.

Please check out the rest of my review at Louder Than War:
]]> <![CDATA[Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats]]> 221179120 The first biography of legendary and influential British punk band The Raincoats, who were instrumental in the origins and longevity of Rough TradeRecords,were invited to tourwith Nirvana and others, and have long been revered by those in the international punk scene.

The Raincoats were formed in London in 1977 as an experimental punk band synonymous with their indie label, Rough Trade; in fact, Geoff Travis even said that“the whole genome of Rough Trade wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good without them.� The Raincoats went on to create what Vivien Goldman called “a new legacy of punk� and arguably became the most pioneering and challenging female band of the post-punk erawhile inspiring a new wave of DIY and queercore artists.

Introduced by Kurt Cobain to a new generation in the 1990s, The Raincoatswere invited to tourwith Nirvana, and were known as the “godmothers of grunge”and "godmothers of Riot Grrrl"before eventually becoming label mates with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Hole,Bikini Kill,and Elastica. In the new millennium, they went on to play openings for feminist art exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Tate Britain, as well as major festivals, and experimented with emerging DIY music technology.In the 21st-century, The Raincoats singularly inspired Bikini Kill to reform after a 20-year hiatus.

Featuring exclusive interviews and brand new photos from the Raincoats' archives, as well as reproduced ephemera (handbills, flyers, contracts, ticket stubs, artworks, etc.),SHOUTING OUT LOUDis the first ever biography of this groundbreaking band and shows how this pioneering group of women paved the way for those that followed in their footsteps. Additionally, the book features original interviews withmembers of Sonic Youth, Hole,Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Big Joanie,Liz Phair, and many more.

Meticulously researched and sweeping in scope,SHOUTING OUT LOUDis the must-haveaccount of a band that became the linchpin of feminist music in the 20th century.]]> 400 Audrey Golden 0306835908 Sarah 0 to-read 0.0 Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats
author: Audrey Golden
name: Sarah
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation]]> 57693654 Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes.

Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning―from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.

These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families� safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers.

These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.]]> 288 Anna Malaika Tubbs 1250756138 Sarah 0 to-read 4.04 2021 Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation
author: Anna Malaika Tubbs
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Maurice 214488980 Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]> 272 E.M. Forster 0571388183 Sarah 0 to-read 4.20 1971 Maurice
author: E.M. Forster
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 212755924 From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.�

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.]]> 464 Yuval Noah Harari 006342200X Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected]]> 42202070 A powerful journey from star athlete to sudden paralysis to creative awakening, award-winning science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.

Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan—something a simple operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.

In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents� hometown in Nigeria. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths—far greater than when we were unbroken.

A guidebook for anyone eager to understand how their limitations might actually be used as a creative springboard, Broken Places & Outer Spaces is an inspiring look at how to open up new windows in your mind.]]> 112 Nnedi Okorafor 1501195476 Sarah 5 memoir 4.08 2019 Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World]]> 61966364 A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changingrelationship between fire and humankind

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for millennia,shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on ariveting journeythrough the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to theunprecedented devastation that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.His urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.]]> 432 John Vaillant 1524732850 Sarah 0 to-read 4.32 2023 Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
author: John Vaillant
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land]]> 199393033 A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests—in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.]]> 352 Rebecca Nagle 0063112043 Sarah 0 to-read 4.43 2024 By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
author: Rebecca Nagle
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Sarah 0 to-read 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Strong Female Protagonist: Book One]]> 23131550
Fighting crime with other teenagers under the alter ego Mega Girl was fun - until an encounter with Menace, her mind-reading arch enemy, showed her evidence of a sinister conspiracy, and suddenly battling giant robots didn't seem so important.

Now Alison is going to college and trying to find ways to help the world while still getting to class on time. It's impossible to escape the past, however, and everyone has their own idea of what it means to be a hero....

After a phenomenal success on Kickstarter, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag bring their popular webcomic into print, collecting the first four issues, as well as some all-new, full-color pages!]]> 220 Brennan Lee Mulligan 0692246185 Sarah 4 4.06 2014 Strong Female Protagonist: Book One
author: Brennan Lee Mulligan
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration]]> 123271610 280 Jason A. Higgins 1625347537 Sarah 0 to-read 0.0 Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration
author: Jason A. Higgins
name: Sarah
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People]]> 199534697 A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?� In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.

Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.� The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.

Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.]]> 256 Imani Perry 0062977393 Sarah 0 to-read 4.34 2025 Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
author: Imani Perry
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Sarah 0 to-read 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 75670157 "Masterful. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a beautiful, timely book about the human condition--and a timeless reminder to pay attention to your attention." --Adam Grant, #1 bestselling author of Think Again and host of the podcast Re: Thinking

The instant #1 bestseller from John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down, is now available in paperback with two brand-new essays!

"Gloriously personal and life-affirming. The perfect book for right now." --People
"Essential to the human conversation." --Library Journal, starred review

The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale--from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar. Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity.

John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is an open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.]]> 318 John Green 0525555242 Sarah 0 to-read 4.39 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Watchmen 472331 Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from award-winning author Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, presents a world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history—the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the Cold War is in full effect.

Considered the greatest graphic novel in the history of the medium, the Hugo Award-winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected as an unknown assassin stalks the erstwhile heroes.]]> 416 Alan Moore 0930289234 Sarah 5 4.38 1987 Watchmen
author: Alan Moore
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:

]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Sarah 5 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
I always love reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's work for his beautiful use of language, incredibly deep thought, and enlightening perspectives on race, racism, and society. His newest book continues this tradition in all the aforementioned areas. The book is not very long, but you'll want to take your time with each page, each sentence, to fully appreciate its beauty and internalize the messages for prolonged reflection.
]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Sarah 5 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:
I subconsciously resisted reading this book until now because I don't really enjoy so-called "period pieces." This was definitely a mistake on my part. I wouldn't even put this book in that category. The characters were rich, the turn of phrase incredible, and now I finally see why this book is so lauded and loved.
]]> <![CDATA[Virginia's Apple: Collected Memoirs]]> 210406336 Virginia’s Apple is a collection of fourteen literary memoirs that explore pivotal episodes across poet and writer Judith Barrington’s life. Artfully crafted, each one stands alone yet they are linked—characters reappear and, taken together, they create a larger narrative.


The content is the early days of the Second Wave of feminism—the exhilaration, the wildness, the love affairs, the surprises, and the self-invention, as well as the confusion and conflicts of those heady times; navigating a sometimes precarious existence as an out lesbian long before it was commonplace; leaving England and becoming an American citizen; finding a life partner; and growing old with an inherited disability. The author’s friendship with the distinguished poet Adrienne Rich is the subject of one story. In another, there’s an appearance by the notorious murderer, Lord Lucan, whose wife was a chance acquaintance.


These stories are laced with humor and joy, while pulsing below the surface is the slow unfolding of delayed grief over her parents� drowning when she was nineteen, revealing how such a loss can shape a life.]]> 234 Judith Barrington 1962645223 Sarah 5 memoir
Read the rest of my review at Hippocampus Magazine: ]]> 4.82 Virginia's Apple: Collected Memoirs
author: Judith Barrington
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.82
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: memoir
review:
Whether describing a broken-down house crowded with a gaggle of young feminists, an apple tree in the backyard of Virginia Wolfe, or a late night sharing drinks and stories with Adrienne Rich, Barrington treats each moment with delicate care, wide-eyed wonder, and endearing humility.

Read the rest of my review at Hippocampus Magazine:
]]> A Farewell to Arms 215003824
Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway’s craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway’s own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author’s son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.]]> 320 Ernest Hemingway Sarah 0 to-read 3.98 1929 A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons (Saffron Everleigh Mystery, #1)]]> 71499379
Debut author Kate Khavari deftly entwines a pulse-pounding mystery with the struggles of a woman in a male-dominated field in 1923 London.

Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh is determined to blaze a new trail at the University College London, but with her colleagues� beliefs about women’s academic inabilities and not-so-subtle hints that her deceased father’s reputation paved her way into the botany department, she feels stymied at every turn.

When she attends a dinner party for the school, she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon. What she doesn’t expect is for Mrs. Henry, one of the professors� wives, to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin.

Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect and evidence quickly mounts. Joined by fellow researcher--and potential romantic interest--Alexander Ashton, Saffron uses her knowledge of botany as she explores steamy greenhouses, dark gardens, and deadly poisons to clear Maxwell's name.

Will she be able to uncover the truth, or will her investigation land her on the murderer’s list, in this entertaining examination of society’s expectations?]]> 320 Kate Khavari 1639102701 Sarah 0 to-read 3.51 2022 A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons (Saffron Everleigh Mystery, #1)
author: Kate Khavari
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Monster 38213254 281 Walter Dean Myers Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 1999 Monster
author: Walter Dean Myers
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity]]> 52375438 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter now turns her focus to the sexual lives of young men, once again offering “both an examination of sexual culture and a guide on how to improve it� (Washington Post).

Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sexbroke ground, shattered taboos, and launched conversations about young women’s right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. InBoys & Sex,Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.

Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word “hilarious� robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys� understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

]]> 304 Peggy Orenstein Sarah 0 to-read 4.22 2020 Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
author: Peggy Orenstein
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In Defense of Ska: The Ska Now More Than Ever Edition]]> 63114327 375 Aaron Carnes 1955904715 Sarah 4 4.31 In Defense of Ska: The Ska Now More Than Ever Edition
author: Aaron Carnes
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:
In his book In Defense of Ska, Author Aaron Carnes brings ska out of the shadows to show readers that the genre is much more than a horn-filled, late-1990s fad. Part history, part journalism, and part memoir, the book’s newest edition contains even more stories from those who played and loved ska in the �90s and beyond. Carnes gives ska musicians and fans a chance to embrace their “checkered pasts� and relive a scene filled with inclusion and joy. (Read the rest of my review at Louder Than War: )
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Sarah 0 to-read 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 41161349
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny.

This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale� (John Green, New York Times)—now with a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin.]]> 329 Octavia E. Butler 1538732181 Sarah 0 to-read 4.17 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Real Majority: The Classic Examination American Electorate]]> 1545916 Richard M. Scammon 1556112971 Sarah 0 to-read 3.75 1992 The Real Majority: The Classic Examination American Electorate
author: Richard M. Scammon
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nick and Charlie: A Heartstopper Novella]]> 61285758 Heartstopper, a must-have novella in which Heartstopper's lead characters, Nick and Charlie, face one of their biggest challenges yet.



Absence makes the heart grow fonder... right?

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie love their nearly inseparable life together. But soon Nick will be leaving for university, and Charlie, a year younger, will be left behind. Everyone's asking if they're staying together, which is a stupid question... or at least that's what Nick and Charlie assume at first.

As the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie start to question whether their love is strong enough to survive being apart. Charlie is sure he's holding Nick back... and Nick can't tell what Charlie's thinking.

Things spiral from there.

Everyone knows that first loves rarely last forever. What will it take for Nick and Charlie to defy the odds?]]> 153 Alice Oseman 1338885103 Sarah 0 to-read 4.20 2015 Nick and Charlie: A Heartstopper Novella
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Six (Heartstopper, #6)]]> 125120424 Alice Oseman Sarah 0 to-read 4.57 Heartstopper: Volume Six (Heartstopper, #6)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Five (Heartstopper, #5)]]> 53344030
Nick and Charlie are very much in love. They've finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick's house ... But with Nick going off to university next year, is everything about to change?

By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize, Heartstopper encompasses all the small moments of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

Contains discussions around mental health and eating disorders, and sexual references.]]> 336 Alice Oseman 1444957651 Sarah 0 to-read 4.47 2023 Heartstopper: Volume Five (Heartstopper, #5)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Four (Heartstopper, #4)]]> 56060300 Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. The bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between: this is the fourth volume of HEARTSTOPPER, for fans of The Art of Being Normal, Holly Bourne and Love, Simon.

Charlie didn't think Nick could ever like him back, but now they're officially boyfriends. Charlie's beginning to feel ready to say those three little words: I love you.

Nick's been feeling the same, but he's got a lot on his mind - not least coming out to his dad, and the fact that Charlie might have an eating disorder.

As summer turns to autumn and a new school year begins, Charlie and Nick are about to learn a lot about what love means.

Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

This is the fourth volume of Heartstopper, which has now been optioned for television by See-Saw Films.]]> 384 Alice Oseman 1338617567 Sarah 5 4.57 2021 Heartstopper: Volume Four (Heartstopper, #4)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Three (Heartstopper, #3)]]> 43449920
Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem� rather close�?]]> 384 Alice Oseman Sarah 5 4.55 2020 Heartstopper: Volume Three (Heartstopper, #3)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Two (Heartstopper, #2)]]> 43307358
But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is discovering all kinds of things about his friends, his family ... and himself.]]> 320 Alice Oseman 1444951408 Sarah 5 4.52 2019 Heartstopper: Volume Two (Heartstopper, #2)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume One (Heartstopper, #1)]]> 40495957
Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn't been too great, but at least he's not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He's heard a little about Charlie - the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months - but he's never had the opportunity to talk to him.

They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner...]]> 288 Alice Oseman 152722533X Sarah 5 4.43 2018 Heartstopper: Volume One (Heartstopper, #1)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 49731704 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307279286.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.]]> 542 Patrick Radden Keefe Sarah 0 to-read 4.52 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso (American Music Series)]]> 197904615 208 Tara López 147732481X Sarah 0 to-read 4.06 Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso (American Music Series)
author: Tara López
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Elphie: A Wicked Childhood (The Wicked Years, #0)]]> 199743711
Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy; Elphie is the riveting coming-of-age story of a very peculiar and relatable young girl.

Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education, haphazard though it must be—until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Elphie is destined to be a witch; she bears the markings from childhood—most evidently in her green skin but more obscurely and profoundly in her cunning and perhaps amoral behaviors, as she seeks to make do, to slip by, to sneak out, to endure, and to aspire.]]> 288 Gregory Maguire 0063377012 Sarah 0 to-read 3.16 2025 Elphie: A Wicked Childhood (The Wicked Years, #0)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Night of the Gun 6432774 The instant New York Times bestseller now in trade a “compelling tale of drug abuse, despair, and, finally, hope� (Chicago Sun-Times).� Critical and commercial The Night of the Gun hit bestseller lists thanks to a national tour and rave reviews from every major newspaper in the country. “Imagine James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces on a dose of truth serum, suffuse it with some cynical humor and a good handful of self-depreca- tion, and you get David Carr’s remarkable and immensely readable memoir,� wrote the New York Post. People magazine gave it three stars, saying “The Night of the Gun is an odyssey you’ll find hard to forget.”•� Lacerating honesty, scrupulous Many memoirists of dysfunction, addiction, and recovery have told incredible stories� what distinguishes Carr is his credibility.Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Carr is an undeniably brilliant and dogged journalist, and he’s written an unforgettable A.”�]]> 412 David Carr 1416580239 Sarah 3 memoir, book-club
What I love: The premise. I originally picked up this book because I was intrigued by the idea that someone's own memory might fail them so badly that they would have to use reporting methods and interviews to piece together their past. It's an interesting idea to consider, the ways our memories might deceive us, even if we haven't fried them with cocaine like David Carr did. If I went back and interviewed everyone I've ever known about things that we did together, how would their versions of events differ from mine? This is rich territory for exploration.

What else I love: The writing. There's good reason Carr is a successful New York Times writer. His writing style is lively, he knows how to grab the reader's attention, and his descriptions are fresh and unique. No cliches here. I was seldom bored as I read.

What I hate: The narrator. Hate is a strong word -- I don't hate him. But I did dislike him greatly. This is to be expected when he's recounting a life filled with drug addiction, aggression, and abuse of others. But what really made me dislike him was his arrogance, as well as the fact that he didn't really seem sorry about some of the horrible things he had done. He would say he regretted them, but he rarely seemed sincere. And this was frustrating.

What else I dislike: The need for editing. When someone writes a more traditional memoir, they run their story through the filter of their memory; they only recount the stories that have imprinted themselves the most deeply and are the most influential in their lives. But Carr went back and interviewed everyone about everything, and it seemed like he put it all in the book, whether it was relevant to his overall narrative or not. I often felt like I was reading story after story about his party days, when I didn't need to hear them all. I wanted a better filter so that I only read the important things.

Would I recommend this book? It's hard to say. It's definitely not for everyone. But I still find the premise to be fascinating, and it's definitely a great book to discuss with others (as evidenced by the lively discussion we had at my book club meeting). Despite its flaws, I'm still glad I read it.]]> 4.08 2008 The Night of the Gun
author: David Carr
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: memoir, book-club
review:
It's cliche to say you have a love/hate relationship with something, but I really do feel that way about this book.

What I love: The premise. I originally picked up this book because I was intrigued by the idea that someone's own memory might fail them so badly that they would have to use reporting methods and interviews to piece together their past. It's an interesting idea to consider, the ways our memories might deceive us, even if we haven't fried them with cocaine like David Carr did. If I went back and interviewed everyone I've ever known about things that we did together, how would their versions of events differ from mine? This is rich territory for exploration.

What else I love: The writing. There's good reason Carr is a successful New York Times writer. His writing style is lively, he knows how to grab the reader's attention, and his descriptions are fresh and unique. No cliches here. I was seldom bored as I read.

What I hate: The narrator. Hate is a strong word -- I don't hate him. But I did dislike him greatly. This is to be expected when he's recounting a life filled with drug addiction, aggression, and abuse of others. But what really made me dislike him was his arrogance, as well as the fact that he didn't really seem sorry about some of the horrible things he had done. He would say he regretted them, but he rarely seemed sincere. And this was frustrating.

What else I dislike: The need for editing. When someone writes a more traditional memoir, they run their story through the filter of their memory; they only recount the stories that have imprinted themselves the most deeply and are the most influential in their lives. But Carr went back and interviewed everyone about everything, and it seemed like he put it all in the book, whether it was relevant to his overall narrative or not. I often felt like I was reading story after story about his party days, when I didn't need to hear them all. I wanted a better filter so that I only read the important things.

Would I recommend this book? It's hard to say. It's definitely not for everyone. But I still find the premise to be fascinating, and it's definitely a great book to discuss with others (as evidenced by the lively discussion we had at my book club meeting). Despite its flaws, I'm still glad I read it.
]]> <![CDATA[Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater]]> 15831483 The Natural, No-Fuss, No-Purée Method for Starting Your Baby on Solid Foods

Baby-Led Weaning explodes the myth that babies need to be spoon-fed and shows why self-feeding from the start of the weaning process is the healthiest way for your child to develop. With baby-led weaning (BLW, for short), you can skip purées and make the transition to solid food by following your baby’s cues.

At about six months, most babies are ready to join the family at the kitchen table and discover food for themselves. Baby-Led Weaning is the definitive guide to this crucial period in your child’s development, and shows you how to help your baby:

Participate in family meals right from the start Experiment with food at his or her own pace Develop new abilities, including hand-eye coordination and chewing Learn to love a variety of foods and to enjoy mealtimes

Baby-led weaning became a parenting phenomenon in the UK practically overnight, inspiring a fast-growing and now international online community of parents who practice baby-led weaning—with blogs and pictures to prove it! In Baby-Led Weaning, world-leading BLW authority Gill Rapley and early BLW practitioner and coauthor Tracey Murkett deliver everything you need to know about raising healthy, confident eaters.

]]> 266 Gill Rapley 1615191240 Sarah 5 parenting 3.99 2008 Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater
author: Gill Rapley
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2012/02/01
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: parenting
review:
The ideas in this book make so much sense, and I look forward to trying baby-led weaning with my son.
]]> <![CDATA[What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection]]> 199657571 A decade behind bars spurs fifty powerful years of political and legal battles for freedom and human rights.

When Dorsey Nunn shuffled, shackled like a slave, into the California State carceral system at age nineteen, he could barely read. While caged he received an education he never could have anticipated. His first Prison had a color scheme, and it didn’t match the larger society. On the inside, guards stoked racial warfare among prisoners while on the outside the machinery of the criminal legal system increasingly targeted poor Black and Brown communities with offenses, real or contrived. Nunn emerged from San Quentin after ten years behind bars, radicalized by his experience and emboldened by the militant wisdom of the men he met there. He poured his heart and mind into liberating all those he left behind, building a nationwide movement to restore justice to millions of system-impacted Americans.

In this poignant, wry, and powerful memoir, Nunn links the politics of Black Power to the movements for Black lives and dignified reentry today. His story underscores the power of coalition building, persistence in the face of backlash, and the importance of centering the voices of experience in the fight for freedom—and proves, once and for all, that jailbirds can fly.]]> 364 Dorsey Nunn 1597146331 Sarah 5 memoir, racial-justice You can read the rest of my review in Hippocampus Magazine: ]]> 4.71 What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection
author: Dorsey Nunn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.71
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: memoir, racial-justice
review:
"What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly is simultaneously a seething criticism of America’s incarceration system, complete with firsthand stories about the violence and destruction within prison walls, and a portrait of how a person with the right support system and self-determination can truly change and find redemption. It’s also, as Nunn writes in the preface, an inspiring story about "camaraderie, commitment, and grassroots organizing."
You can read the rest of my review in Hippocampus Magazine:
]]> The Nickel Boys 43269446 This follow-up to The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner's conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead 0345804341 Sarah 0 to-read 4.34 2019 The Nickel Boys
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Call Me by Your Name 34930873 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.]]> 248 André Aciman 1250169445 Sarah 0 to-read 4.18 2007 Call Me by Your Name
author: André Aciman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst]]> 28007903
Ultimately, the saga highlighted a decade in which America seemed to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown.]]> 384 Jeffrey Toobin 0385536712 Sarah 0 to-read 3.85 2016 American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
author: Jeffrey Toobin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung: Mao’s Little Red Book Original Version]]> 35744272 26 Mao Zedong 1547154357 Sarah 0 to-read 3.71 1964 Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung: Mao’s Little Red Book Original Version
author: Mao Zedong
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beautiful Ruins 11447921
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece� (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.]]> 337 Jess Walter 0061928127 Sarah 1 3.67 2012 Beautiful Ruins
author: Jess Walter
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves:
review:
Why was this book so popular and well-reviewed? Most of the characters are despicable men, they spend their time mooning over or manipulating a woman simply because of her beauty, and that woman is given no agency or real story of her own. I'm supposed to enjoy a book full of bad men treating women badly? Do not recommend.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 58678422 ŷ Choice winner for Nonfiction 2021 and instant #1 bestseller! A deeply moving collection of personal essays from John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down.

The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale—from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar.

Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. As a species, we are both far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough, a paradox that came into sharp focus as we faced a global pandemic that both separated us and bound us together.

John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is an open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.]]> 304 John Green 0525556532 Sarah 0 to-read 4.42 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance]]> 49247757 A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain

At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,� she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter� in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,� a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance.

Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.]]> 301 Hanif Abdurraqib 1984801198 Sarah 0 to-read 4.60 2021 A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)]]> 41864516 The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.

Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.]]> 207 Hanif Abdurraqib 1477316485 Sarah 0 to-read 4.47 2019 Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension]]> 181346634
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it's basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.]]> 334 Hanif Abdurraqib 0593448790 Sarah 0 to-read 4.32 2024 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us]]> 33947154
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.]]> 291 Hanif Abdurraqib Sarah 0 to-read 4.57 2017 They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deephaven (Deephaven Mystery, 1)]]> 65646961 288 Ethan M. Aldridge 0063283166 Sarah 4 3.97 2023 Deephaven (Deephaven Mystery, 1)
author: Ethan M. Aldridge
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk]]> 78130090 An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want

Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl� and “Double Dare Ya� are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul­tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band� in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.]]> 326 Kathleen Hanna 0062825232 Sarah 4 4.40 2024 Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
author: Kathleen Hanna
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
I loved getting this closer look at the trajectory of one of my musical heroes, especially how she evolved into the feminist powerhouse that she is today.
]]> <![CDATA[How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement]]> 101021832 An eye-opening exploration of American policy reform, or lack thereof, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement and how the country can do better in the future from Fredrik deBoer, “one of the sharpest and funniest writers on the internet� (The New York Times).

In 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic raged, the United States was hit by a ripple of political discontent the likes of which had not been seen since the 1960s. The spark was the viral video of the horrific police murder of an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. The killings of George Floyd galvanized a nation already reeling from Covid and a toxic political cycle. Tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest. Major corporations and large nonprofit groups—institutions that are usually resolutely apolitical—raced to join in. The fervor for racial justice intersected with the already simmering demands for change from the #MeToo movement and for economic justice from Gen Z. The entire country suddenly seemed to be roaring for change in one voice.

Then nothing much happened.

In How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, Fredrik deBoer explores why these passionate movements failed and how they could succeed in the future. In the digital age, social movements flare up but then lose steam through a lack of tangible goals, the inherent moderating effects of our established institutions and political parties, and the lack of any real grassroots movement in contemporary America. Hidden beneath the rhetoric of the oppressed and symbolism of the downtrodden lies and the inconvenient fact that those are doing the organizing, messaging, protesting, and campaigning are predominantly drawn from this country’s more upwardly mobile educated classes. Poses are more important than policies.

deBoer lays out an alternative vision for how society’s winners can contribute to social justice movements without taking them over, and how activists and their organizations can become more resistant to the influence of elites, nonprofits, corporations, and political parties. Only by organizing around class rather than empty gestures can we begin the hard work of changing minds and driving policy.]]> 251 Fredrik deBoer 1668016036 Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 2023 How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
author: Fredrik deBoer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)]]> 43763
Louis and Claudia travel Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires--a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals pretending to be vampires. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and in fact presents dangers they scarcely imagined.

Originally begun as a short story, the book took off as Anne wrote it, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul. As well as the struggles of its characters, Interview captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, sexuality, and power.
source: annerice.com]]> 346 Anne Rice 0345476875 Sarah 5 4.04 1976 Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
author: Anne Rice
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kent State: An American Tragedy]]> 200201147 416 Brian VanDeMark 1324066253 Sarah 0 to-read 4.29 2024 Kent State: An American Tragedy
author: Brian VanDeMark
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty]]> 210454076 Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.

Alex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyers� association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect—and fear—for a hundred miles.

When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. His forefathers had covered up a midnight suicide at a remote railroad crossing, a bootlegging ring run from a courthouse, and the attempted murder of a pregnant lover. Alex, too, almost walked away from his unspeakable crimes with his reputation intact, but his downfall was secured by a twist of fate, some stray mistakes, and a fateful decision by an old friend who’d finally seen enough.

Why would a man who had everything kill his wife and grown son? To unwind the roots of Alex’s ruin, award-winning journalist Valerie Bauerlein reported not just from the courthouse every day but also along the backroads and through the tidal marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. When the jurors made their pilgrimage to the crime scene, trying to envision Maggie and Paul’s last moments, she walked right behind them, sensing the ghosts that haunt the Murdaughs� now-shattered legacy.

Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.]]> 480 Valerie Bauerlein 059350058X Sarah 0 to-read 4.46 2024 The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
author: Valerie Bauerlein
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Erasure 355862 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 280 Percival Everett 0786888156 Sarah 0 to-read 4.17 2001 Erasure
author: Percival Everett
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer]]> 146274
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America's notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame and wealth for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought.

Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully documented work and a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.]]> 444 James L. Swanson 0060518502 Sarah 0 to-read 4.16 2006 Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
author: James L. Swanson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Long 'til Black Future Month?]]> 40855636 400 N.K. Jemisin 0316491349 Sarah 0 to-read 4.27 2018 How Long 'til Black Future Month?
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin Sarah 0 to-read 4.29 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Heart That Works 171985149
New York Times  Bestseller *� The New Yorker � Best Books of 2022 *� Entertainment Weekly� Best Books of 2022 *� USA Today � Best Books of 2022 * � Time �100 Must-Read Books of 2022 *� Mother Jones  Books We Needed in 2022 * � People � Fall Must Read *�2022� BuzzFeed � Fall Reading Pick * New York Post Best Books of 2022 * New York Times Editors� Choice]]> 192 Rob Delaney 1954118562 Sarah 0 to-read 4.62 2022 A Heart That Works
author: Rob Delaney
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century]]> 568236 Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.]]> 714 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345349571 Sarah 0 to-read 4.04 1978 A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World]]> 22107280
Blueprint for Revolution will teach you how to
� make oppression backfire by playing your opponents� strongest card against them
� identify the “almighty pillars of power� in order to shift the balance of control
� dream big, but start learn how to pick battles you can win
� listen to what people actually care about in order to incorporate their needs into your revolutionary vision
� master the art of compromise to bring together even the most disparate groups
� recognize your allies and view your enemies as potential partners
� use humor to make yourself heard, defuse potentially violent situations, and “laugh your way to victory�

Praise for Blueprint for Revolution

“The title is no exaggeration. Otpor’s methods . . . have been adopted by democracy movements around the world. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the key to overthrowing a dictator who had held power for thirty years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.� � The New York Times

“A clear, well-constructed, and easily applicable set of principles for any David facing any Goliath (sans slingshot, of course). . . By the end of Blueprint, the idea that a punch is no match for a punch line feels like anything but a joke.� � The Boston Globe

“An entertaining primer on the theory and practice of peaceful protest.� � The Guardian

“With this wonderful book, Srdja Popovic is inspiring ordinary people facing injustice and oppression to use this tool kit to challenge their oppressors and create something much better. When I was growing up, we dreamed that young people could bring down those who misused their power and create a more just and democratic society. For Srdja Popovic, living in Belgrade in 1998, this same dream was potentially a much more dangerous idea. But with an extraordinarily courageous group of students that formed Otpor!, Srdja used imagination, invention, cunning, and lots of humor to create a movement that not only succeeded in toppling the brutal dictator Slobodan Milošević but has become a blueprint for nonviolent revolution around the world. Srdja rules!� —Peter Gabriel

� Blueprint for Revolution is not only a spirited guide to changing the world but a breakthrough in the annals of advice for those who seek justice and democracy. It asks (and not heavy-handedly): As long as you want to change the world, why not do it joyfully? It’s not just funny. It’s seriously funny. No joke.� —Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and Occupy Nation]]> 304 Srdja Popovic 0812995309 Sarah 0 to-read 4.31 2015 Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World
author: Srdja Popovic
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rough Crossing: An Alaskan Fisherwoman's Memoir]]> 34662726 201 Rosemary McGuire 0826358039 Sarah 3 memoir 3.89 2017 Rough Crossing: An Alaskan Fisherwoman's Memoir
author: Rosemary McGuire
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs]]> 246041
For the last several years, the editors of Word, the pioneering Web magazine, have been sending interviewers—nearly forty in all—across America to talk to people about their jobs. They wanted to document reality, not to advance any overarching thesis or political agenda. Their sole position on work was that it's a fascinating topic and an elemental part of nearly everyone's life. They were certainly not disappointed with what they found; this wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving.

Recalling Studs Terkel's 1972 classic best-seller, Working, the more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed—and stayed the same—in the last three decades. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right.

But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological—it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one.

With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.]]> 688 John Bowe 0609807072 Sarah 5 4.14 2000 Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs
author: John Bowe
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves:
review:
This is a fantastic book and I recommend it to everyone. It is a fascinating look at a huge array of jobs that people have in our country. Every chapter is a person talking about their job, in their own voice, and that alone reveals quite an interesting array of personalities. I also learned some very interesting things about some of the jobs people hold. This book was also fascinating because it came out in 2000, and reading it in 2024 was like opening a time capsule to what work was like back then, before 9/11, and before so many other modern things changed our workforce. I will be talking about and thinking about much of what I read in this book for a long time.
]]> Thunder Song: Essays 185767242
Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue between the miraculous and the mundane, the spiritual and the physical, as they examine the role of art--in particular music--and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.]]> 256 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe 1640096353 Sarah 5 memoir
Most of us can relate at some level to these deeply personal topics, all of which Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe weaves throughout her latest book.

What pushes LaPointe’s essays to another level are the themes distinctive to her individual story as an Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe punk rocker living on the Puyallup reservation near Tacoma, Washington.

Read the rest of my review at Hippocampus Magazine: ]]> 4.40 2024 Thunder Song: Essays
author: Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: memoir
review:
Strong women. Connections to our home and landscape. Losing � and gaining � cultural identity. Shame. Beauty. Strength.

Most of us can relate at some level to these deeply personal topics, all of which Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe weaves throughout her latest book.

What pushes LaPointe’s essays to another level are the themes distinctive to her individual story as an Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe punk rocker living on the Puyallup reservation near Tacoma, Washington.

Read the rest of my review at Hippocampus Magazine:
]]> <![CDATA[What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures]]> 144421737 What if we act as if we love the future?

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financers, architects and advocates help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from all of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it� this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world, or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.

With grace, humor, and humanity, Ayana invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question, What if we get it right?

On imagination, possibility, and transformation with

Paola Antonelli
Xiye Bastida & Ayisha Siddiqa
Jade Begay
Régine Clément
Abigail Dillen
Brian Donahue
Kelly Sims Gallagher
Rhiana Gunn-Wright
Corley Kenna
Bryan C. Lee Jr. & Kate Orff
Franklin Leonard & Adam McKay
Bill McKibben
Kate Marvel
Samantha Montano
Leah Penniman
Colette Pichon Battle
Kendra Pierre-Louis
Judith D. Schwartz
Jigar Shah
Bren Smith
Oana Stanescu
Mustafa Suleyman]]> 496 Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Sarah 0 to-read 4.47 2024 What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures
author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Place for Us 43837230 A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister's footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best?

A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this family's life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is here, from Rafiq and Layla's own arrival in America from India, to the years in which their children--each in their own way--tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home.

A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.]]> 388 Fatima Farheen Mirza 152476356X Sarah 0 to-read 4.24 2018 A Place for Us
author: Fatima Farheen Mirza
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Write an Autobiographical Novel]]> 36520053 New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he's sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing �-- ​Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley �-- ​the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.]]> 0 Alexander Chee 1328764419 Sarah 0 to-read 4.31 2018 How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
author: Alexander Chee
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet]]> 201627000
“When heat comes, it’s invisible. It doesn’t bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it’s arrived�. The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you.”�

The world is waking up to a new wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.

The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing.It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event� one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic.

As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell’s new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it. Masterfully reported, mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Jeff Goodell tackles the big questions and uncovers how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before.
]]> 416 Jeff Goodell 031649755X Sarah 0 to-read 4.30 2023 The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
author: Jeff Goodell
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing]]> 64631561 New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors� credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,� showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.]]> 319 Lara Love Hardin 1982197668 Sarah 0 to-read 4.45 2023 The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
author: Lara Love Hardin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let Us Descend 123246338
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 316 Jesmyn Ward 1982104511 Sarah 0 to-read 3.76 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice]]> 202775006
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: Liliana is a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. Rivera Garza traces her sister’s history, depicting everything from Liliana’s early romance with a handsome but possessive and short-tempered man to that exhilarating final summer of 1990 when she loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.

Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana’s loved ones—to document her sister’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.
Read less]]> 320 Cristina Rivera Garza 0593244117 Sarah 0 to-read 3.98 2021 Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice
author: Cristina Rivera Garza
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures]]> 71872835 Our climate future is not yet written. What if we act as if we love the future?

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it—this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.

With grace, humor, and humanity, Johnson invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question What if we get it right?

On imagination, possibility, and transformation with
Paola Antonelli � Xiye Bastida & Ayisha Siddiqa � Jade Begay � Régine Clément � Abigail Dillen � Brian Donahue � Kelly Sims Gallagher � Rhiana Gunn-Wright � K. Corley Kenna � Bryan C. Lee Jr. & Kate Orff � Franklin Leonard & Adam McKay � Bill McKibben � Kate Marvel � Samantha Montano � Leah Penniman � Colette Pichon Battle � Kendra Pierre-Louis � Judith D. Schwartz � Jigar Shah � Bren Smith � Oana Stănescu � Mustafa Suleyman]]> 492 Ayana Elizabeth Johnson 0593229363 Sarah 0 to-read 4.47 2024 What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures
author: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories]]> 111126 Hateship Loveship), Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.

A tough-minded housekeeper jettisons the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager’s practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife’s nursing-home romance.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best, tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.]]> 323 Alice Munro 0375727434 Sarah 0 to-read 4.08 2001 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories
author: Alice Munro
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lives of Girls and Women 14285 The Love of a Good Woman -- is an insightful, honest book, "autobiographical in form but not in fact," that chronicles a young girl's growing up in rural Ontario in the 1940s.

Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father's fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women -- her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence.

Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.]]> 277 Alice Munro 0375707492 Sarah 0 to-read 4.01 1971 Lives of Girls and Women
author: Alice Munro
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth]]> 196774338
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world.]]> 304 Zoë Schlanger 0063073854 Sarah 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
author: Zoë Schlanger
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness]]> 199798280
Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science.

The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating great art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible, obsessed with trying to outdo his rival, Alexander Wilson. George Ord, a fan and protégé of Wilson, held a bitter grudge against Audubon for years, claiming he had faked much of his information and his scientific claims. A few of Audubon’s birds were pure fiction, and some of his writing was invented or plagiarized. Other naturalists of the era, including Charles Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon), John Townsend, and Thomas Nuttall, also became entangled in the scientific derby, as they stumbled toward an understanding of the natural world—an endeavor that continues to this day.

Despite this intense competition, a few species—including some surprisingly common songbirds, hawks, sandpipers, and more—managed to evade discovery for years. Here, renowned bird expert and artist Kenn Kaufman explores this period in history from a new angle, by considering the birds these people discovered and, especially, the ones they missed. Kaufman has created portraits of the birds that Audubon never saw, attempting to paint them in that artist’s own stunning style, as a way of examining the history of natural sciences and nature art. He shows how our understanding of birds continues to gain clarity, even as some mysteries persist from Audubon’s time until ours.]]> 400 Kenn Kaufman 1668007592 Sarah 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
author: Kenn Kaufman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>