en-US Mon, 31 Mar 2025 18:02:46 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 16158561 A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, by narrative, by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own stories—of her mother and her decline from memory loss, of a trip to Iceland, of an illness—Solnit revisits fairytales and entertains other stories: about arctic explorers, Che Guevara among the leper colonies, and Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, about warmth and coldness, pain and kindness, decay and transformation, making art and making self. Woven together, these stories create a map which charts the boundaries and territories of storytelling, reframing who each of us is and how we might tell our story.]]> 259 Rebecca Solnit 0670025968 Martin 0 to-read 4.20 2013
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Martin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2013
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]]> 49985046
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy.

Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women’s rights.

She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer—books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.]]> 256 Rebecca Solnit 0593083334 Martin 0 to-read 4.22 2020
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Martin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 62919847 A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida
June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.]]> 576 Tananarive Due 1982188340 Martin 0 to-read 4.44 2023
author: Tananarive Due
name: Martin
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 209891406 From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.

Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.

Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.

This is “one of our most gifted writers�� (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.]]> 496 Alan Hollinghurst 0593243064 Martin 0 currently-reading 3.93 2024
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Martin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 205436018 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang 0593595459 Martin 0 to-read 3.87 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Martin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> 196845474 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies�� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 432 Helen Simonson 1984801317 Martin 0 to-read 3.84 2024
author: Helen Simonson
name: Martin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> 55584194 400 Erin Kelly 1473680867 Martin 0 to-read 3.76 2021
author: Erin Kelly
name: Martin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 212807002 From the internationally award-winning creator of Broadchurch comes a brilliant new detective story following one man’s death and the secrets that unravel in a coastal English village

The villagers of Bradcombe like to think of it as one of the most picturesque spots on England’s seaside.

But now, it’s a crime scene.

A man is found dead, tied to a chair in the middle of the road, with a stag’s antler’s on his head. The gruesome scene stuns the town, especially when they learn that it is Jim Tiernan, owner of the White Hart pub, who has been found murdered.

Is it a personal vendetta, or something more macabre? Tierney’s pub is at the center of village life and he knew everyone’s secrets.

Detective Nicola Bridge grew up in Bradcombe, and has been craving a juicy case ever since she moved back from the big city.�� DC Harry Ward is ten years younger, and their partnership is somehow stronger, and more satisfying even than her marriage. Together, they are determined to crack the storybook façade to find out just what the people of Bradcombe have to hide.

And now, in the town she thought she knew so well, Detective Nicola Bridge is asking questions. Is she ready for what she’s about to find?]]> 352 Chris Chibnall 0593831578 Martin 0 to-read 3.94
author: Chris Chibnall
name: Martin
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 31574750
“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy. �� Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different―“girlish,�� intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.

Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result―a critical and popular triumph―has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.]]> 208 Édouard Louis 0374266654 Martin 0 to-read 3.96 2014
author: Édouard Louis
name: Martin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 40383471 Optimism demands action. Optimism is an active choice. Optimism is not naïve and it is not impossible.

We are living in an age of turmoil, destruction and uncertainty. Global warming has reached terrifying heights of severity, human expansion has caused the extinction of countless species, and Neoliberalism has led to a destructive divide in wealth and a polarisation of mainstream politics. But, there is a constructive way to meet this challenge, there is a reason to keep on fighting and there are plenty of reasons for optimism.

Lily Cole has met with some of the millions of people around the world who are working on solutions to our biggest challenges and committed to creating a more sustainable and peaceful future for humanity. Exploring issues from fast fashion to fast food and renewable energy to gender equality, and featuring interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Sir Paul McCartney, Elon Musk and Extinction Rebellion co-founder Professor Gail Bradbrook, Reasons for Optimism is a beacon of hope in dark times.

This book is a rousing call to action that will leave you feeling hopeful that we can make a difference. We are the ancestors of our future: a generation who will either be celebrated for their activism or blamed for its apathy. It is for us to choose optimism, to make a change and to show what is possible.]]> 448 Lily Cole 0241309123 Martin 0 to-read 4.06
author: Lily Cole
name: Martin
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/21
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]]> 9957 144 Ian McEwan 0099468387 Martin 0 to-read 3.56 1978
author: Ian McEwan
name: Martin
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 26192990
Set against Argentina's turbulent years following the collapse of the corrupt Peronist regime, this is the story of Juan Salvador the penguin, rescued by English schoolteacher Tom Michell from an oil slick in Uruguay just days before a new term. When the bird refuses to leave Tom's side, the young teacher has no choice but to take it with him and look after it. This is their story.]]> 229 Tom Michell 0718181638 Martin 0 to-read 4.05 2015
author: Tom Michell
name: Martin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/18
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review:

]]> 53931 ]]> 245 Mario Vargas Llosa 0312420285 Martin 0 dropped-it 3.74 1987
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Martin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: dropped-it
review:
Meh --- love Llosa as an artist but didn't connect with a "The Storyteller", at all, on any level. Premise sounded promising but didn't deliver anything that held my attention.
]]> 63577939 It’s mid morning. Cool. Not many coffee bars open. I, the brave one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out; heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own hell. Bold as brass I cross the road stopping dead in front of him. He raises his eyes, so sadly that I love him for it.

Leda is lost. Bouncing from job to job, from coffee bar to house party, he spends his days watching the hours pass and waiting for the night to arrive. Trysts in the rubble of a bombsite follow hours spent in bedsits with near strangers, as Leda is forced to find intimacy in unusual places.

Semi-homeless and estranged from his given family, he relies on the support of his chosen one: a community of older gay men and divorced women who feed and clothe him, gently encouraging him to find a foothold in a society which excludes him at every turn. And then there is Daniel, a buttoned-up man of the Lord, for whom Leda nurses an unrequited obsession �� one which sends him spiralling into self-destruction.

This newly discovered, never-before-published novel �� which pre-dates the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 �� is a portrait of a lost Soho, as well as an important document of queer, working-class life, from a voice long overlooked.

Mark Hyatt was born in South London in 1940, and died by suicide outside Blackburn in 1972. His selected poems, So Much For Life, edited by Sam Ladkin and Luke Roberts, is forthcoming with Nightboat Books (2023). Hyatt received little or no formal education, and learned to read and write as an adult. Love, Leda (c. 1965) is his only known novel.]]> 176 Mark Hyatt 1913512215 Martin 0 to-read 3.78 2023
author: Mark Hyatt
name: Martin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
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]]> 209456186 Vikram Seth and Thrity Umrigar meet Rebecca in this sweeping multi-generational debut novel by accomplished television executive Nayantara Roy, about a young Indian American book editor from Brooklyn who returns to Kolkata when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home, and the secrets that lie within it.


It’s the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family she thought she left behind sixteen years ago. Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author�� and occasional lover�� is suddenly determined to make things more serious.


As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of keeping everything under the surface. For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.]]> 448 Nayantara Roy 1643755846 Martin 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Nayantara Roy
name: Martin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/13
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]]> 7951334 A masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the true literary icons of our time.

Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand-nephew, Ptolemy's only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece's seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew's funeral.

But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy's hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won't live to see age ninety- two but that he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew's death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget.

In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley captures the compromised state of his protagonist's mind with profound sensitivity and insight, and creates an unforgettable pair of characters at the center of a novel that is sure to become a true contemporary classic.]]> 277 Walter Mosley 1594487723 Martin 0 to-read 4.08 2010
author: Walter Mosley
name: Martin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> 40671717 A behind-the-scenes look at the desperate, scandalous private life of a British MP and champion manipulator, and the history-making trial that exposed his dirty secrets
��
As a Member of Parliament and Leader of the Liberal Party in the 1960s and 70s, Jeremy Thorpe's bad behavior snuck under the radar for years. Police and politicians alike colluded to protect one of their own. In 1970, Thorpe was the most popular and charismatic politician in the country, poised to hold the balance of power in a coalition government.
��
But Jeremy Thorpe was a man with a secret. His homosexual affairs and harassment of past partners, along with his propensity for lying and embezzlement, only escalated as he evaded punishment. Until a dark night on the moor with an ex-lover, a dog, and a hired gun led to consequences that even his charm and power couldn't help him escape.
��
Dubbed the "Trial of the Century," Thorpe's climactic case at the Old Bailey in London was the first time that a leading British politician had stood trial on a murder charge, and the first time that a murder plot had been hatched in the House of Commons. And it was the first time that a prominent public figure had been exposed as a philandering gay man, in an era when homosexuality had only just become legal.
��
With the pace and drama of a thriller, A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL is an extraordinary story of hypocrisy, deceit, and betrayal at the heart of the British Establishment.]]> 361 John Preston 1590518152 Martin 0 to-read 4.00 2016
author: John Preston
name: Martin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18866705 The much-anticipated final instalment of the Wool trilogy.

In the aftermath of the uprising, the people of Silo 18 are coming to terms with a new order.

Some embrace the change, others fear the unknown; none have control of their fate.

The Silo is still in danger.

There are those set on its destruction.

Jules knows they must be stopped.

The battle has been won.

The war is just beginning.]]> 416 Hugh Howey Martin 0 to-read 4.19 2013
author: Hugh Howey
name: Martin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17306293 579 Hugh Howey Martin 0 to-read 4.12 2013
author: Hugh Howey
name: Martin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13453029
The first Wool story was released as a standalone short in July of 2011. Due to reviewer demand, the rest of the story was released over the next six months.

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

Alternate cover for B0071XO8RA]]> 509 Hugh Howey Martin 0 to-read 4.22 2012
author: Hugh Howey
name: Martin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 207297833 A vibrant memoir from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Nenah Cherry who shares an inside look at her fascinating career and globe-traversing journeys in a life of love and music. Born in Sweden in 1964, Neneh Cherry’s father Ahmadu was a musician from Sierra Leone. Her mother, Moki, was a twenty-one-year-old Swedish textile artist. Her parents split up just after Neneh was born, and not long afterwards Moki met and fell in love with acclaimed jazz musician Don Cherry. Eventually, the strong pull New York City in the 1970s drew him them there, but they made a home wherever they traveled. Neneh and her brother Eagle Eye experienced a life of creativity, freedom, and, of course, music. In A Thousand Threads, Neneh takes readers from the charming old schoolhouse in the woods of Sweden where she grew up, to the village in Sierra Leone that was birthplace of her biological father, to the early punk scene in London and New York, to finding her identity with her stepfather’s family in Watts, California. Neneh has lived an extraordinary life of connectivity and creativity and she recounts in intimate detail how she burst onto the scene as a teenager in the punk band The Slits, and went on to release her first album in 1989 with a worldwide hit single “Buffalo Stance.�� Neneh’s inspiring and deeply compelling memoir both celebrates female empowerment and shines a light on the global music scene—and is perfect for anyone interested in the artistic life in all its forms.]]> 304 Neneh Cherry 1982161043 Martin 4 Just wow.
Neneh Cherry, you are an amazing woman. And thank you for sharing your amazing life with us through these pages. I devoured every page. You got me right in the heart - what a beautiful testament to the love for family through thick and thin and the profound resilience of women and the sacrifices they make.
WOW.]]> 4.14 2024
author: Neneh Cherry
name: Martin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
WOW.
Just wow.
Neneh Cherry, you are an amazing woman. And thank you for sharing your amazing life with us through these pages. I devoured every page. You got me right in the heart - what a beautiful testament to the love for family through thick and thin and the profound resilience of women and the sacrifices they make.
WOW.
]]> 53265647
This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side.

Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.

Love,
Mariah]]> 349 Mariah Carey 1250164680 Martin 0 to-read 4.07 2020
author: Mariah Carey
name: Martin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55573130 Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.

In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country.

At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality.

A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures.]]> 336 Paul Mendez 0385547064 Martin 4 I had a lot of compassion and sympathy for Jesse, the main character, as he left home, navigated life, came to terms with being gay and learning how to exist outside the bubble of his Jehovah Witness life.
Solid 3.75 ⭐️ for me. ]]> 3.81 2020
author: Paul Mendez
name: Martin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
Being a gay man, I do love a book written by a gay man about a gay man. Throw in some religious oppression and I'm all in. But, the primary reason I chose to read this book was to try and gain a deeper understanding of the black gay male experience and the racism that people of color experience. And this book sheds a lot of light on that experience. I could hear my white parents saying things like the dialogue that Paul Mendez wrote in the pages of this wonderful book. It helped me to understand even more how inherent racism is and how people are racist without a second thought as to what the other person might be feeling or experience or even going through.
I had a lot of compassion and sympathy for Jesse, the main character, as he left home, navigated life, came to terms with being gay and learning how to exist outside the bubble of his Jehovah Witness life.
Solid 3.75 ⭐️ for me.
]]> 39927096 You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and you can’t say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,�� “elegiac,�� “ingenious,�� as well as “too sappy by half,�� Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.]]> 273 Andrew Sean Greer Martin 5
Maybe because I’m a gay man who lives in San Francisco, like the main character - maybe because I’ve kinda been on journeys to far flung parts of the earth to accidentally discover things about myself, like the main character - maybe because I’ve been in a long-term relationship (27yrs) that has dipped and dived and twisted and turned and endured, like some in the book - maybe because the writing is exquisitely page-turningly smart - whatever, this is a great book.

I loved it. I devoured it.]]> 3.61 2017
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Martin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
This was not what I expected at all. I’d seen this on on the shelves at Green Apple Books, staring at me, I’d pick it up to check it out then put it back on the shelf. Well, it was given to me with the usual “NO - you’re really gonna LOVE it!�� So, I decided it’d be a holiday read. I finished it in 2 sittings in 2 days.

Maybe because I’m a gay man who lives in San Francisco, like the main character - maybe because I’ve kinda been on journeys to far flung parts of the earth to accidentally discover things about myself, like the main character - maybe because I’ve been in a long-term relationship (27yrs) that has dipped and dived and twisted and turned and endured, like some in the book - maybe because the writing is exquisitely page-turningly smart - whatever, this is a great book.

I loved it. I devoured it.
]]> 198563681
Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.

Obiefuna finds and hides who he truly is as he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence. Back home, his mother Uzoamaka must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s life, or the life he wants to live, becomes even further out of a reach and more dangerous than ever before.

Told from the alternating perspectives of Obiefuna and Uzoamaka, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and the love that can flourish in spite of it all.]]> 288 Chukwuebuka Ibeh 0385550642 Martin 0 to-read 4.16 2024
author: Chukwuebuka Ibeh
name: Martin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration�� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Martin 0 to-read 4.45 2010
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Martin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8521879
B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar �� a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois �� offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried.]]> 100 B.R. Ambedkar 8187190442 Martin 0 to-read 4.61 1936
author: B.R. Ambedkar
name: Martin
average rating: 4.61
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60021216 In the��follow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America.

“Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.��

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,”��through��the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo �� a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat��costume of a true “Unitedstatesian��... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.��

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts,��bayous,��and coastlines.��From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book,��Less Is��Lost��is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.]]> 272 Andrew Sean Greer 0316498904 Martin 0 to-read 3.64 2022
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Martin
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214363953
After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir.

Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center.

She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist.

As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship.

With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.

Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart.

Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.

It is a life too immense for only one book.]]> 432 Cher 0008355371 Martin 5
Cher has had the most extraordinarily interesting life, meeting and working with scions of the entertainment industry, working hard, making money, losing it all, making it all back, etc. What struck me the most is this woman’s determination and will. She’s one of the most famous women in the world but through it all, in my humble adoring opinion, she’s managed to keep her feet on the ground!!

GOD LOVE CHER!!!!!!]]> 4.24 2024
author: Cher
name: Martin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:
I’m a huge fan, been with her through thick and thin and all her career ups and downs, but I devoured this memoir. I know these stars probably don’t do all their own writing but I could feel her voice on every page. Cher could have EASILY filled the pages with all kinds of kiss and tell but, instead it’s all just very matter of fact, direct and to the point. Just like her.

Cher has had the most extraordinarily interesting life, meeting and working with scions of the entertainment industry, working hard, making money, losing it all, making it all back, etc. What struck me the most is this woman’s determination and will. She’s one of the most famous women in the world but through it all, in my humble adoring opinion, she’s managed to keep her feet on the ground!!

GOD LOVE CHER!!!!!!
]]> 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 Martin 4
I expected to not enjoy this book so much for two specific reasons:
1. I feared it would feel dated since it was published in 1985, almost 40 years ago.
2. I’ve been an avid watcher of the series and I worried that my visual experience with the story would overshadow the reading experience.
I was wrong on both counts.

I enjoyed how Offred was speaking to the reader - I felt like I was in her head, observing the experiences of a Handmaids in Gilead from a first-hand pov. I could hear Offred talking as if she was recounting her experience directly to the reader.

I thought that the way that Atwood presented Offred and her story were visceral and disturbing in a very matter-of-fact voice. There were several passages n the book where I gasped out loud because I thought “holy shit - that’s what’s happening right now in the USA��. Was 1985 Atwood a foreseer of the future of America??? I hope not - but it’s pretty compelling. And also unfolding before our eyes.]]> 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Martin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
Solid 4.5 Stars.

I expected to not enjoy this book so much for two specific reasons:
1. I feared it would feel dated since it was published in 1985, almost 40 years ago.
2. I’ve been an avid watcher of the series and I worried that my visual experience with the story would overshadow the reading experience.
I was wrong on both counts.

I enjoyed how Offred was speaking to the reader - I felt like I was in her head, observing the experiences of a Handmaids in Gilead from a first-hand pov. I could hear Offred talking as if she was recounting her experience directly to the reader.

I thought that the way that Atwood presented Offred and her story were visceral and disturbing in a very matter-of-fact voice. There were several passages n the book where I gasped out loud because I thought “holy shit - that’s what’s happening right now in the USA��. Was 1985 Atwood a foreseer of the future of America??? I hope not - but it’s pretty compelling. And also unfolding before our eyes.
]]> 60235494 Trevor Oliver Taddich III didn’t really think he was ever “in��. But that doesn’t stop him from a sensational coming “out�� story!Trevor finally creates an Eccentric San Francisco place for himself in this continuation of a coming-of-age memoir. He’s quite comfortable & content in his rarified world until the rumblings of wanting “more�� start to grow. He’s never been one to hide who he is, but that’s not exactly the same as coming out Gay in the 1970s.

Trevor’s initiation into “more�� is embellished & punctuated by a mysterious Abstract Expressionist painter, a psychoanalyst, magnificent Venetian Crystal chandeliers, impressive dicks, a blue Royal portable typewriter, and a kitten named Oscar...not to mention an alter ego also known as Phillip Reed.

Can Trevor & Phillip summon the courage to be their authentic selves?

The stakes of this coming out feel so high! Will they be? Just exactly what sort of chain reactions will being honest with his prominent family & being honest with himself set off in Trevor’s young life?

Through this masterfully told story painting a tapestry of the coming out lifestyle in those last whimsical, playful, and wonderful months before AIDS hit, breathe in the whimsy, intrigue, and the angst of a Gay Civilization that once sprang up out of San Francisco Barbary Coast & Gold Rush soil. Read along as a showtune flower of Gay Liberation sang out & opened its petals over the city’s seven-mile radius & bloomed big!

Pick up The Red Room, Book 3 in the San The Luxury of Eccentricity series today to tap dance through hilarious and poignant memories of a time gone by.]]> 750 William Martin Martin 0 to-read 5.00
author: William Martin
name: Martin
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 56415426 He was on a runaway bus of one kind or another for most of his life.The suburban house, professional father, housewife mother, and two children formed the perfect facade of family life in early 1960s California. But inside the house, the extraordinary Trevor Oliver Taddich III struggled to escape a cocoon of normal and expectations dictated by invisible, twisted familial ropes, cultural catalysts, and societal sway. Walt Disney and Leave it to Beaver it wasn’t.

Enjoy a runaway bus ride through the Cold War era and the hippie flower children years as William Martin chronicles the growth and development of Trevor in his unique blend of poetic whimsy and humor. Find the answers to what contributed to making Trevor so individually Trevor in a time punctuated with conformity. Discover what created the vulnerabilities that would portend the threat to his place in the family.

We fell in love with the flamboyant and vulnerable 19-year-old Trevor in Life in an Ivory Tower. Now, travel back in time on The Runaway Bus, book two in the San The Luxury of Eccentricity memoir series today. It’s the runaway bus ride of a lifetime.��]]> 401 William Martin Martin 0 to-read 4.33
author: William Martin
name: Martin
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53791885 Sometimes the only way through is over the top.You're nineteen years old and you just landed on your own in 1970's San Francisco...

It’s a wildly eccentric place, perfect for exploring who you are, coming to terms with who you were, and creating who you want to be.

Trevor Oliver Taddich III isn't just trying to define who he is as an adult, he’s learning how to live outside the shadow of his influential family, as a gay man refusing to be closeted.

Enjoy these memoir snippets that capture the anguish of becoming a man. They will leave you roaring with laughter, remembering with fondness, and embracing the compassion of one of the most whimsical and wild decades of our time. Enjoy the entertainment as Martin turns Roman a clef on its ear and into a modern, cutting edge memoir with the frivolity and panache of a drag queen revue.

Read Life in an Ivory Tower the first book in the San The Luxury of Eccentricity series, where San Francisco is as much a character as Trevor Oliver Taddich III.]]> 316 William Martin Martin 0 to-read 4.40
author: William Martin
name: Martin
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 120274
Since freshmen year, Jane and her two roommates, Lucy Toller and Deirdre Hall, were inseparable–studying the classics, performing school girl rituals on the lake, and sneaking out after curfew to meet Lucy’s charismatic brother Matt. However, the last winter before graduation, everything changed. For in that sheltered, ice-encrusted wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of senseless suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden for more than two decades in the dark depths of Heart Lake.

Now pages from Jane’s missing journal, written during that tragic time, have reappeared, revealing shocking, long-buried secrets. And suddenly, young, troubled girls are beginning to die again . . . as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface.

At once compelling, sensuous, and intelligent, The Lake of Dead Languages is an eloquent thriller, an intricate balance of suspense and fine storytelling that proves Carol Goodman is a rare new talent with a brilliant future.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 390 Carol Goodman 034548715X Martin 0 to-read 3.78 2002
author: Carol Goodman
name: Martin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8143909
Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan's great accomplishment and talent.]]> 89 Claire Keegan 0571255655 Martin 4 4.32 2010
author: Claire Keegan
name: Martin
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
review:
Another gorgeous piece of writing. Claire Keegan gives us snippets of life that are so real and just pull you in. I’m keeping all her books on my shelf so I can read them over and over and over again. There’s so much in such a short little book.
]]> 35657511 Warlight is a vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire. It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz and years of war. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends- men and women with a shared history, all of whom seem determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn't know or understand in that time, and it is this journey - through reality, recollection, and imagination - that is told in this magnificent novel.]]> 290 Michael Ondaatje 1787330729 Martin 3 3.55 2018
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Martin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
It was just ok for me. Parts of it I thoroughly enjoyed, mostly because I devour books of this genre. But it all felt really disjointed and it didn’t really go anywhere for me. It was a little laconic for me, just kinda lulling along. I enjoyed it enough, just 3 stars.
]]> 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Martin 0 to-read 4.41 2016
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Martin
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20696006 In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.]]> 282 Atul Gawande 0805095152 Martin 5 I’m so grateful for this book.
I absolutely loved it. And I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. Thinking maybe I should.]]> 4.47 2014
author: Atul Gawande
name: Martin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
My mom is elderly, facing the final stages of her life. It’s so hard to know what to do and how to do it. Gawande masterfully brings to light how to navigate the final stages of life. Maybe it’s my own current life experience that influenced how this book affected me (or is it effected?) but I think it’s essential reading for anyone who is dealing with someone in their life who has chronic illness or is facing the finality of human life.
I’m so grateful for this book.
I absolutely loved it. And I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. Thinking maybe I should.
]]> 11447921
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece�� (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.]]> 337 Jess Walter 0061928127 Martin 4
I loved the melange of history, fact, fiction, sprawling the decades, the intrigue, the humanity of this book. It was such a pleasure read, cover to cover.

For me it was a story about love in all its iterations. And I thought it was really beautiful.

Highly recommend.]]> 3.67 2012
author: Jess Walter
name: Martin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
Solid 4.75 ⭐️ for me.

I loved the melange of history, fact, fiction, sprawling the decades, the intrigue, the humanity of this book. It was such a pleasure read, cover to cover.

For me it was a story about love in all its iterations. And I thought it was really beautiful.

Highly recommend.
]]> 17938761
To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today.

A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.]]> 486 Joseph Allen Boone 0231151101 Martin 0 to-read 4.23 2014
author: Joseph Allen Boone
name: Martin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36112982 Now a major TV series, Mary & George, starring Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine.The King’s Assassin is the scandalous story of George Villiers, lover �� and murderer �� of King James I.The rise of George Villiers from minor gentry to royal power seemed to defy gravity. Becoming gentleman of the royal bedchamber in 1615, the young gallant enraptured James, Britain’s first Stuart king, royal adoration reaching such an intensity that the king declared he wanted the courtier to become his ‘wife��. For a decade, Villiers was at the king’s side �� at court, on state occasions and in bed, right up to James’s death in March 1625.Almost immediately, Villiers�� many enemies accused him of poisoning the king. A parliamentary investigation was launched, but the charges came to nothing, and were relegated to a historical footnote.Now, new historical scholarship suggests that a deadly combination of hubris and vulnerability did indeed drive Villiers to kill the man who made him. It may have been by accident, but there is compelling evidence that Villiers, overcome by ambition and frustrated by James’s passive approach to government, poisoned him.In The King’s Assassin, acclaimed author Benjamin Wooley examines this remarkable, even tragic story. Combining vivid characterization and a strong narrative with historical scholarship and forensic investigation, Woolley tells the story of King James’s death, and of the captivating figure at its centre. What emerges is a compelling portrait of a royal favourite whose charisma overwhelmed those around him and, ultimately, himself.]]> 385 Benjamin Woolley 1509837078 Martin 0 to-read 3.60 2017
author: Benjamin Woolley
name: Martin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199239243
It was supposed to be the happiest time of their lives. But for newlywed Stella, the dream honeymoon has turned into a nightmare overnight. Her perfect husband, Austin, has vanished without a trace.

Alone in Venice, Stella frantically searches for him. But as fear turns into confusion, she finds herself questioning everything she knows about the man she married. Has Austin really abandoned her, or has someone from his past finally caught up with him—the business partner he threatened to sue? The obsessive ex-girlfriend who refuses to let go? When Stella becomes convinced someone is following her, panic sets in.

As hours turn into days and clues start to unravel dark secrets, a terrified Stella can’t help but ask herself: is her husband who she thought he was at all?]]> 263 Shalini Boland 1662507127 Martin 0 to-read 3.68 2024
author: Shalini Boland
name: Martin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61812427 To live and dream is a wicked dance.

My dreams often come true -- a curse, and a blessing.

Pamela Anderson's blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands during a Canadian football game, she was quickly launched into superstardom, becoming Playboy's favorite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sex appeal. Yet the Pamela Anderson we think we know was created through happenstance rather than careful cultivation. Love, Pamela brings forth her true story: that of a small-town girl getting tangled up in her own dream.

Growing up on Vancouver Island, the daughter of young, wild, and unwittingly stylish parents, Pamela lived a hardscrabble childhood but developed a deep love for nature, populating her world with misfits, apparitional friends, and injured animals. Eventually overcoming her natural shyness, Pamela's restless imagination propelled her into a life few can dream of, from the beaches of Malibu to the coveted scene at the Playboy Mansion. As her star rose, she found herself a fixture of tabloid fodder, at the height of an era when paparazzi tactics were bent on destroying a person's image and self-esteem.

Pamela forged ahead with grace, finding sanctuary in her love of art and literature, and emerged a devoted mother and activist. Now, having returned to the island of her childhood, after a memorable run starring as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, Pamela is telling her story, a story of an irrepressible free spirit coming home and discovering herself anew at every turn. With vivid prose interspersed with bursts of original poetry, Love, Pamela is a pensive, layered, and unforgettable memoir.]]> 256 Pamela Anderson 0063226561 Martin 0 to-read 3.80 2023
author: Pamela Anderson
name: Martin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23346719
Finding a mysterious novel at her bedside plunges documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft into a living nightmare. Though ostensibly fiction, The Perfect Stranger recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the terrible day she became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew—and that person is dead.

Now that the past is catching up with her, Catherine’s world is falling apart. Her only hope is to confront what really happened on that awful day . . . even if the shocking truth might destroy her.]]> 304 Renée Knight 0857522817 Martin 0 to-read 3.61 2015
author: Renée Knight
name: Martin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever��

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Martin 0 to-read 3.78 2024
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Martin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 128620074 370 Bailey Merlin 1913770648 Martin 0 to-read 4.32 2023
author: Bailey Merlin
name: Martin
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 56534999 Welcome to the thrilling and unnervingly prescient world of the slow horses. This team of MI5 agents is united by one common bond: They've screwed up royally and will do anything to redeem themselves.

This special tenth-anniversary deluxe edition of a modern classic includes a foreword by the author, discussion questions for book clubs, and an exclusive short story featuring the slow horses.

London, England: Slough House is where washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers. The “slow horses,�� as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated there. Maybe they botched an Op so badly they can’t be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they have in common, though, is they want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.

When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?]]> 334 Mick Herron 1641292970 Martin 0 to-read 4.05 2010
author: Mick Herron
name: Martin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199797716
Ernesto and Elena Vega arrive in Mexico City where Ernesto works on a construction site until he is discovered by a local lucha libre trainer. At a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rockstars, Ernesto finds fame as El Rey Coyote, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico.

Years later, in East Los Angeles Freddy Vega is struggling to save his father’s gym while Freddy’s own son Julian is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes. The once larger-than-life Ernesto Vega is now dying, leading Freddy and Julian to find their own passions and discover what really happened back in Mexico.

Told from alternating perspectives, Ernesto takes you from the ranches of Michoacán to the makeshift colonias and crowded sports arenas of Mexico City. Freddy describes life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built as Julian descends deep into the culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood, The Sons of El Rey is an intimate portrait of a family wading against time and legacy, yet always choosing the fight.]]> 384 Alex Espinoza 1668032783 Martin 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Alex Espinoza
name: Martin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Martin 4
I thoroughly enjoyed the first person POV of this interpretation / retelling / reimagining / more developed story of Circe, making her a much more fully developed character.]]> 4.22 2018
author: Madeline Miller
name: Martin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:
Solid 3.85 ☀�� for me so I just rounded up to 4.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first person POV of this interpretation / retelling / reimagining / more developed story of Circe, making her a much more fully developed character.
]]> 7444174 Gardener Amory is a New England WASP who is beginning to feel the cracks in his empire. Nixon is about to be impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life carefully negotiating her parents�� conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother, and the conservative, liquor-soaked life of her father. But when they divorce, and Gardiner’s basest impulses are unleashed, the chasm quickly widens and Daley feels herself stretched thinly across it.
As she grows into adulthood, Daley rejects the narrow world that nourished her father’s fears and prejudices, and embarks on her own separate life—until he hits rock bottom. Lured back home by the dream of getting her father sober and rebuilding a trust that was broken years ago, Daley risks losing everything she has found beyond him, including her new love, Jonathan, who represents so much of what Daley’s father claims to hate, and who has given her so much of what he could never provide.
Intimate in its detail yet epic in range, Father of the Rain is a raw, compelling journey into the emotional complexities, mercurial contours, and magnetic pull of family. It is also the stunning portrait of a deeply complex man and his daughter’s fierce, primal attachment to him.]]> 354 Lily King 0802119492 Martin 0 to-read 3.95 2010
author: Lily King
name: Martin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53402121 An achingly beautiful story of female friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance set in the changing landscape of San Francisco��

Teenage Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know Sea Cliff’s homes and beaches, its hidden corners and eccentric characters—as well as the upscale all-girls�� school they attend. One day, walking to school with friends, they witness a horrible act—or do they? Eulabee and Maria Fabiola vehemently disagree on what happened, and their rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola’s sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths.����������������

Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is Vendela Vida’s masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tides is both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.��]]> 272 Vendela Vida 0062936239 Martin 0 to-read 3.62 2021
author: Vendela Vida
name: Martin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal�� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 Martin 0 to-read 4.14 2023
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Martin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6361885
When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson - his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

Surrounded by people he doesn't know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there's another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .]]> 340 Ann Cleeves 0230014461 Martin 0 to-read 3.94 2009
author: Ann Cleeves
name: Martin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 129877 The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor.]]> 224 R.K. Narayan 0143039644 Martin 0 to-read 3.93 1958
author: R.K. Narayan
name: Martin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52219386 This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster.��

One of the monsters is me.

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother aren’t fazed by his condition. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say "thank you," and when to laugh. Yunjae grows up content, even happy, with his small family in this quiet, peaceful space.

Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school and begins to bully Yunjae.��

Against all odds, tormentor and victim learn they have more in common than they realized. Gon is stumped by Yunjae’s impassive calm, while Yunjae thinks if he gets to know the hotheaded Gon, he might learn how to experience true feelings. Drawn by curiosity, the two strike up a surprising friendship. As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life in danger, it is Yunjae who will step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become a most unlikely hero.��

The Emissary meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in this poignant and triumphant story about how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever.]]> 272 Sohn Won-Pyung 0062961373 Martin 0 to-read 4.16 2017
author: Sohn Won-Pyung
name: Martin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207794132
It's the early nineties and the elite he is now surrounded by is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Initially awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister undercurrents and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.

In this world, half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals. When Tommo's friend Johnnie's brother is found dead, a shotgun at his feet, he realises there are secrets that everyone knows, but no one speaks about, or even acknowledges. And those secrets can no longer be hidden.]]> 329 Hugo Rifkind 1788856627 Martin 0 to-read 3.78 2024
author: Hugo Rifkind
name: Martin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 159515463
Imperatrix, the second volume of the tale, takes us into the heart of the Imperial palace with all its intrigue, depravity, and splendor.

"Somtow's pen knows no boundaries. From outrageous sex scandals to fascinating detail-rich elements of history that draw you right into the machinations of Ancient Rome ..." - from Proof Positive

" This is compulsive reading and all the more remarkable for being broadly speaking a true story. All the key players in this story are genuine and the story follows real events in their lives. The book feels very well researched but the research is used to fuel the story rather than slow it down. Somtow's writing has rarely been more compulsive than this. It's a fast, and incredibly easy read despite the complexities of the politics woven into the narrative." - Marc Lyth in Marc's World of Books]]> 273 S.P. Somtow Martin 0 to-read 4.34
author: S.P. Somtow
name: Martin
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/14
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]]> 90588349
World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow weaves a vivid adventure about one of the most colorful personalities in ancient Rome. Delicatus, the first volume in a trilogy, speaks of Sporus, from his enslavement by pirates in a remote corner of the Empire to his meeting with the great satirist Petronius and the woman to whom he bears a striking resemblance, the beautiful Poppaea with her manipulative plans to seduce the Emperor Nero and become Divine Empress.]]> 246 S.P. Somtow Martin 0 to-read 4.34
author: S.P. Somtow
name: Martin
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181110022 Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almodóvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the class struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid in the last decades of the twentieth century.

"I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels."

Told in the heartrending voice of a girl trapped within the body of a boy, Bad Habit is a story of coming-of-age in working class Madrid–in a godforsaken neighborhood ironically named after a saint. Alana S. Portero's spunky protagonist struggles to make sense of herself and the world she inhabits, conveying her surroundings with mythic allusions and a poetic vitality absent from everyday life.

Set against the heroin epidemic that ravaged Madrid in the 1980s and the city’s vibrant party scene that dominated its nightlife in the 1990s, Bad Habit follows Portero’s unnamed protagonist as she grows up in a blue-collar suburb that has no place for her. Forging ahead, she discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this exciting, often terrifying, world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.

Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty, vivid in its realism, autobiographical in its detail, it is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.

Translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem]]> 240 Alana S. Portero 006333612X Martin 0 to-read 4.22 2023
author: Alana S. Portero
name: Martin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199757490 A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,�� from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
��
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s��Mommy,��Daddo,��and Grandma Ruth.��But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”����
��
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.��
��
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.����
��
But Other Mommy needs an answer.��
��
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.]]> 367 Josh Malerman 0593723120 Martin 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Josh Malerman
name: Martin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/14
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]]> 1364772 320 Timothy Conigrave 0978825950 Martin 0 to-read 4.41 1995
author: Timothy Conigrave
name: Martin
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18467802 Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives...]]> 256 Lily King 0802122558 Martin 0 to-read 3.84 2014
author: Lily King
name: Martin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197491143
A whistleblower pulls Tully into a murder investigation at the centre of an election battle for a global dictator, with a mandate to prevent a climate apocalypse. A former US President campaigns against the first AI politician for the position, but someone is trying to sway the outcome.

Tully must convince the world to face the truth and make hard choices about the future of the species. But will humanity ultimately choose salvation over freedom, whatever the cost?

An enthralling murder mystery with a vividly realised future world, forcing readers to grapple with hard hitting questions about the climate crisis, our relationship with Artificial Intelligence and the price we'd be willing to pay, as a species, to be saved. Perfect for fans of Blake Crouch, Harlan Coben, Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, Kim Stanley Robinson and RR Haywood.]]> 433 Thomas R. Weaver 1739434307 Martin 0 to-read 3.97 2023
author: Thomas R. Weaver
name: Martin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Martin 0 to-read 4.04
author: Jane Gardam
name: Martin
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 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 Martin 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Martin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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review:

]]> 199373500 An extraordinary debut novel in which the transforming love and friendship between two young men during one unforgettable teenage summer in rural New England haunts them into adulthood

It took three car crashes to kill Jake.

Theron David Alden is there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he’s fifteen and anxious, and Jake’s seventeen and a natural; then six years later in New York City, those too-short, ecstatic, painful nights that change both their lives forever—the end of the dream and the longing for the dream and the dream itself, all at once.

Theron is not there for the third crash.

And yet, their story contains so much joy and the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of insecurity; the way a great song can distill a universe; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between yourself and the person you love better than yourself; the beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want.]]> 320 August Thompson 0593656563 Martin 0 to-read 4.03 2024
author: August Thompson
name: Martin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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review:

]]> 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it�� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 Martin 0 to-read 3.67 2024
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Martin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 51182571
After a series of financial calamities (worsened by the racial prejudices of the small town he lives in) Bug reluctantly takes part in a daring diamond heist to solve his money troubles - and to go straight once and for all. However, when it goes horrifically wrong, he's sucked into a grimy underworld which threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear . . .]]> 285 S.A. Cosby Martin 0 to-read 4.06 2020
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Martin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 62039176 An enthralling and original first novel about exile, diaspora, and the impossibility of Black refuge in America and beyond.

In the morning, I received a phone call and was told to board a flight. The arrangements had been made on my behalf. I packed no clothes, because my clothes had been packed for me. A car arrived to pick me up.

A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn’t recognize the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone recognizes him, a man who calls him brother—setting him on a quest to find his real brother, who is dying.

In Hangman, Maya Binyam tells the story of that search, and of the phantoms, guides, tricksters, bureaucrats, debtors, taxi drivers, relatives, riddles, and strangers that will lead to the truth.

It is an uncommonly assured debut: an existential journey; a tragic farce; a slapstick tragedy; and a strange, and strangely honest, story of one man’s stubborn quest to find refuge—in this world and in the world that lies beyond it.]]> 194 Maya Binyam 037461007X Martin 0 to-read 3.62 2023
author: Maya Binyam
name: Martin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 50275 Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.

Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.

Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.

'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'
Allen Ginsberg

'An urgent tickertape from hell'
Spectator]]> 290 Hubert Selby Jr. 0747549923 Martin 0 to-read 3.94 1964
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Martin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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review:

]]> 53492652 Passion According to GH with a book that looks suspiciously like a romance novel?

In The Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector tries to discover how to bridge the gap between people, or how to even begin to try.

A woman struggles to emerge from solitude and sadness into love, including sexual love: her guide on this journey is Ulisses, who (yes) leads her patiently into the fullness of life.

The Apprenticeship was a bestseller and, as her biographer Benjamin Moser writes, "This accessible love story surprised many readers. When it came out, an interviewer said: 'I thought The Book of Pleasures was much easier to read than any of your other books. Do you think there’s any basis for that?' Clarice answered: 'There is. I humanized myself, the book reflects that.'”]]> 176 Clarice Lispector 0811230619 Martin 0 to-read 4.24 1969
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Martin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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review:

]]> 145625252 Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008.

The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.

Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author’s continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.

On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir “written�� by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the “I�� for the “we�� (or “they��, or “one��) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents�� generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents�� generation (and could be writing of her own book): “From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the “we�� and impersonal pronouns.”]]> 240 Annie Ernaux 1609807871 Martin 0 to-read 4.22 2008
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Martin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Martin 0 to-read 4.01 1987
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Martin
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 19089 "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are"

George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".]]> 912 George Eliot 0451529170 Martin 0 to-read 4.00 1872
author: George Eliot
name: Martin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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]]> 33833 398 Reinaldo Arenas 1852428082 Martin 5 I wish I could have known Reinaldo Arenas. His story is, I’m sure, a story that so many people have lived and have told. Reinaldo’s is one of beauty while enduring so much suffering and hardship. He just wanted to be free, as we all do. And even when he found his freedom from the oppressions he suffered living in his homeland of Cuba, the suffering didn’t end when he became a refugee. But he still found beauty in the world, beauty through his suffering.
This is a story of what it means to be free. In every aspect of one’s existence. What a beautiful book.]]> 4.17 1992
author: Reinaldo Arenas
name: Martin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves:
review:
Wow.
I wish I could have known Reinaldo Arenas. His story is, I’m sure, a story that so many people have lived and have told. Reinaldo’s is one of beauty while enduring so much suffering and hardship. He just wanted to be free, as we all do. And even when he found his freedom from the oppressions he suffered living in his homeland of Cuba, the suffering didn’t end when he became a refugee. But he still found beauty in the world, beauty through his suffering.
This is a story of what it means to be free. In every aspect of one’s existence. What a beautiful book.
]]> 33655868
When a leading Metropolitan Police detective was tasked with solving the case, he questioned the residents of the seaside town of Littlehampton about their neighbours' vocabularies, how often they wrote letters, what their handwriting was like, whether they swore-and how they swore, for the letters at the heart of the case were often bizarre in their abuse. The archive that the investigation produced shows in extraordinary detail how ordinary people could use the English language in inventive and surprising ways at a time when universal literacy was still a novelty. Their personal lives, too, had surprises. The detective's inquiries and the courtroom dramas laid bare their secrets and the intimate details of neighbourhood and family life. Drawing on these records, The Littlehampton Libels traces the tangles of devotion and resentment, desire and manipulation, in a working-class community. We are used to emotional complexity in books about the privileged, but history is seldom able to
recover the inner lives of ordinary people in this way.]]> 256 Christopher Hilliard 0198799659 Martin 0 to-read 4.10 2017
author: Christopher Hilliard
name: Martin
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 212069476
With a blend of dark humor and shattering insight, this collection takes readers on a compelling journey through the absurdities and shortcomings of modern life and the near future. As an added bonus, this collection concludes with the first three chapters of Ginsberg’s (hopeful) debut novel, In the Algorithm We Trust.

As was the plan at publication, this cover has been discontinued. Long story short--I paid two cover designers who provided me with AI-generated covers. The last cover came in the day before publication, so I used this while waiting for new covers to come in.]]> Ryan David Ginsberg Martin 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Ryan David Ginsberg
name: Martin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54120

Against his own better judgement, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he establishes the man's identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a dark meditation on identity and, perhaps, on the crass assumptions behind cloning - that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.]]> 324 José Saramago 0151010404 Martin 0 to-read 3.91 2002
author: José Saramago
name: Martin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 8913370
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made��to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.]]> 592 Sarah Waters 1101057025 Martin 3 4.05 2002
author: Sarah Waters
name: Martin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/07/18
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review:

]]> 42270835 Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead Martin 0 to-read 4.25 2019
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Martin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 29430746 In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.]]> 241 Kiese Laymon 1501125656 Martin 0 to-read 4.48 2018
author: Kiese Laymon
name: Martin
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
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]]> 22929602
What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

Listening length: 6 hours, 11 minutes]]> 195 Garth Greenwell 0374288224 Martin 4
If this novel isn’t semi-autobiographical then Greenwell is a VERY thorough storyteller. Each page completely drew me into an extremely layered and emotionally complex story of subtle and profound metaphors. I know there’s so much to unpack here but I don’t know to express it - I just feel it.

There’s A LOT packed into these 191 pages.
WOW.
I can relate to so much in this novel.
Amazing!!!!]]> 3.79 2016
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Martin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves:
review:
I don’t even know where to start. The writing is so rich, layered, textured - with each chapter, I felt like I was gazing at an enormous, three dimensional still life painting of a human experience. I feel like I truly had a SENSE of what it was like to have these experiences in a place I’ve never been, ie Bulgaria.

If this novel isn’t semi-autobiographical then Greenwell is a VERY thorough storyteller. Each page completely drew me into an extremely layered and emotionally complex story of subtle and profound metaphors. I know there’s so much to unpack here but I don’t know to express it - I just feel it.

There’s A LOT packed into these 191 pages.
WOW.
I can relate to so much in this novel.
Amazing!!!!
]]> 363655
"Manchette has appropriated and subverted the classic thriller [with] descriptions of undiluted action, violence and suspense [and] a perspective on evil, a disenchanted world of manipulation and fury . . . ." ��Times Literary Supplement

"The petty exigencies of the classic thriller find themselves summarily reduced to cremains by the fiery blue jets of Jean-Patrick Manchette's concision, intelligence, tension, and style." —Jim Nisbet, author of Lethal Injection and Prelude to a Scream

"Manchette is a must for the reading lists of all noir fans. . . . Manchette deserves a higher profile among noir fans." ��Publishers Weekly

"Manchette . . . performs miracles within this simple story. His style is very matter of fact, stark and almost cool like the jazz his hero or anti-hero Gerfaut devours at every opportunity. Yet in this short novel there is no lack of atmosphere, excitement, characters or descriptive writing, it is just the total lack of unnecessary material that makes the story seem so lean and mean." —Norman Price, EuroCrime

"A social satire cum suspense equally interested in dissecting everyday banalities and manufacturing thrills. Writing with economy, deadpan irony, and an eye for the devastating detail, Manchette spins pulp fiction into literature." ��Kirkus Reviews

"While there isn’t much that’s obviously moral—in the good-versus-evil sense—[this novel] demonstrate[s] why Manchette is hailed as the man who kicked the French crime novel or “polar�� out of the apolitical torpor into which it had fallen by the time he started publishing his “neo-polars�� in the 1970s. . . . Grim and cerebral as they feel, it’s remarkable how comic—in an absurdist, laugh-or-you’ll-cry way—these books are, as if Manchette had decided that poking fun at the products of the capitalist system were the fittest way to attack the system itself." —Jennifer Howard, Boston Review

"The pace is fast, the action sequences are superb, and the effect is just as striking as it must have been when the book was first published in 1976." —Laura Wilson, The Guardian

"[T]he novel is brilliantly written, replete with allusions to art, literature, and music, papered with the very texture and furniture of our lives. Manchette is Camus on overdrive, at one and the same time white-hot, ice-cold. He deserves much the same attention." —James Sallis, Review of Contemporary Fiction

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942��1995) rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police procedurals �� restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968 leftism. Today, Manchette is a totem to the generation of French mystery writers who came in his wake. Jazz saxophonist, political activist, and screen writer, Manchette was influenced as much by Guy Debord as by Gustave Flaubert. City Lights has published more of work, including The Gunman.


]]> 134 Jean-Patrick Manchette 0872863956 Martin 0 to-read 3.88 1976
author: Jean-Patrick Manchette
name: Martin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
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]]> 2372326
FROM A DISTANT PLACE makes a powerful statement about the complacency of the modern American suburb, the daily horrors of apathy, and the evils of disinterest. It is the story of a middle-aged woman learning to save her own life, and her son Derek, who must make up a life for himself. Don Carpenter has written a tale of disconnected lives filled with moments of grace and humanity, moments of humor, and a few small moments of epiphany.

(from front jacket flap)]]> 230 Don Carpenter 0865473323 Martin 0 to-read 4.37 1988
author: Don Carpenter
name: Martin
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6553843 308 Don Carpenter 1590173244 Martin 0 to-read 4.13 1966
author: Don Carpenter
name: Martin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200502180 306 Garth Greenwell 1509874690 Martin 0 to-read 4.29 2024
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Martin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57127277 “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.��

So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on tales about the might and benevolence of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the worthy. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to the marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear.

Desperate for independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With it, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen.

But as the evil from her childhood stories threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. And Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak—and what legacy she intends to leave behind.

The unforgettable tale of a woman determined to leave her mark in a world gods and men dictate the shape of things to come. "Patel's mesmerizing debut shines a brilliant light on the vilified queen from the Ramayana"
(Publishers Weekly, starred review).]]> 478 Vaishnavi Patel 0759557330 Martin 0 to-read 4.18 2022
author: Vaishnavi Patel
name: Martin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181865600
A mother and a son. A goddess and a prince. A curse and an oath. A river whose course will change the fate of the world.

Ganga, joyful goddess of the river, serves as caretaker to the mischievous godlings who roam her banks. But when their antics incur the wrath of a powerful sage, Ganga is cursed to become mortal, bound to her human form until she fulfills the obligations of the curse.

Though she knows nothing of mortal life, Ganga weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. But in a cruel turn of fate, just as she is freed of her binding, she is forced to leave her infant son behind.

Her son, prince Devavrata, unwittingly carries the legacy of Ganga’s curse. And when he makes an oath that he will never claim his father’s throne, he sets in motion a chain of events that will end in a terrible and tragic war.

As the years unfold, Ganga and Devavrata are drawn together again and again, each confluence another step on a path that has been written in the stars, in this deeply moving and masterful tale of duty, destiny, and the unwavering bond between mother and son.]]> 496 Vaishnavi Patel 035652020X Martin 0 to-read 3.78 2024
author: Vaishnavi Patel
name: Martin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 33300119 431 Saurabh Shah 9351221709 Martin 0 to-read 4.52 2013
author: Saurabh Shah
name: Martin
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Martin 0 to-read 3.84 2023
author: James McBride
name: Martin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61964751
In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.

But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.

Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby’s. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel’s future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars . Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?

As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. An astonishing twist ultimately reveals the truth in this transporting and refreshingly original novel about the bond between sisters, the complications of conflicted love, and the enduring magic of storytelling.]]> 355 Patti Callahan Henry 1668011832 Martin 0 to-read 4.03 2023
author: Patti Callahan Henry
name: Martin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25330194 Cousin Bette by one of America's most prolific and significant writers. Earl, a black, gay actor working in a meatpacking plant, and Bette, a white secretary, have lived next door to each other in the same Greenwich Village apartment building for thirty years. Shamed and disowned by their families, both found refuge in New York and in their domestic routine. Everything changes when Hortense, a wealthy young actress from Ohio, comes to the city to "make it." Textured with the grit and gloss of midcentury Manhattan, The Cosmopolitans is a lush, inviting read.��The truths it frames about the human need for love and recognition remain long after the book is closed.]]> 377 Sarah Schulman 1558619046 Martin 0 to-read 3.82 2016
author: Sarah Schulman
name: Martin
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35427341 From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Man Booker Prize, a sweeping new novel that explores richly complex relationships between fathers and sons as it spans seven transformative decades in England, from the 1940s through the present

In the fall of 1940, with the world at war, a young man arrives at Oxford to study engineering, though his sights are already set on joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. Handsome, charismatic, a powerful athlete and oarsman, David Sparsholt seems at first unaware of the effect he has on others--especially on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist, himself also destined to become a writer. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove from the action: a place of transience and uncertainty, the fears and rigors of the blackout both encouraging and concealing unexpected liaisons. Between these two young men of very different backgrounds an unusual friendship develops, one whose consequences will unfold over the many years that follow.

Alan Hollinghurst's masterly new novel evokes the intimate lives of three generations of Sparsholts in a sequence of vividly rendered episodes: a childhood holiday in Cornwall; eccentric social gatherings at the Dax family home; the adventures of David's son Johnny, in pursuit of love and a career as a painter in 1970s London. Changes in taste, morality, and private life are explored in a group portrait of friends brought together by art, literature, and love. Champions of the Modern live to see modernity itself becoming history, while more personal, life-changing crises and scandals--including that which gives this novel its title--recede into the past, leaving their ambiguous traces. And as gay men and women live in increasing freedom and openness, and the gay scene evolves into new forms and possibilities, The Sparsholt Affair becomes a meditation on human transience, even as it expresses the countervailing longing for permanence and continuity.

Witty, tender, epic in scope yet rich in observation, The Sparsholt Affair is a dazzling new work of fiction by a writer justly hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the best novelists at work today."]]> 454 Alan Hollinghurst 1447208218 Martin 3 I can’t put my finger on it, why I didn’t LOVE this one. But what I did l really enjoy was piecing pieces of the story together. The reader has to work a little to figure out what really happened but it is eventually, almost all revealed.
If you enjoy his other books, you’ll enjoy this one.]]> 3.50 2017
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Martin
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:
Well, this is not my favorite Hollinghurst novel but I still did enjoy it. Solid 3.5 ⭐️ for me. There is just something about the way Hollinghurst draws me in - I will read anything he writes and pretty damn sure I’ll enjoy it.
I can’t put my finger on it, why I didn’t LOVE this one. But what I did l really enjoy was piecing pieces of the story together. The reader has to work a little to figure out what really happened but it is eventually, almost all revealed.
If you enjoy his other books, you’ll enjoy this one.
]]> 54785525 William di Canzio's Alec, inspired by Maurice, E. M. Forster's secret novel of a happy same-sex love affair, tells the story of Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper Maurice Hall falls in love with in Forster's classic, published only after the author's death.

Di Canzio follows their story past the end of Maurice to the front lines of battle in World War I and beyond. Forster, who tried to write an epilogue about the future of his characters, was stymied by the radical change that the Great War brought to their world. With the hindsight of a century, di Canzio imagines a future for them and a past for Alec--a young villager possessed of remarkable passion and self-knowledge.

Alec continues Forster's project of telling stories that are part of "a great unrecorded history." Di Canzio's debut novel is a love story of epic proportions, at once classic and boldly new.]]> 340 William di Canzio 0374102600 Martin 0 to-read 4.13 2021
author: William di Canzio
name: Martin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174070471
When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family’s hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle’s name. Daniel flounders at first―but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light.

But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam’s hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel’s life forever. As he grapples with profound loss, Daniel finds himself in his family’s ancestral homeland in México for the summer, finding joy in this setting even as he struggles to come to terms with what’s happened and faces a host of new How does the person he is connect with this place his family comes from? How is his own story connected to his late uncle’s? And how might he reconcile the many parts of himself as he learns to move forward?

Equal parts tender and triumphant, Andrés N. Ordorica’s How We Named the Stars is a debut novel of love, heartache, redemption, and learning to honor the dead; a story of finding the strength to figure out who you are―and who you could be―if only the world would let you.]]> 304 Andrés N. Ordorica 1959030337 Martin 0 to-read 4.00 2024
author: Andrés N. Ordorica
name: Martin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 74897931
Robbie grows into an accomplished portraitist in the vivid London art world with the help of Anton's enchanting former wife, while Anton turns from his inherited wealth and connections to improve the conditions of the poor.

But it is the Edwardian Era, and the law sentences homosexual men to prison with hard labor, following the tragic experience of Oscar Wilde. As Robbie and Anton's commitment to each other grows, the world about them turns to a more dangerous place.

"The Boy in the Rain transports us to another time and place in this powerful, sensual, and lyrical novel that literally took my breath away—the love is so visceral, the pain so deep, the beauty so real, and the danger so palpable!"
—NYT bestseller, M.J. Rose, author of The Last Tiara]]> 326 Stephanie Cowell 1646033507 Martin 0 to-read 4.05 2023
author: Stephanie Cowell
name: Martin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55200729 Have you met Ms. Jones?

One night in 1979, a woman in a red beret skyrocketed to fame after a performance on Saturday Night Live. The song was “Chuck E’s in Love,�� and the singer, Rickie Lee Jones. A vital part of the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz pop scene, she would soon be pronounced “Duchess of Coolsville�� by TIME magazine.

Last Chance Texaco is the first no-holds-barred account of the life of one of rock’s hardest working women in her own words. With candour and lyricism, Rickie Lee Jones takes us on the journey of her exceptional life, including her nomadic childhood as the granddaughter of vaudevillian performers; her father’s abandonment of the family and her years as a teenage runaway; her beginnings at LA’s Troubadour club; her tumultuous relationship with Tom Waits and her battle with drugs; and her longevity as a woman in rock and roll.

These are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a songwriter who would inspire American culture for decades.]]> 384 Rickie Lee Jones 1443464627 Martin 0 to-read 4.09 2021
author: Rickie Lee Jones
name: Martin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 141153 The great Indian epic rendered in modern prose

India's most beloved and enduring legend, the Ramayana is widely acknowledged to be one of the world's great literary masterpieces. Still an integral part of India's cultural and religious expression, the Ramayana was originally composed by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki around 300 b.c. The epic of Prince Rama's betrayal, exile, and struggle to rescue his faithful wife, Sita, from the clutches of a demon and to reclaim his throne has profoundly affected the literature, art, and culture of South and Southeast Asia-an influence most likely unparalleled in the history of world literature, except, possibly, for the Bible. Throughout the centuries, countless versions of the epic have been produced in numerous formats and languages. But previous English versions have been either too short to capture the magnitude of the original; too secular in presenting what is, in effect, scripture; or dry, line-by-line translations. Now novelist Ramesh Menon has rendered the tale in lyrical prose that conveys all the beauty and excitement of the original, while making this spiritual and literary classic accessible to a new generation of readers.
]]> 697 Ramesh Menon 0865476950 Martin 5 4.29 1957
author: Ramesh Menon
name: Martin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1957
rating: 5
read at: 2011/06/01
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves:
review:
Epic - love everything about this story. It never gets old no matter how many times I read it.
]]> 33253215 real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from �� and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.]]> 582 John Boyne Martin 0 to-read 4.51 2017
author: John Boyne
name: Martin
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 449189
Through the lends of their complex, tumultuous, yet enduring relationship - and their involvement with the handsome model, poet and decorated Vietnam vet Matt Loguidice, whom they both love - Felice Picano chronicles and celebrates gay life and subculture over the last half of the twentieth century.

From Malibu Beach in its palmist surfer days to the legendary parties at Fire Island Pines in the 1970s, from San Francisco during its gayest era to AIDS activism in Greenwich Village in the 1990s, Like People in History presents 'the heroic and funny saga of the last three decades by someone who saw everything and forgot nothing' (Edmund White).]]> 528 Felice Picano 0349108382 Martin 0 to-read 4.02 1995
author: Felice Picano
name: Martin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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