Defne's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:17:58 -0700 60 Defne's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey, #1) 4954833 Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm Tóibín's sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America--to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland"--she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.]]> 262 Colm Tóibín 1439138311 Defne 0 currently-reading 3.71 2009 Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey, #1)
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Defne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Defne 0 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Defne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Ducks, Newburyport 43412920
A scorching indictment of America’s barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster, Ducks, Newburyport is a heresy, a wonder—and a revolution in the novel.

It’s also very, very funny.]]> 1022 Lucy Ellmann 191029697X Defne 0 to-read 3.90 2019 Ducks, Newburyport
author: Lucy Ellmann
name: Defne
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Redhead by the Side of the Road]]> 46014983
These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.]]> 178 Anne Tyler 0525658416 Defne 0 to-read 3.53 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road
author: Anne Tyler
name: Defne
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Confess 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 Defne 5
THIS BOOK.

I'm quite mad at myself because I finished this book in 6 days when I could actually devour it in hours. Seriously, Colleen Hoover never ceases to amaze me, I haven't read all of her books yet but the ones I did read were both fascinating and heart-wrenching.

As I expected, Confess was equally amazing, if not more, as her other books that I've read.

To be honest this review is going to be quite short because I can say nothing but good things about this book. The characters were constructed beautifully, each had their flaws and motivations and I loved that. I could feel the hopelessness of the characters and I could feel their happiness, sadness, anger and every other emotion. Those who follow me on ŷ can see my status, at one point, it was all becoming too much and I said "I have never felt this helpless in my whole life", not because I was actually feeling helpless but because reading about the what the characters were going through affected me and I could feel it in my veins.

And the romance, God, the romance was unbelievable. I am a huge sucker for romance and everything that has to do with romance so it was pretty obvious that I was going to love this book but I wasn't expecting it to be this good.

"'How many days have we actually seen each other since we met?' he asks. (...) I shrug. 'I don't know. Four? Five?' He slowly shakes his head. 'If you count today, it's seven,' he says, sliding a hand through my hair. 'So tell me, Auburn. How is it possible that I'm already falling in love with you?'"


The plot wasn't mind-blowing, in fact, it was quite expectable but I think it was the way the book was written that got me smitten. The sentences were full of emotion and thoughts that weren't expressed out loud. I marked, like, 7 or so sentences with post-its.

“I'm scared I'll never feel this again with anyone else," I whisper.
He squeezes my hands. "I'm scared you will.�


Lastly, the connection with art was astonishing. I loved the paintings, I don't really know how to explain them without showing them to you and I don't want to do that because in order to feel the paintings, I believe that you need to see them between the pages and the story. They won't make any sense when they are alone. Another great thing was the whole idea of taking a confession and painting it. I loved the whole concept of it and I'd love to read every single confession Owen has out there and the paintings they are attached to.

"The painting was called 'When I'm with You, I Think of All the Great Things I Could Be If I Were Without You.'"


I don't think this review made sense in any way because it was mostly me blabbering about the amazing things about Confess and honestly, I did try to find one single thing that I didn't like about this book but no, I couldn't.

Go buy this book, I guarantee you, you won't be disappointed because to me, Colleen Hoover is slowly proving that she is a goddess.]]> 4.14 2015 Confess
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Defne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/05/07
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: owned-english-only, favorites, 2016
review:
This book.

THIS BOOK.

I'm quite mad at myself because I finished this book in 6 days when I could actually devour it in hours. Seriously, Colleen Hoover never ceases to amaze me, I haven't read all of her books yet but the ones I did read were both fascinating and heart-wrenching.

As I expected, Confess was equally amazing, if not more, as her other books that I've read.

To be honest this review is going to be quite short because I can say nothing but good things about this book. The characters were constructed beautifully, each had their flaws and motivations and I loved that. I could feel the hopelessness of the characters and I could feel their happiness, sadness, anger and every other emotion. Those who follow me on ŷ can see my status, at one point, it was all becoming too much and I said "I have never felt this helpless in my whole life", not because I was actually feeling helpless but because reading about the what the characters were going through affected me and I could feel it in my veins.

And the romance, God, the romance was unbelievable. I am a huge sucker for romance and everything that has to do with romance so it was pretty obvious that I was going to love this book but I wasn't expecting it to be this good.

"'How many days have we actually seen each other since we met?' he asks. (...) I shrug. 'I don't know. Four? Five?' He slowly shakes his head. 'If you count today, it's seven,' he says, sliding a hand through my hair. 'So tell me, Auburn. How is it possible that I'm already falling in love with you?'"


The plot wasn't mind-blowing, in fact, it was quite expectable but I think it was the way the book was written that got me smitten. The sentences were full of emotion and thoughts that weren't expressed out loud. I marked, like, 7 or so sentences with post-its.

“I'm scared I'll never feel this again with anyone else," I whisper.
He squeezes my hands. "I'm scared you will.�


Lastly, the connection with art was astonishing. I loved the paintings, I don't really know how to explain them without showing them to you and I don't want to do that because in order to feel the paintings, I believe that you need to see them between the pages and the story. They won't make any sense when they are alone. Another great thing was the whole idea of taking a confession and painting it. I loved the whole concept of it and I'd love to read every single confession Owen has out there and the paintings they are attached to.

"The painting was called 'When I'm with You, I Think of All the Great Things I Could Be If I Were Without You.'"


I don't think this review made sense in any way because it was mostly me blabbering about the amazing things about Confess and honestly, I did try to find one single thing that I didn't like about this book but no, I couldn't.

Go buy this book, I guarantee you, you won't be disappointed because to me, Colleen Hoover is slowly proving that she is a goddess.
]]> A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Defne 5 4.29 1943 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
author: Betty Smith
name: Defne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Enter Ghost 59725231 A bold, evocative new novel from the Sue Kaufman, Betty Trask and Plimpton Prize Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia stayed in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.]]> 336 Isabella Hammad 080216238X Defne 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Enter Ghost
author: Isabella Hammad
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blue Nights 10252302
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. “How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?� Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.

Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.]]> 208 Joan Didion 0307267679 Defne 0 to-read 3.92 2011 Blue Nights
author: Joan Didion
name: Defne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Pivot Year 138301904 This is the year you change your life.

If you’re in a pivot period—if you’re still bridging the space between where you are and where you want to be—remember that the person you’re becoming is already within you. The journey is convincing your mind to act consistently on what your heart already knows it wants to do.

The Pivot Year is a book of 365 daily meditations on finding the courage to become who you’ve always wanted to be, from the internationally bestselling author of 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, and more.]]> 368 Brianna Wiest 1949759628 Defne 0 to-read 4.11 2023 The Pivot Year
author: Brianna Wiest
name: Defne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays]]> 11987 212 Albert Camus Defne 0 to-read 4.23 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
author: Albert Camus
name: Defne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Efendi: Beyaz Türklerin Büyük Sırrı]]> 11220110 Evliyazadeler İzmir’in seçkin ailelerinden. Kitap onların soyağacıyla başlıyor. Ailenin üyeleri bu ülkenin kaderini belirlemiş insanlar çoğunlukla. İçlerinde siyaset adamları da var, futbolcu da, güzellik kraliçesi de, yazar da... Evliyazadelerin soyağacı Dr. Nâzım, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu ve Adnan Menderes’e kadar uzanıyor. Hikâyenin en önemli kısımlarından biri de bu zaten. "Efendi"yi okurken Türkiye’nin farklı bir yüzüne tanık olacak, gizli kalmış gerçekleriyle yüzleşeceksiniz. Yalçın’ın araştırması, tarihin derinlerine inmek, gündemde olan konulara bir de tarihin gözünden bakmak için kaçırılmaz bir fırsat. Üstelik bir roman akıcılığında.]]> 614 Soner Yalçın 9759915162 Defne 0 to-read 3.73 2004 Efendi: Beyaz Türklerin Büyük Sırrı
author: Soner Yalçın
name: Defne
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Arkadaşıma Veda 32612033
Yardımcısı Salih Bozok'un dilinden dâhi lider Mustafa Kemal Atatürk'ün hayat hikâyesi. Yüreği daima vatan sevgisiyle dolu iki arkadaşın, hayallerini gerçekleştirme masalı.

Canım yavrum, Ben hayatım boyunca Mustafa Kemal Atatürk'e sonsuz bir hayranlık duydum ve daima onun izinden yürüdüm. Ne mutlu bana ki halkın, dâhi liderine duyduğu derin sevgiye tanık oldum. Bu kitap, onu henüz altı yasındayken Selanik'te tanıdıgım ilk günden, Istanbul'da öldügü o acı güne kadar süren essiz dostlugumuzun hikâyesidir. Yüregi daima vatan sevgisiyle dolu iki arkadasın, hayallerini gerçeklestirme hikâyesidir. Bu satırları bir ülkenin kurtulus destanı olarak da okumanı dilerim. Senden tek istegim, onun ilkelerini iyi anlaman ve yurduna yarasır, çalıskan bir insan olup siz gençlere emanet ettigi cumhuriyeti korumandır. Sevgilerimle, Baban Salih Bozok]]> 192 Zülfü Livaneli 605093746X Defne 0 to-read 4.56 2016 Arkadaşıma Veda
author: Zülfü Livaneli
name: Defne
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Huzursuzluk 33797647
İstanbul’un kargaşası içinde sıradan bir yaşam süren İbrahim, çocukluk arkadaşı Hüseyin’in ölüm haberi üzerine doğduğu kadim kent Mardin’e gider. Onun, önce sevdaya sonra ölüme yazılmış, Mardin’de başlayıp Amerika’da sona ermiş hayatını araştırmaya koyulur. Böylece âdeta bir girdabın içine çekilir, tutkuyla ve hırsla gizemli bir kadının peşine düşer.

Harese nedir, bilir misin? Develerin çölde çok sevdiği bir diken var. Deve dikeni yedikçe ağzı kanar. Tuzlu kanın tadı dikeninkiyle karışınca bu, devenin daha çok hoşuna gider. Kanadıkça yer, bir türlü kendi kanına doyamaz� Ortadoğu’nun âdeti budur, tarih boyunca birbirini öldürür ama aslında kendini öldürdüğünü anlamaz. Kendi kanının tadından sarhoş olur.

Mardinli Hüseyin ile IŞİD zulmünü misliyle yaşamış Ezidi kızı Meleknaz’ın ve kelamın çocuklarının hikâyesi... Livaneli okuru, sevda ile acının iç içe geçtiği bir Ortadoğu gerçeğiyle buluşturuyor.]]> 160 Zülfü Livaneli 6050939829 Defne 0 4.05 2017 Huzursuzluk
author: Zülfü Livaneli
name: Defne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:

]]> The Troubles with Us 57503157 288 Alix O'Neill Defne 0 to-read 4.09 2021 The Troubles with Us
author: Alix O'Neill
name: Defne
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pineapple Street 61246258
Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.]]> 304 Jenny Jackson 059349069X Defne 0 to-read 3.49 2023 Pineapple Street
author: Jenny Jackson
name: Defne
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Inseparable 56197486 A never-before-published novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship

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

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

Deemed too intimate to publish during Simone de Beauvoir’s life, Inseparable offers fresh insight into the groundbreaking feminist’s own coming-of-age; her transformative, tragic friendship with her childhood friend Zaza Lacoin; and how her youthful relationships shaped her philosophy. Sandra Smith’s vibrant translation of the novel will be long cherished by de Beauvoir devotees and first-time readers alike.]]> 176 Simone de Beauvoir 0063075040 Defne 0 to-read 4.05 2020 Inseparable
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Defne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Welcome to the Monkey House 4985 Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Alternative cover edition here ]]> 331 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333501 Defne 0 to-read 4.14 1968 Welcome to the Monkey House
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Defne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Second Sex 457264 746 Simone de Beauvoir 0679724516 Defne 0 to-read 4.16 1949 The Second Sex
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Defne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Defne 0 to-read 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Defne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Defne 0 to-read 4.09 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Defne
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Anthropologists 195391751
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,� chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.� Life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues-parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.]]> 192 Aysegül Savas 163973306X Defne 0 3.88 2024 The Anthropologists
author: Aysegül Savas
name: Defne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Goodbye Process 201924625 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Longlisted for THE STORY PRIZE
A Library Journal BEST BOOK OF 2024
An Electric Literature Most Exciting Debut Short Story Collection of 2024

“Short story fans might just discover their new favorite author in this arresting collection, a must-have.”�Library Journal (STARRED review)

What happens when you are forced to let go of the things you love the most? What are you left with?

In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.

The stories―which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny―will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’s characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.

Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.]]> 240 Mary Jones 1958506621 Defne 0 3.93 2024 The Goodbye Process
author: Mary Jones
name: Defne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Defne 0 books-to-buy 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Defne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: books-to-buy
review:

]]> The Lincoln Highway 59238565 576 Amor Towles 1529157641 Defne 0 to-read 4.16 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Defne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Defne 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Defne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1) 199368721 She's been driving him wild for years . . . the good kind of wild.

The kind of wild that comes with wanting your best friend's little sister and knowing you can't have her.

Forbes may have labeled Ford Grant the World's Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he's her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend's sister, Rosie Belmont.

After living in the city, Rosie came blasting back into town like a storm. Beautiful, messy, and chaotic. And one wide-eyed, desperate plea for a job is all it takes for Ford to hire her. He vows to keep her at arm's length. Tries to stick to scowls and grumpy one-liners. But with her, verbal sparring is a type of foreplay―friction that soon turns to blistering heat.

Ford knows damn well he shouldn't cross this line. But shouldn't and can't are two very different things.

And the only thing he truly can't do is resist her.]]> 402 Elsie Silver 0349441626 Defne 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1)
author: Elsie Silver
name: Defne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TܰԱ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Defne 0 to-read 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Defne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beyoğlu'nun En Güzel Abisi 18662065
Yılbaşı gecesi işlenen bir cinayet...

Tarlabaşı’nın arka sokaklarında bulunan bir erkek cesedi. Öldürülmüş erkeklerin en yakışıklısı, belki de en kötüsü. Karanlık sırların ortaya çıkardığı utanç verici bir gerçek. Gururlarının kurbanı olmuş erkekler, onların hayatlarını yaşamak zorunda olan kadınlar. Bu cinayetler yatağında, bu kötülükler bahçesinde, bu insan eti satılan can pazarında masumiyetini korumaya çalışan bir adam. Bir zamanlar İstanbul’un en gözde yeri olan Beyoğlu’nun hazin hikâyesi. Karanlık...

Soğuk havayla iyice ağırlaşan bir karanlık. Uzaklardan şarkılar geliyor kulağına, neşeli kadın çığlıkları, ayarını yitirmiş sarhoş naraları, biri küfrediyor belki ana avrat, belki ağlıyor biri hıçkıra hıçkıra, belki biri sessizce ölüyor bu gürültünün, bu hengâmenin ortasında. Umurunda değil. Hepsinden sıyrılmış, sadece öfke...

Nereye gittiğini bilmeden yürüyor, nefret tarafından kuşatılmış olarak. Kıskançlık denen o canavar, çelikten pençesine almış yüreğini, habire sıkıyor. “Kadınlar,� diyor bir ses zihninin derinliklerinden...

“Kadınlar, onlarla oynayamazsın... Oynadığını zannedersin ama bir de bakmışsın, asıl oyuncak sen olmuşsun.� Hayatına giren kadınların yüzleri beliriyor sokağın zemininde. Birer birer düşüyor görüntüleri ayaklarının dibine. Hepsinin boynu bükük, hepsinin gözlerinde keder. Hepsi üzgün... Aldırmıyor, bir su birikintisiymiş gibi basıp geçiyor üzerlerinden ama yeniden düşüyor görüntüler zemine. “Kadınlar,� diyor o ses yine, “Kadınlardan asla kurtulamazsın, hayaletleri hayatın boyunca seni takip eder.”]]> 418 Ahmet Ümit 6051416838 Defne 0 3.82 2013 Beyoğlu'nun En Güzel Abisi
author: Ahmet Ümit
name: Defne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Couple (Nantucket, #3)]]> 34840184
But it's going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons after tragedy strikes: a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony-and everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect. Featuring beloved characters from The Castaways, Beautiful Day, and A Summer Affair, The Perfect Couple proves once again that Elin Hilderbrand is the queen of the summer beach read.]]> 480 Elin Hilderbrand 0316375241 Defne 0 3.93 2018 The Perfect Couple (Nantucket, #3)
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Defne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Orientalism 355190
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.]]> 424 Edward W. Said Defne 0 to-read 4.13 1978 Orientalism
author: Edward W. Said
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> If Beale Street Could Talk 38463 197 James Baldwin 0307275930 Defne 0 to-read 4.28 1974 If Beale Street Could Talk
author: James Baldwin
name: Defne
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,� written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,� The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.]]> 106 James Baldwin 067974472X Defne 0 to-read 4.55 1963 The Fire Next Time
author: James Baldwin
name: Defne
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> No Name in the Street 256105
“It contains truth that cannot be denied.� � The Atlantic Monthly

In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.]]> 208 James Baldwin 0307275922 Defne 0 to-read 4.50 1972 No Name in the Street
author: James Baldwin
name: Defne
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld]]> 198493821 The harrowing tale of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the rise of organized crime.

In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry.

But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands. Worried about the anti-immigration lobby and the uncertain future of Jewish Americans, the uptowners marshalled a strictly off-the-books vice squad led by an ambitious young reformer.

The squad, known as the Incorruptibles, took the fight to the heart of crime in the city, waging war on the sin they saw as threatening the future of their community. Their efforts, however, led to unforeseen consequences in the form of a new mobster class who realized, in the country’s burgeoning reform efforts, unprecedented opportunities to amass power.

In this mesmerizing and atmospheric account, drawn from never-before-seen sources and peopled with unforgettable characters, Dan Slater tells an epic and often brutal saga of crime and redemption, exhuming a buried history that shaped our modern world.]]> 432 Dan Slater 0316427713 Defne 0 to-read 3.54 2024 The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
author: Dan Slater
name: Defne
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss]]> 200634629
In 1850, Fredericka Mandelbaum traveled to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a widow with four children, a fixture of high society, and an admired philanthropist. What had enabled a woman on the margins of American life to ascend from tenement poverty to immense wealth?

In the intervening years, “Marm� Mandelbaum, as she was known, had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a successful criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (the equivalent of nearly $300 million in today’s money) had passed through her modest haberdashery shop on the Lower East Side. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime in New York City� by the New York Times , she planned, financed, and profited from robberies of cash, gold, diamonds, and silk throughout the city and across the United States.

But Fredericka Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the formerly scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of New York's foremost bank robbers, housebreakers, and shoplifters, and neatly bribing anyone who stood in her way, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business .

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum paints a vivid image of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with delightful rogues, capitalist power brokers, and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all of whom straddled the line between underworld enterprise and the realm of “legitimate� commerce. Combining deep historical research with the narrative flair for which she is celebrated, Margalit Fox tells the unforgettable story of a once-famous, now-forgotten heroine, a tale that exemplifies the cherished rags-to-riches narrative of Victorian America while simultaneously upending it altogether.]]> 301 Margalit Fox 0593243854 Defne 0 to-read 3.43 2024 The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
author: Margalit Fox
name: Defne
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America]]> 198919204
On the morning of May 16, 1922, a young man’s body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of “shadow men,� blackmailers who extorted their victims� moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder?

For sixteen months, the media fueled a firestorm of speculation. Unscrupulous criminal attorneys, fame-seeking chorus girls, con artists, and misogynistic millionaires harnessed the power of the press to shape public perception. New York governor and future presidential candidate Al Smith and editor of the Daily News Joseph Medill Patterson leveraged the investigation to further professional ambitions. Famous figures like Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and F. Scott Fitzgerald weighed in. As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring the callous Ward to justice, America watched enraptured.

Capturing the extraordinary twists and turns of the case, Shadow Men conjures the excess and contradictions of the Jazz Age and reveals the true-crime origins of the media-led voyeurism that reverberates through contemporary life. It’s a story of privilege and power that lays bare the social inequity that continues to influence our system of justice.]]> 368 James Polchin 1640096000 Defne 0 to-read 3.55 2024 Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America
author: James Polchin
name: Defne
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2)]]> 12983100 Angelfall, the survivors of the angel apocalypse begin to scrape back together what's left of the modern world.

When a group of people capture Penryn's sister Paige, thinking she's a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken.

Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige. Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels' secret plans where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go.

Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can't rejoin the angels, can't take his rightful place as one of their leaders. When faced with recapturing his wings or helping Penryn survive, which will he choose?]]> 438 Susan Ee Defne 5 owned-english-only, 2016 Click to see the review of the full series]]> 4.24 2013 World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2)
author: Susan Ee
name: Defne
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2016/06/19
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: owned-english-only, 2016
review:
Click to see the review of the full series
]]> Bright Young Women 101124639
The survivors, including key witness Pamela Schumacher, will be forever changed by this night. They have all become victims. But they tell their perspectives here, they remain masters of their stories. And they hunt the perpetrator on their own - against resistance from the justice system and the police; against public opinion, which idolizes the serial killer.]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Defne 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Defne
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In Memoriam 59948520 A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war.

It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.

Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood--without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.

An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.]]> 382 Alice Winn 0593534565 Defne 0 to-read 4.51 2023 In Memoriam
author: Alice Winn
name: Defne
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Defne 0 to-read 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Defne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Outline 21400742
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]> 249 Rachel Cusk 0571233627 Defne 0 to-read 3.68 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Defne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

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

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Defne 0 to-read 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Defne
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World]]> 43706466 An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .]]> 312 Elif Shafak 0241293863 Defne 0 to-read 4.09 2019 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
author: Elif Shafak
name: Defne
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Island of Missing Trees 56587382 A rich, magical new book on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited -- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.]]> 354 Elif Shafak 0241434998 Defne 0 to-read 4.13 2021 The Island of Missing Trees
author: Elif Shafak
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Konstantiniyye Oteli 25484988
Romanları 40 dilde yayınlanan ve uluslararası pek çok ödüle layık görülen ünlü yazar Zülfü Livaneli, Konstantiniyye Oteli ile okurlarına bir İstanbul panoraması çiziyor. İstanbul’un kaymak tabakasını, alt sınıfları ve hatta ölülerin ruhlarını buluşturup başarılı bir işkadını Zehra’nın gözünden anlatıyor. İstanbul’un köklü tarihini fona alan usta edebiyatçı, onlarca karakteri, geçmişi Bizans’a dayanan bir otelin açılışına konuk ediyor; güç ve yönetim ilişkilerinden romantizme ve “başına sevda gelenlere� kadar uzanan, geniş bir yelpazede insan ruhunu didik didik ediyor.

Prof. Onur Bilge Kula’nın deyişiyle “senfonik bir roman� olma özelliği taşıyan Konstantiniyye Oteli, İstanbul’da yüzyıllardır süren cümbüşü anlamak açısından Türk edebiyatında önemli
bir yer tutuyor.

Elinizde tuttuğunuz bu özel kitap, yeni baskısı ve gözden geçirilmiş son haliyle okurlarına çok sesli müzikal bir yapıt sunuyor.]]> 480 Zülfü Livaneli 605092631X Defne 0 3.70 Konstantiniyye Oteli
author: Zülfü Livaneli
name: Defne
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves:
review:

]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Defne 5 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Defne
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home]]> 63889384 The acclaimed international food writer and award-winning author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking explores the history and future of six of the world's most fascinating and iconic food cultures--France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey

We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is--or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or.... But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national cuisine? Anya von Bremzen, award-winning international food writer, has written definitive cookbooks for Russian, Spanish and Latin American cuisine, and delved into the world's great food traditions as a three-time James-Beard-award-winning food journalist. Now, in National Dish, she embarks on a fascinating journey to the heart of six of the world's most storied food traditions, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to people on the street, in search of how cuisine became connected to place.

Paris is where the whole idea of a country's food as its national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the invention of the restaurant, the codification of French food, and the tension between the cosmopolitan and locavore tendencies of the modern eater. From France, she moves quarters to Naples, where she comes face to face with the myth and reality of the pizza in the city where it all began, and takes on the Italian-ness of pasta in the bargain. Next is Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore the mystique of ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan's future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the essence of Spain's tapas culture and sense of community, and then Oaxaca, where culture wars over the pretty dream and the complex reality of postcolonial cultural integration find expression in the form of maize, mole, and mezcal. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck with friends becomes a lens on how a great multi-cultural empire defined its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in the melting pot of Jackson Heights, Queens, for a Ukrainian dinner centered around borscht, a meal which has never felt more loaded, or more precious.

A book of astonishing range and connoisseurship, National Dish peels back the layers of myth, commercialization, and fetishization around these great world cuisines. In so doing, it brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country.]]> 352 Anya von Bremzen 0735223165 Defne 0 currently-reading 3.50 National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home
author: Anya von Bremzen
name: Defne
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy]]> 111604 176 John Armstrong 0393057593 Defne 0 3.91 2002 Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy
author: John Armstrong
name: Defne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 133539
He claims that people are defined by the objects that surround them and must piece together their identities bit by bit each time they wake up. The young Marcel is so nervous about sleeping alone that he looks forward to his mother's goodnight kisses, but also dreads them as a sign of an impending sleepless night. One night, when Charles Swann, a friend of his grandparents, is visiting, his mother cannot come kiss him goodnight. He stays up until Swann leaves and looks so sad and pitiful that even his disciplinarian father encourages "Mamma" to spend the night in Marcel's room.]]> 615 Marcel Proust 0375751548 Defne 0 to-read 4.28 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Defne
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1913
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Free: Coming of Age at the End of History]]> 60099892
Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was almost impossible to visit, almost impossible to leave. It was a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. To Lea, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. There was community and hope.

Then, in December 1990, everything changed. The statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished. There was no longer anything to fear from prying ears. But factories shut, jobs disappeared and thousands fled to Italy on crowded ships, only to be sent back. Predatory pyramid schemes eventually bankrupted the country, leading to violent conflict. As one generation's aspirations became another's disillusionment, and as her own family's secrets were revealed, Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant.

Free is an engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.]]> 313 Lea Ypi 0141995106 Defne 0 to-read 4.31 2021 Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
author: Lea Ypi
name: Defne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Master and Margarita 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

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

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Defne 0 to-read 4.31 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Defne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Absalom, Absalom! 373755 316 William Faulkner 0679732187 Defne 0 to-read 3.97 1936 Absalom, Absalom!
author: William Faulkner
name: Defne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You]]> 923950
Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the HSP, it's a way of life. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.]]> 251 Elaine N. Aron 0553062182 Defne 0 currently-reading 3.86 1996 The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
author: Elaine N. Aron
name: Defne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle]]> 26026054
Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score . Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.

As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.]]> 256 Mark Wolynn 1101980362 Defne 0 3.45 2016 It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
author: Mark Wolynn
name: Defne
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Another Country 38474
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.]]> 448 James Baldwin 0141186372 Defne 0 4.32 1962 Another Country
author: James Baldwin
name: Defne
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Ana 85886721 Ana 0 Maksim Gorky Defne 0 to-read 4.23 1906 Ana
author: Maksim Gorky
name: Defne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1906
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Simple Art of Killing a Woman]]> 128713530 The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vividly conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.

To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region’s women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of Icamiabas, warrior women bent on vengeance―and gradually, she recovers the details of her own mother’s early death.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman resists categorization: it is a series of prose poems lamenting the real-life women murdered by so many men in Brazil; a personal search for history, truth, and belonging; and a modern, exacting, and sometimes fantastical take on very old problems that, despite our better selves, dog us the world over.]]> 272 Patrícia Melo 1632063468 Defne 0 to-read 4.21 2019 The Simple Art of Killing a Woman
author: Patrícia Melo
name: Defne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving]]> 500901
1. Attention to the present moment; observing, listening, and noticing all the feelings at play in our relationships.
2. Acceptance of ourselves and others just as we are.
3. Appreciation of all our gifts, our limits, our longings, and our poignant human predicament.
4. Affection shown through holding and touching in respectful ways.
5. Allowing life and love to be just as they are, with all their ecstasy and ache, without trying to take control.


When deeply understood and applied, these five simple concepts—what Richo calls the five A's—form the basis of mature love. They help us to move away from judgment, fear, and blame to a position of openness, compassion, and realism about life and relationships. By giving and receiving these five A's, relationships become deeper and more meaningful, and they become a ground for personal transformation.]]> 265 David Richo 1570628122 Defne 0 to-read 4.13 2002 How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving
author: David Richo
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All About Love: New Visions 17607 All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.]]> 240 bell hooks 0688168442 Defne 0 to-read 4.06 1999 All About Love: New Visions
author: bell hooks
name: Defne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> God Sees the Truth, but Waits 1535285 32 Leo Tolstoy 0886820715 Defne 0 to-read 3.90 1872 God Sees the Truth, but Waits
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Defne
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Alamut 171970 Alamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers." By creating a virtual paradise at Alamut, filled with beautiful women, lush gardens, wine and hashish, Sabbah is able to convince his young fighters that they can reach paradise if they follow his commands.

Alamut tells the story of how Sabbah was able to instill fear into the ruling class by creating a small army of devotees who were willing to kill, and be killed, in order to achieve paradise. Believing in the supreme Ismaili motto “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,� Sabbah wanted to “experiment� with how far he could manipulate religious devotion for his own political gain through appealing to what he called the stupidity and gullibility of people and their passion for pleasure and selfish desires.

The novel focuses on Sabbah as he unveils his plan to his inner circle, and on two of his young followers � the beautiful slave girl Halima, who has come to Alamut to join Sabbah's paradise on earth, and young ibn Tahir, Sabbah's most gifted fighter. As both Halima and ibn Tahir become disillusioned with Sabbah's vision, their lives take unexpected turns.

Alamut was originally written in 1938 as an allegory to Mussolini's fascist state. In the 1960's it became a cult favorite throughout Tito's Yugoslavia, and in the 1990s, during the Balkan's War, it was read as an allegory of the region's strife and became a bestseller in Germany, France and Spain.]]> 510 Vladimir Bartol 0972028730 Defne 0 4.34 1938 Alamut
author: Vladimir Bartol
name: Defne
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted]]> 50743767
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.]]> 352 Suleika Jaouad 0399588582 Defne 0 to-read 4.40 2021 Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: Defne
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays]]> 300570 384 Guy Davenport 1567920802 Defne 0 to-read 4.42 1981 The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays
author: Guy Davenport
name: Defne
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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

This is a tale of murder.

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

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

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

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

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X Defne 0 to-read 3.34 2024 The Fury
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Defne
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Talking at Night 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 Defne 0 to-read 3.91 2023 Talking at Night
author: Claire Daverley
name: Defne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune]]> 17704903 �winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?

Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world.

Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else.

The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic.

Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

The No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Best nonfiction books of the year at ŷ, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble. One of the New York Times critic Janet Maslin's 10 favorite books of 2013.
]]> 456 Bill Dedman 0345534522 Defne 0 to-read 3.76 2013 Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
author: Bill Dedman
name: Defne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nothing Personal 55629665 James Baldwin's critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.

Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, Nothing Personal is Baldwin's deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020--which were met with tear gas and rubber bullets the same year white supremacists entered the US Capitol with little resistance, openly toting flags of the Confederacy--Baldwin's documentation of his own troubled times cuts to the core of where we find ourselves today.

Baldwin's thoughts move through an interconnected range of questions, from America's fixation on eternal youth, to its refusal to recognize the past, its addiction to consumerism, and the lovelessness that fuels it in its cities and popular culture. He recounts his own encounter with police in a scene disturbingly similar to those we see today documented with ever increasing immediacy. This edition also includes a new foreword from interdisciplinary scholar Imani Perry and an afterword from noted Baldwin scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Both explore and situate the essay within the broader context of Baldwin's work, the Movement for Black Lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the presidency of Donald Trump.

Nothing Personal is both a eulogy and a declaration of will. In bringing this work into the twenty-first century, readers new and old will take away fundamental and recurring truths about life in the US. It is both a call to action, and an appeal to love and to life.]]> 83 James Baldwin 0807006424 Defne 0 to-read 4.67 1964 Nothing Personal
author: James Baldwin
name: Defne
average rating: 4.67
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rich Dad, Poor Dad 69571 195 Robert T. Kiyosaki 0751532711 Defne 0 to-read 4.11 1997 Rich Dad, Poor Dad
author: Robert T. Kiyosaki
name: Defne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Natural Beauty 61420120 Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.]]> 272 Ling Ling Huang 0593472926 Defne 0 to-read 3.79 2023 Natural Beauty
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: Defne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Castle 333538 Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman

Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.]]> 328 Franz Kafka 0805211063 Defne 0 to-read 3.97 1926 The Castle
author: Franz Kafka
name: Defne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Okumaz Yazmaz 202011904
Macaristan’daki ilk mutlu yıllar, savaş sonrası yoksulluk, yatılı okul dönemi, “çocukluğun gümüş ipliği”nin kopuşu, Stalin’in ölümü, sürgün, Lozan yılları, yeni bir ülke, anadil ve düşman dil... Ágota Kristóf bebeği ve kocasıyla yirmi bir yaşında sığınmacı olarak yerleştiği İsviçre’de hiçbir zaman tam anlamıyla hâkim olamayacağı, asla kendine ait kılamayacağı, ne yazabildiği ne de okuyabildiği düşman bir dille tanışır. Bundan böyle kendini bir halkın parçası hissedemediği gibi ötekilik hissini de her daim içinde taşır.

Yazarın tek otobiyografik metni olan Okumaz Yazmaz ölçülü, kısa cümleleri, ne eksik ne de fazla sözcükleriyle doğrudan okurun kalbine sesleniyor.

“Bu kitap küçük bir mücevher.�
Kirkus Reviews

“Kristóf yaklaşık elli sayfada, başkalarının bütün bir kariyeri boyunca hedefleyebileceği şeyi başarıyor. Katıksız bir deha.�
Max Porter]]> 48 Ágota Kristóf 975076224X Defne 0 to-read 4.43 2004 Okumaz Yazmaz
author: Ágota Kristóf
name: Defne
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Woman's Story 59452779 104 Annie Ernaux Defne 0 to-read 4.32 1988 A Woman's Story
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Defne
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kuzeyli Annem 36207963
Kendisi hakkında yazmamla ilgili bugün ne düşünürdü acaba?

Tedirginim, belki de kitabı sevmeyecek. Alkolik kocasından bahsedilmesinden gına gelmiş olmalı. Ketum ve çekingen olan kendisinden, hayali hastalıklarından, kederinden bahsedilmesini istemiyordur.

Satır aralarını okumayı bilecek, bu kitabın bir ilanı aşk olduğunu, öğretmenimizin Anneler Günü için dikte ettiği övgü sözleri hariç, onu sevdiğimi asla söylemeyen benim hatamı telafi ettiğimi anlayabilecek mi?

Bunları onu yeniden yaşatmak için yazdığımı anlayabilecek mi? Çünkü onu özlediğimi."

Jean-Louis Fournier’den yeni bir aile anlatısı daha.
“Kuzeyli Annem� tıpkı diğer Fournier kitapları gibi: sade, şiirsel ve sarsıcı...]]> 152 Jean-Louis Fournier 9750840534 Defne 0 to-read 4.21 2015 Kuzeyli Annem
author: Jean-Louis Fournier
name: Defne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men]]> 126262032 Librarian's Note: This is the entry for the short story collection. Please don't combine it with the short story of the same name.


A triptych of stories about love, lust, betrayal, misogyny, and the ever-intriguing interchanges between women and men. Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories, newly revised and expanded, together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work.

In “So Late in the Day,� Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he behaved differently.

In “The Long and Painful Death,� a writer’s arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his presence and opinions.

And in “Antarctica,� a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger.

Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence. Potent, charged, and breathtakingly insightful, these three essential tales will linger with readers long after the book is closed.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802160859 Defne 0 to-read 3.98 2022 So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men
author: Claire Keegan
name: Defne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Self-Help 90872
In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.]]> 163 Lorrie Moore 0307277291 Defne 0 to-read 4.13 1985 Self-Help
author: Lorrie Moore
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bliss Montage 60243188 A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built mirages

What happens when fantasy tears through the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?

In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.]]> 228 Ling Ma 0374293511 Defne 0 to-read 3.91 2022 Bliss Montage
author: Ling Ma
name: Defne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Five People You Meet in Heaven]]> 3431
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"]]> 196 Mitch Albom 0786868716 Defne 5 4.00 2003 The Five People You Meet in Heaven
author: Mitch Albom
name: Defne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/11
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom]]> 6596 The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.]]> 152 Miguel Ruiz 1878424505 Defne 0 4.20 1997 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
author: Miguel Ruiz
name: Defne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/29
date added: 2023/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Art of Loving 14142
Most people are unable to love on the only level that truly matters: love that is compounded of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage. As with every art, love demands practice and concentration, as well as genuine insight and understanding.

In his classic work, The Art of Loving, renowned psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm explores love in all its aspects—not only romantic love, steeped in false conceptions and lofty expectations, but also brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, the love of God, and the love of parents for their children.]]> 180 Erich Fromm 0061129739 Defne 0 4.05 1956 The Art of Loving
author: Erich Fromm
name: Defne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/29
date added: 2023/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Defne 0 to-read 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Defne
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Trial 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Defne 0 to-read 4.00 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: Defne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Men Live by and Other Tales]]> 407154
- What Men Live by
- Three Questions
- The Coffee-House of Surat
- How Much Land Does a Man Need?]]> 56 Leo Tolstoy 1419193570 Defne 0 to-read 4.10 1885 What Men Live by and Other Tales
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Defne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1885
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Notes from the Underground 36190076
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as Notes from the Underground, this edition of Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 108 Fyodor Dostoevsky Defne 0 to-read 4.18 1864 Notes from the Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Defne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1864
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A History of My Brief Body 44049371 In this stunning essay-collection-cum-prose-poem-cycle, Belcourt meditates on the difficulty and necessity of finding joy as a queer NDN in a country that denies that joy all too often. Out of the 'ruins of the museum of political depression' springs a 'tomorrow free of the rhetorical trickery of colonizers everywhere.' Happiness, this beautiful book says, is the ultimate act of resistance. --Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine
The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray's writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.]]> 192 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1937512940 Defne 0 to-read 4.22 2020 A History of My Brief Body
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: Defne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sun Down Motel 45885644
Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…]]> 327 Simone St. James 0440000173 Defne 0 to-read 3.99 2020 The Sun Down Motel
author: Simone St. James
name: Defne
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Defne 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Defne
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sankofa 56994001 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781646220830.

Masterful in its examination of freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place.

Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother—the only parent who raised her—is dead.

Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive...

When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots.]]> 304 Chibundu Onuzo Defne 0 to-read 3.77 2021 Sankofa
author: Chibundu Onuzo
name: Defne
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics]]> 40718037 Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such as C.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the International Library of Psychology series is available upon request.

]]> 257 Erich Fromm Defne 0 to-read 4.29 1947 Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics
author: Erich Fromm
name: Defne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> For Whom the Bell Tolls 46170 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Defne 0 to-read 3.98 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Defne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway Defne 0 to-read 3.81 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Defne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sofranız Şen Olsun: Ninelerimin Mutfağından Damağımda, Aklımda Kalanlar]]> 16167684 160 Takuhi Tovmasyan 9757265705 Defne 0 to-read 4.60 2004 Sofranız Şen Olsun: Ninelerimin Mutfağından Damağımda, Aklımda Kalanlar
author: Takuhi Tovmasyan
name: Defne
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ]]> 23013953
For too long, the gut has been the body’s most ignored and least appreciated organ, but it turns out that it’s responsible for more than just dirty work: our gut is at the core of who we are. Gut, an international bestseller, gives the alimentary canal its long-overdue moment in the spotlight. With quirky charm, rising science star Giulia Enders explains the gut’s magic, answering questions like: Why does acid reflux happen? What’s really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity and mood? Communication between the gut and the brain is one of the fastest-growing areas of medical research—on par with stem-cell research. Our gut reactions, we learn, are intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being. Enders’s beguiling manifesto will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach: they’re trying to tell you something important.]]> 273 Giulia Enders 1771641495 Defne 0 to-read 4.04 2014 Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ
author: Giulia Enders
name: Defne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 384 Coco Mellors 1635576814 Defne 0 3.71 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: Defne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/07
date added: 2023/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Death of the Moth and Other Essays]]> 785075 248 Virginia Woolf 0156252341 Defne 0 y, to-read 4.13 1931 The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Defne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1931
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: y, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Crash into You (Pushing the Limits, #3)]]> 17233800
The girl with straight A's and the perfect life—that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy family…and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker—a guy she has no business even talking to. But after the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind.

The last thing Isaiah needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks. But when their shared love of street racing puts their lives in jeopardy, Isaiah and Rachel will have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other.]]> 474 Katie McGarry 037321099X Defne 0 to-read 4.26 2013 Crash into You (Pushing the Limits, #3)
author: Katie McGarry
name: Defne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Walk the Edge (Thunder Road, #2)]]> 17928147 426 Katie McGarry 0373211627 Defne 0 to-read 4.23 2016 Walk the Edge (Thunder Road, #2)
author: Katie McGarry
name: Defne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> şıı 31785592
Richard Howard’s new English translation of this complex and brooding novel—the first in more than a hundred years—reveals the final, unexpected flowering of a great French realist’s art.]]> 192 Guy de Maupassant 975570812X Defne 0 2017 3.82 1890 şıı
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: Defne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at: 2017/01/06
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves: 2017
review:

]]> The Sentence 56816904
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written]]> 387 Louise Erdrich 006267112X Defne 0 books-to-buy 3.92 2021 The Sentence
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Defne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/28
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: books-to-buy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion]]> 12576334
Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them � because they're packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, Alain (a non-believer himself) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:

- build a sense of community

- make our relationships last

- overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy

- escape the twenty-four hour media

- go travelling

- get more out of art, architecture and music

- and create new businesses designed to address our emotional needs.

For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing lots of peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.]]> 320 Alain de Botton 0241144779 Defne 0 3.66 2011 Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
author: Alain de Botton
name: Defne
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/27
date added: 2023/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]>