Kai's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 17 Feb 2025 01:24:12 -0800 60 Kai's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Gotham Central, Book One: In the Line of Duty]]> 3316474 240 Ed Brubaker 1401219233 Kai 4 4.34 2008 Gotham Central, Book One: In the Line of Duty
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Kai
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes]]> 123204479 A clinical psychologist gives us 75 quick, scientifically proven techniques and exercises to manage stress and build resilience.
Ěý
Here’s a promise that could not be more timely or You can dial down your stress in just a few minutes, with no ponderous meditations, medications, or martinis required. Written by Dr. Jennifer L. Taitz, a clinical psychologist who specializes in teaching mindfulness-based behavioral skills to manage intense emotions and situations, Stress Resets ĚýĚý provides 75 scientifically proven ways to improve how you respond to stress, both in the moment and the long run.

There are accessible yet powerful exercises like dipping your face in ice water to quiet your body and mind; adopting a half smile to change your mood from the outside in; singing your irrational negative thoughts to reduce their believability; building a hope kit so you can remind yourself of what’s possible in tough moments; and making a pie chart of your life to gain perspective. By incorporating these into your days, you can stop the cycle of obsessing, panicking, and avoiding and instead effectively approach what matters to you most. You’ll also find stress buffers designed to build your resilience so you can navigate whatever comes your way.

Through personal anecdotes, expert interviews, cutting-edge studies, and practical tips, you’ll learn how to manage your emotions instead of the other way around. Stress Resets will not only change how you view your stress but also give you the hope and confidence you need to reset and ultimately change how you feel.]]> 257 Jennifer Taitz 1523523328 Kai 0 currently-reading 4.03 Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes
author: Jennifer Taitz
name: Kai
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 60 Seconds and You're Hired! 25614480 Fully revised and updated for the 2016 job hunt—the must-have guide to acing the interview and landing the dream job, from “America’s top career expert� (The Los Angeles Times)
Ěý
60 Seconds & You're Hired! has already helped thousands of job seekers get their dream jobs by excelling in crucial interviews. America's top job search expert Robin Ryan draws on her 20 years as a career counselor, 30 years of direct hiring, and extensive contact with hundreds of recruiters, decisions makers, and HR professionals to teach you proven strategies to help you take charge of the interview process and get the job you want. Brief, compact, and packed with insightful direction to give you the cutting edge to slip past the competition,Ěý60 Seconds & You're Hired! is here to help you succeed! This newly revised editionĚýfeatures:ĚýĚý
Ěý Ěý
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýUnique techniques like "The 60 Second Sell" and "The 5-Point Agenda"
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýOver 125 answers to tough, tricky interview questions employers often ask
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýHow to handle structured or behavioral interview questions
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýQuestions you should always ask, and questions you should never ask
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýHow to deal effectively with any salary questions to preserve your negotiating power
Ěý Ěý Ěý•Ě�20 interview pitfalls to avoid
Ěý Ěý Ěý•ĚýProven negotiation techniques that secure higher salaries - and much more!

“Robin Ryan has the inside track on how to get hired.� —ABC News]]> 224 Robin Ryan 0143128507 Kai 4 4.13 1994 60 Seconds and You're Hired!
author: Robin Ryan
name: Kai
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
I've technically already read this one, but it's a good primer/resource for interviewing. More important, it's an absolute page-turner! Egad!
]]> The Lottery and Other Stories 63233679 A trove of iconic horror stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson, “the master of the haunted tale� (The New York Times Book Review).

One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery� created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. Now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, this lucid tale of a sleepy town’s annual lottery—and the monstrous desires it awakens—endures as an essential classic of American fiction.
The Lottery and Other Stories unites “The Lottery� with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson’s remarkable range—from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous—and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers.]]> 320 Shirley Jackson 1250910153 Kai 0 currently-reading 3.92 1949 The Lottery and Other Stories
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Kai
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Kai 0 3.79 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Kai
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: to-read-science-fiction, to-read
review:

]]> Reasons to Stay Alive 25733573 Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.]]> 256 Matt Haig 0143128728 Kai 4 4.04 2015 Reasons to Stay Alive
author: Matt Haig
name: Kai
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stretching: 40th Anniversary Edition]]> 50485935 This is the book that people tell their friends about, that trainers suggest for virtually every sport and activity, and that medical professionals recommend to people just starting to get back in shape. Stretching first appeared in 1980 as a new generation of Americans became committed to running, cycling, aerobic training, and workouts in the gym -- all of which are commonplace now.

It features stretching routines specific to a variety of people, including sports enthusiasts, travelers, children, gardeners, and people in wheelchairs. There is a new section titled "Stretches for the Digital World," with stretches for people using cell phones and/or computers, as well as tips for better posture and stretches to do in an office environment.]]> 240 Bob Anderson 0936070846 Kai 0 currently-reading 4.72 1975 Stretching: 40th Anniversary Edition
author: Bob Anderson
name: Kai
average rating: 4.72
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)]]> 3 309 J.K. Rowling 0439554934 Kai 4 4.47 1997 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Kai
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music]]> 57648017
Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ("It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.

This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.]]> 384 Dave Grohl 0063076098 Kai 0 currently-reading 4.45 2021 The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
author: Dave Grohl
name: Kai
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening]]> 55883882
Collects MONSTRESS #1-6

About the Creators:

New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer Marjorie Liu is best known for her fiction and comic books. She teaches comic book writing at MIT, and leads a class on Popular Fiction at the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop. Ms. Liu's extensive work includes the bestselling "Astonishing X-Men" for Marvel Comics, which featured the gay wedding of X-Man Northstar and was subsequently nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Prior to writing full-time, Liu was a lawyer. She currently resides in Boston.

Sana Takeda is an illustrator and comic book artist who was born in Niigata, and now resides in Tokyo, Japan. At age 20 she started out as a 3D CGI designer for SEGA, a Japanese video game company, and became a freelance artist when she was 25. She is still an artist, and has worked on titles such as "X-23" and "Ms. Marvel" for Marvel Comics, and is an illustrator for trading card games in Japan.]]> 192 Marjorie M. Liu 1632157098 Kai 0 3.96 2016 Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: Kai
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks]]> 27217175
There's a new and better way to treat anxiety, but few have ever heard it.

Most people are advised to either just "mange" their anxiety or medicate it away. If you're tired of just managing your anxiety problem, then follow the breakthrough approach explained in Barry McDonagh's latest book DARE.

Based on hard science and years of experience helping people who suffer from anxiety, Barry McDonagh has perfected the way to break free from anxiety and get people back living life to the fullest.

In this daring step-by-step guide you will learn how to:

-Stop panic attacks and end feelings of anxiety.

-Put an end to anxious and intrusive thoughts.

-Face any anxious situation you've been avoiding.

-Exercise and use natural supplements to keep anxiety at bay.

-Regain your confidence and feel like your old self again.

-Live a more bold and daring life!

THIS IS MUCH MORE THAN JUST A BOOK.

It comes with a free App and a powerful community of caring people who support each other as they break free from their anxiety. You can learn more about that at:

http: //]]> 242 Barry McDonagh 0956596258 Kai 3 4.30 2015 Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks
author: Barry McDonagh
name: Kai
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2017/07/29
date added: 2023/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives Of Bats: My Adventures with the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals]]> 37569328 Ěý
“Grips and doesn't let go.� � Wall Street Journal
Ěý
“It’s a terrific read.� � Huffington Post
Ěý
“A whirlwind adventure story and a top-shelf natural history page-turner.� � Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
Ěý
“One of the best, most interesting books I’ve ever read.� � Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs]]> 304 Merlin Tuttle 0544815599 Kai 0 4.31 2015 The Secret Lives Of Bats: My Adventures with the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals
author: Merlin Tuttle
name: Kai
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: currently-reading, to-read-science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fear: A Powerful Guide to Overcoming Uncertainties and Personal Terrors, and Finding Peace and Freedom from Anxiety, by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh]]> 17383911 176 Thich Nhat Hanh 0062004735 Kai 0 4.32 2012 Fear: A Powerful Guide to Overcoming Uncertainties and Personal Terrors, and Finding Peace and Freedom from Anxiety, by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Kai
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/28
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for OCD: Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention to Live Well with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]]> 51044251 Stand up to your OCD! The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for OCD combines evidence-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP) for the most up-to-date, effective treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

If you’re one of millions of people who suffer from OCD, you may experience obsessive, intrusive, or even disturbing thoughts. You may engage in compulsive or ritualistic behaviors, such as checking to make sure you’ve locked the front door, or endlessly washing your hands for fear of germs or contamination. And you may be tempted to give up if treatment just doesn’t work for you.

Whether you’ve just received a diagnosis, or have suffered for years, this workbook can help. Using the powerful and proven-effective treatments in this guide, you’ll learn what type of OCD you suffer from (such asĚýharm OCD), how to identify the underlying mechanisms of your OCD, move through triggering incidents while staying present and connected to your values, be more aware and flexible, tolerate uncertainty, and commit to behaviors that ultimately allow you to lead a full, rewarding life. Once you realize what really matters to you, you’ll find the motivation needed to start on the path to psychological well-being.

If you’re ready to be courageous, take a risk, and stand up to your OCD symptoms, this workbook can help guide you, every step of the way.]]> 232 Marisa T. Mazza 168403289X Kai 0 to-read, to-read-self-help 4.53 The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for OCD: Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention to Live Well with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
author: Marisa T. Mazza
name: Kai
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

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

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

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

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 Kai 0 to-read-fantasy, to-read 4.19 2019 Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Kai
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: to-read-fantasy, to-read
review:

]]> The Man Who Couldn't Stop 20930755
David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece; or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness.

Told with fierce clarity, humour and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare, and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.]]> 304 David Adam Kai 0 3.90 2014 The Man Who Couldn't Stop
author: David Adam
name: Kai
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-biography-memoir
review:

]]> Daredevil: Born Again 20878196 231 Frank Miller 1302369989 Kai 0 4.31 1986 Daredevil: Born Again
author: Frank Miller
name: Kai
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)]]> 58724626 From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 165 T. Kingfisher 1250830753 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.86 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Kai
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)]]> 22875099 NOT EVERY GIFT IS A BLESSING.

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius."

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.]]> 405 M.R. Carey 0316334758 Kai 3
Nevertheless, this book makes for an entertaining read, and whatever it lacks in nuance and characterization it makes up for with consistent pacing and writing from Carey. And the ending, while somewhat undercooked, is still pretty neat in its subversion of reader expectations.

Now, who's hungry?]]> 3.97 2014 The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)
author: M.R. Carey
name: Kai
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2017/08/03
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves:
review:
An entertaining, if somewhat overrated, read. Props to Carey for attempting to put a new spin on the whole zombie schtick, however (and this is where it gets nerdy, and mildly spoilery) the whole idea of a fungal zombie plague has previously appeared in Naughty Dog's fantastic videogame The Last of Us, which first released in 2013. So the novelty of Carey's idea is somewhat lessened for me personally, especially when there are such clear parallels between the two (I'd bet money that the author knew about TLOU when he wrote this book).

Nevertheless, this book makes for an entertaining read, and whatever it lacks in nuance and characterization it makes up for with consistent pacing and writing from Carey. And the ending, while somewhat undercooked, is still pretty neat in its subversion of reader expectations.

Now, who's hungry?
]]> Our Share of Night 61111034
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,� says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”]]> 588 Mariana Enríquez 0451495144 Kai 0 to-read 4.07 2019 Our Share of Night
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: Kai
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Destroyer of Worlds (Lovecraft Country, #2)]]> 61190257 305 Matt Ruff 0063256894 Kai 0 to-read 3.87 2023 The Destroyer of Worlds (Lovecraft Country, #2)
author: Matt Ruff
name: Kai
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)]]> 50608676
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.]]> 640 Marlon James 0735220182 Kai 0 to-read-fantasy, to-read 3.47 2019 Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)
author: Marlon James
name: Kai
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/09
shelves: to-read-fantasy, to-read
review:

]]> Ring Shout 49247242 In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?]]> 185 P. Djèlí Clark 1250767024 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.96 2020 Ring Shout
author: P. Djèlí Clark
name: Kai
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/09
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety]]> 551520 152 Alan W. Watts 0394704681 Kai 0 to-read-self-help, to-read 4.14 1951 The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
author: Alan W. Watts
name: Kai
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/09
shelves: to-read-self-help, to-read
review:

]]> The Chicago Manual of Style 8226853 The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style has been superseded by the 17th edition.

The Chicago Manual of Style is the authoritative source that writers, editors, and publishers trust for guidance on style, grammar, and publishing process.

The sixteenth edition offers expanded information on producing electronic publications, including web-based content and e-books. The Chicago system for citing sources has been streamlined and adapted for a variety of online and digital sources. Figures and tables are updated throughout the book—including a return to the Manual’s popular hyphenation table and new, comprehensive listings of Unicode numbers for special characters.

With the wisdom of a hundred years of editorial practice and a wealth of industry expertise from both Chicago’s staff and an advisory board of publishing professionals, The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, is an invaluable resource for anyone who works with words.]]> 1026 University of Chicago Press 0226104206 Kai 4
Okay, not really, but this book is an invaluable and exhaustive resource that helped me write my history thesis.]]> 4.50 1906 The Chicago Manual of Style
author: University of Chicago Press
name: Kai
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1906
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/02/05
shelves:
review:
Kept me up all night, quite a page-turner!

Okay, not really, but this book is an invaluable and exhaustive resource that helped me write my history thesis.
]]> Punk Paradox: A Memoir 60568088 A historical memoir and cultural criticism of punk rock’s evolution,Ěýby the legendary singer-songwriter of Bad Religion
Ěý
Greg Graffin is the lead vocalist and songwriter of Bad Religion, recently described as “America's most significant punk band.� Since its inception in Los Angeles in 1980, Bad Religion has produced 18 studio albums, become a long-running global touring powerhouse, and has established a durable legacy as one of the most influential punk rock bands of all time.
Ěý
Punk Paradox is Graffin's life narrative before and during L.A. punk's early years, detailing his observations on the genre's explosive growth and his band'sĚýsteady rise in importance. The book begins by exploring Graffin’s Midwestern roots and his life-changing move to Southern California in the mid-â€�70s. Swept up into the burgeoning punk scene in the exhilarating and often-violent streets of Los Angeles, Graffin and his friends formed Bad Religion,Ěýbuilt a fanbase, and became a touring institution. All these activities took place in parallel with Graffin's never ceasing quest for intellectual enlightenment.ĚýDespite the demands of global tours, recording sessions, and dedication to songwriting, the author also balanced a budding academic career. In so doing, heĚýmanaged to reconcile an improbable double-life as an iconic punk rock front man and University Lecturer in evolution.
Ěý
Graffin’s unique experiences mirror the paradoxical elements that define the punk genre—the pop influence, the quest for society’s betterment, music’s unifying power—all of which are prime ingredients in its surprising endurance. Fittingly, this book argues against the traditional narrative of the popular perception of punk. As Bad Religion changed from year to year, the spirit of punk—and its sonic significance—lived on while Graffin was ever willing to challenge convention, debunk mythology, and liberate listeners from the chains of indoctrination.
ĚýĚýĚý
As insightful as it is exciting, this thought-provoking memoir provides both a fly on the wall history of the punk scene and astute commentary on its endurance and evolution.

Ěý]]> Greg Graffin Kai 0 4.04 Punk Paradox: A Memoir
author: Greg Graffin
name: Kai
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-biography-memoir
review:

]]> The Nineties 58082714 The Nineties: a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

Beyond epiphenomena like Cop Killer and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a '90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.

In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, "The video for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany" make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.]]> 370 Chuck Klosterman 0735217955 Kai 0 3.86 2022 The Nineties
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Kai
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-nonfiction-essays
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3)]]> 58662507
The zombies are coming back.

And all Nona wants is a birthday party.

In many ways, Nona is like other people. She lives with her family, has a job at her local school, and loves walks on the beach and meeting new dogs. But Nona's not like other people. Six months ago she woke up in a stranger's body, and she's afraid she might have to give it back.

The whole city is falling to pieces. A monstrous blue sphere hangs on the horizon, ready to tear the planet apart. Blood of Eden forces have surrounded the last Cohort facility and wait for the Emperor Undying to come calling. Their leaders want Nona to be the weapon that will save them from the Nine Houses. Nona would prefer to live an ordinary life with the people she loves, with Pyrrha and Camilla and Palamedes, but she also knows that nothing lasts forever.

And each night, Nona dreams of a woman with a skull-painted face...]]> 480 Tamsyn Muir 1250854113 Kai 0 4.36 2022 Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Kai
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kaiju Preservation Society]]> 57693406
What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389126 Kai 0 3.93 2022 The Kaiju Preservation Society
author: John Scalzi
name: Kai
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Kai 0 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Kai
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (What If?, #2)]]> 60190659
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist.

Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Randall consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airplane-catapult design to clearly and concisely answer his readers� questions. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.

Filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and Randall’s signature stick-figure comics, What If? 2 is sure to be another instant classic adored by inquisitive readers of all ages.]]> 354 Randall Munroe 0525537112 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-science 4.35 2022 What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (What If?, #2)
author: Randall Munroe
name: Kai
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us]]> 59575939 A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.]]> 464 Ed Yong Kai 0 to-read, to-read-science 4.46 2022 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
author: Ed Yong
name: Kai
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World We Make (Great Cities, #2)]]> 60399181 Four-time Hugo Award-winning andĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author N.K. Jemisin craftsĚýa glorious taleĚýof identity,Ěýresistance, magic andĚýmyth.

AllĚýis not well in the city that never sleeps.ĚýEven thoughĚýthe avatars of New York CityĚýhaveĚýtemporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric ofĚýgentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order"Ěýmay have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.Ěý

In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings,Ěýthe avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.

N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology, which began withĚýThe City We BecameĚýand concludes withĚýThe World We Make, is a masterpiece of speculative fiction from one of the most importantĚýwriters of her generation.
]]> 357 N.K. Jemisin 035651269X Kai 0 to-read, to-read-fantasy 4.05 2022 The World We Make (Great Cities, #2)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Kai
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-fantasy
review:

]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-fantasy 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Kai
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road]]> 57789644
It won six Oscars and has been hailed as the greatest action film ever, but it is a miracle Mad Max: Fury Road ever made it to the screen� or that anybody survived the production. The story of this modern classic spanned nearly two decades of wild obstacles as visionary director George Miller tried to mount one of the most difficult shoots in Hollywood history.

Production stalled several times, stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron clashed repeatedly in the brutal Namib Desert, and Miller’s crew engineered death-defying action scenes that were among the most dangerous ever committed to film. Even accomplished Hollywood figures are flummoxed by the accomplishment: As the director Steven Soderbergh has said, “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film, and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.�

Kyle Buchanan takes readers through every step of that moviemaking experience in vivid detail, from Fury Road’s unexpected origins through its outlandish casting process to the big-studio battles that nearly mutilated a masterpiece. But he takes the deepest dive in reporting the astonishing facts behind a shoot so unconventional that the film’s fantasy world began to bleed into the real lives of its cast and crew. As they fought and endured in a wasteland of their own, the only way forward was to have faith in their director’s mad vision. But how could Miller persevere when almost everything seemed to be stacked against him?

With hundreds of exclusive interviews and details about the making of Fury Road, readers will be left with one undeniable conclusion: There has never been a movie so drenched in sweat, so forged by fire, and so epic in scope.]]> 384 Kyle Buchanan 0063084341 Kai 0 4.31 2022 Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road
author: Kyle Buchanan
name: Kai
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-nonfiction-essays
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe]]> 24611567 Two terrifying classics by “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction� (The Washington Post)
Ěý
Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second,ĚýGrimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction.ĚýInfluenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.

Ligotti’s stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 448 Thomas Ligotti 0143107763 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.98 2015 Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
author: Thomas Ligotti
name: Kai
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/05
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> Uzumaki 17837762
Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral � the hypnotic secret shape of the world. This bizarre masterpiece of horror manga is now available in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!]]> 653 Junji Ito 1421561328 Kai 0 4.45 2000 Uzumaki
author: Junji Ito
name: Kai
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/14
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu]]> 55643292
Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale.

Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man’s quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.]]> 275 Tom Lin 0316542156 Kai 0 3.66 2021 The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
author: Tom Lin
name: Kai
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/13
shelves: to-read-fiction-literature, to-read
review:

]]> Palm of the Hand Stories 14031 ]]> 262 Yasunari Kawabata 0374530491 Kai 0 4.05 1971 Palm of the Hand Stories
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Kai
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/25
shelves: to-read-fiction-literature, to-read
review:

]]> A Planet for Rent 22067499 �A Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba's most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human civilization. Yoss' smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society.� —NPR, Best Books of 2015

Out of the modern-day dystopia of Cuba comes an instant classic from the island’s most celebrated science fiction author: a raucous tale of a future in which a failing Earth is at the mercy of powerful capitalist alien colonizers.

In A Planet for Rent, Yoss critiques life under Castro in the �90s by drawing parallels with a possible Earth of the not-so-distant future. Wracked by economic and environmental problems, the desperate planet is rescued, for better or worse, by alien colonizers, who remake the planet as a tourist destination. Ruled over by a brutal interstellar bureaucracy, dispossessed humans seek better lives via the few routes available—working for the colonial police; eking out a living as black marketeers, drug dealers, or artists; prostituting themselves to exploitative extraterrestrial visitors—or they face the cold void of space in rickety illegal ships.

This inventive book marks the English-language debut of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.]]> 272 Yoss 1632060086 Kai 0 3.80 2011 A Planet for Rent
author: Yoss
name: Kai
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sweet Tooth, Vol. 3: Animal Armies]]> 9921208 Sweet Tooth epic yet!

Collecting: Sweet Tooth 12-17]]> 143 Jeff Lemire 1401231705 Kai 0 4.15 2011 Sweet Tooth, Vol. 3: Animal Armies
author: Jeff Lemire
name: Kai
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sweet Tooth, Vol. 2: In Captivity]]> 8171206
Collecting: Sweet Tooth 6-11]]> 144 Jeff Lemire 1401228542 Kai 4 4.09 2010 Sweet Tooth, Vol. 2: In Captivity
author: Jeff Lemire
name: Kai
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/26
date added: 2022/06/26
shelves:
review:
Lemire’s narrative takes it’s time revealing new insight and developments, but things are getting more compelling as we learn the history and connections of these characters and what went wrong in this world.
]]> <![CDATA[Moon Knight by Lemire & Smallwood: The Complete Collection]]> 58505949
COLLECTING: MOON KNIGHT (2016) 1-14]]> 320 Jeff Lemire 1302933639 Kai 0 4.31 2018 Moon Knight by Lemire & Smallwood: The Complete Collection
author: Jeff Lemire
name: Kai
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> Cloud Cuckoo Land 56783258 When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.]]> 626 Anthony Doerr 1982168439 Kai 0 4.24 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Kai
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/30
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> At Night All Blood is Black 50403480 “Cłó´Çł¦´Ç±ô˛ąłŮâ€� soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.

Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?

Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.

Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel� (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War.]]> 145 David Diop 0374266972 Kai 4
A challenging, thought provoking read.]]> 3.82 2018 At Night All Blood is Black
author: David Diop
name: Kai
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/24
date added: 2022/05/24
shelves:
review:
Profound, visceral, searing…and much more complex than it initially seems? This slim volume is an exploration and indictment of numerous themes, ranging from war to trauma, ptsd, colonialism, sexuality, duality, and revenge. The last few chapters are ambiguous, and throw the reader for a bit of a loop.

A challenging, thought provoking read.
]]> Borne (Borne, #1) 31451186
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.

Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,� a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?]]> 323 Jeff VanderMeer 0374115249 Kai 0 3.93 2017 Borne (Borne, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Kai
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> ±á´Ç°ů°ů´Ç°ů˛őłŮö°ů 13129925
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, ±á´Ç°ů°ů´Ç°ů˛őłŮö°ů is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, ±á´Ç°ů°ů´Ç°ů˛őłŮö°ů delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.

Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.]]> 248 Grady Hendrix 1594745269 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.64 2014 ±á´Ç°ů°ů´Ç°ů˛őłŮö°ů
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Kai
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams]]> 34466963 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.]]> 368 Matthew Walker Kai 0 to-read, to-read-science 4.37 2017 Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
author: Matthew Walker
name: Kai
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read, to-read-science
review:

]]> The Master and Margarita 40580109 A 50th-anniversary Deluxe Edition of the incomparable 20th-century masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation

Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov's fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with historical, imaginary, frightful, and wonderful characters. Written during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, and finally published in 1966 and 1967, The Master and Margarita became a literary phenomenon, signaling artistic and spiritual freedom for Russians everywhere.

This newly revised translation, by the award-winning team of Pevear and Volokhonsky, is made...

]]> 412 Mikhail Bulgakov 1524704121 Kai 0 4.03 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Kai
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sweet Tooth, Vol. 1: Out of the Deep Woods]]> 6954438
Collecting: Sweet Tooth 1-5]]> 123 Jeff Lemire 1401226965 Kai 3 3.94 2010 Sweet Tooth, Vol. 1: Out of the Deep Woods
author: Jeff Lemire
name: Kai
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/08
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures]]> 52668915
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of â€intelligenceâ€�, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the â€Wood Wide Webâ€�, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.]]> 352 Merlin Sheldrake 0525510311 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-science 4.34 2020 Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Kai
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Broken (In the Best Possible Way)]]> 54305363 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened comes a deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.

With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.

A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.]]> 285 Jenny Lawson 1250077036 Kai 0 4.01 2021 Broken (In the Best Possible Way)
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Kai
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/02
shelves: to-read-biography-memoir, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee]]> 50690241
Stan Lee—born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922—is one of the most beloved and influential entertainers to emerge from the twentieth century. He served as editor in chief of Marvel Comics for three decades and, in that time, launched more pieces of internationally recognizable intellectual property than anyone other than Walt Disney: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor... the list seems to never end. On top of that, his carnival-barker marketing prowess more or less single-handedly saved the comic-book industry and superhero fiction. Without him, the global entertainment industry would be wildly different—and a great deal poorer.

But Lee's unprecedented career was also pitted with spectacular failures, controversy, and bitter disputes. Lee was dogged by accusations from his long-time collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko over who really created Marvel's signature characters—icons for whom Lee had always been suspected of taking more than his due share of credit. A major business venture, Stan Lee Media, resulted in stock manipulation, bankruptcy, and criminal charges. And in his final years, after the death of his beloved wife, Joan, rumors swirled that Lee was a virtual prisoner in his own home, issuing cryptic video recordings as a battle to control his fortune and legacy ensued.

Abraham Riesman is a veteran culture reporter who has conducted extensive new interviews and research, turning up never-before-published revelations about Lee's life and work. Lee's most famous motto was: "With great power comes great responsibility." True Believer chronicles every triumph and every misstep of an extraordinary life, and leaves it to readers to decide whether Lee lived up to the responsibilities of his own talent.]]> 416 Abraham Riesman 0593135717 Kai 0 3.78 2021 True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee
author: Abraham Riesman
name: Kai
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-biography-memoir
review:

]]> Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Kai 0 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Kai
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/21
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> Calypso 36341620 David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny-it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet-and it just might be his very best.
]]> 261 David Sedaris 0316392383 Kai 4 4.14 2018 Calypso
author: David Sedaris
name: Kai
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2018/08/09
date added: 2021/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Mister Miracle 39208001 No prison can hold him. No trap can contain him. He is Scott Free, the worldwide celebrity sensation known as Mister Miracle, and he is the greatest escape artist who ever lived. But can he pull off the ultimate trick–and escape death itself?

Something has gone horribly wrong with the perfect life that Scott and his wife Big Barda have made for themselves on Earth. With war raging between their homeworlds of Apokolips and New Genesis, Scott's cruel adoptive father, Darkseid, seems to have finally found the Anti-Life Equation–the weapon that will give him total victory.

As the mountains of bodies on both sides grow ever higher, only Mister Miracle can stop the slaughter and restore peace. But the terrible power of the Anti-Life Equation may already be at work in his own mind, warping his reality and shattering the fragile happiness he's found with the woman he loves.

Is death the trap that's been waiting for him all along? Or is it life itself? And what price will Scott Free have to pay to learn the answer?

Eisner Award winners Tom King and Mitch Gerads present a bold new vision of one of Jack Kirby's greatest creations with Mister Miracle–powerful, intimate and utterly unique, this modern comics classic will challenge everything you know about super-heroism!

Collects Mister Miracle #1-12.]]> 300 Tom King 1401283543 Kai 0 4.41 2019 Mister Miracle
author: Tom King
name: Kai
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> The Arrest 51179946 From the award-winning author of The Feral DetectiveĚýand Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-apocalyptic yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted—cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters—quits working. . . .Ěý

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A.ĚýAn old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt.Ěý

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was.ĚýSandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way.ĚýPlopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza?ĚýWhatever he's up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.Ěý

Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread,ĚýThe ArrestĚýis speculative fiction at its absolute finest.]]> 307 Jonathan Lethem 0062938789 Kai 0 3.07 2020 The Arrest
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Kai
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> A Promised Land 55361205
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,� and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.]]> 768 Barack Obama 1524763187 Kai 0 4.32 2020 A Promised Land
author: Barack Obama
name: Kai
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/06
shelves: to-read-biography-memoir, to-read
review:

]]> My Sister, the Serial Killer 38819868
My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water...]]> 226 Oyinkan Braithwaite 0385544235 Kai 3
A sharp, delicious little novel, full of deadpan wit, minimalist prose, and a slow, inexorable body count.]]> 3.65 2018 My Sister, the Serial Killer
author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
name: Kai
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/05
date added: 2021/02/05
shelves:
review:
3.5/5

A sharp, delicious little novel, full of deadpan wit, minimalist prose, and a slow, inexorable body count.
]]> Fortune Smiles 23590496
In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. "Nirvana," which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous" - first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology - a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.]]> 304 Adam Johnson 0857522973 Kai 0 4.00 2015 Fortune Smiles
author: Adam Johnson
name: Kai
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/29
shelves: to-read-fiction-literature, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life]]> 53487237 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?� He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.]]> 403 George Saunders 1984856049 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-on-writing 4.55 2021 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
author: George Saunders
name: Kai
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-on-writing
review:

]]> Sister Jaguar's Journey 28231993 Sister Jaguar’s Journey is the fiercely honest story of Sister Judy Bisignano, a Dominican nun, who after spending 68 years looking for God in all the wrong places, finally found the peace and divine connection she was looking for in the Amazon rainforest.

It all starts with a simple invitation to visit the Achuar community in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Here in this place, with these special people, using plant medicine, she was propelled onto a new path. Guided by the indigenous wisdom of the Pachamama (Mother Earth), and the sacred rituals of the Achuar people, she confronts and lets go of her turbulent, abusive, angry past, ultimately discovering that her life’s purpose was not to be an American educator, author and nun but rather a compassionate human being.

In many ways, Sister Jaguar’s Journey is the story of one nun’s transformational passage from self-rejection to self-acceptance, and from self-blame to self-love. It is, perhaps, the journey of each of us as we search for peace in this life and beyond.

The Achuar call her “Hermana Otorango � Sister Jaguar,� and so will you�

]]> 230 Judy Bisignano 0990968812 Kai 4 4.25 Sister Jaguar's Journey
author: Judy Bisignano
name: Kai
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Dark Nights: Metal 36268449 The Dark Multiverse is coming, and nothing will ever be the same! One of the biggest events in DC history is here in the shocking, action-packed epic Dark Nights: Metal from critically acclaimed author Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, reuniting after their smash-hit Batman series.

Beyond our universe there is the Multiverse...and beneath the Multiverse is a nightmare realm where every fear that has ever been felt on our Earth becomes reality. Now an evil force as old as time wants to drag us down into the shadows, into the realm of never-ending terror.

But when the door between worlds opens, it's not just any nightmares that come spilling out. They call themselves the Dark Knights. Each one is a twisted version of Batman from a world where one of his worst fears has come true.

With the invasion underway and Batman trapped in the Dark Multiverse, the Justice League must undergo an impossible quest to find the mysterious metals capable of repelling the Dark Knights and their master, the fearsome Barbatos. If they fail, everything they've ever known will be plunged into eternal darkness. But the true horror is...what if they're already too late?

Collects Dark Nights: Metal #1-6.]]> 216 Scott Snyder 1401277322 Kai 0 3.60 2018 Dark Nights: Metal
author: Scott Snyder
name: Kai
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/20
shelves: to-read-comics-graphic-novels, to-read
review:

]]> Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1) 117899 Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud’dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family—and would bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

Ěý

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction. Frank Herbert’s death in 1986 was a tragic loss, yet the astounding legacy of his visionary fiction will live forever.

]]> 884 Frank Herbert 0425080021 Kai 0 4.26 1965 Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Kai
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/20
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.69 2020 The Only Good Indians
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Kai
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/04
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo]]> 13330922 The Count of Monte CristoĚýand The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.ĚýBorn in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East â€� until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.]]> 414 Tom Reiss 030738246X Kai 0 to-read, to-read-history 4.00 2012 The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
author: Tom Reiss
name: Kai
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-history
review:

]]> The Nickel Boys 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 Kai 0 4.25 2019 The Nickel Boys
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Kai
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Kai 0 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Kai
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Batman: Curse of the White Knight]]> 50409334 Ancient curses are awoken and timeless secrets are revealed in this explosive sequel to the critically acclaimed blockbuster Batman: White Knight from writer/artist Sean Murphy!

The Joker recruits Azrael to help him expose a shocking secret about the Wayne family's legacy--and run Gotham City into the ground! As Batman rushes to protect the city and his loved ones from danger, the mystery of his ancestry unravels and Batman begins to question everything he thought he knew about himself and his place in Gotham.

With Gotham City's identity and institutions hanging in the balance, Barbara Gordon decides to take matters into her own hands -- but will her rogue actions play right into The Joker's plans? After tragedy strikes, Renee Montoya steps into the fray to lead the GTO and restore order to the chaos that is quickly consuming Gotham City. Lightning-quick pacing and an all-star cast of Gotham's heaviest hitters will keep you on the edge of your seat until the breathtaking finale of this second installment of the White Knight saga!

Collects Batman: Curse of the White Knight #1-8 and Batman: White Knight Presents Von Freeze #1.]]> 272 Sean Gordon Murphy 1779504489 Kai 0 4.18 2020 Batman: Curse of the White Knight
author: Sean Gordon Murphy
name: Kai
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stories of Your Life and Others]]> 28503870 ]]> 281 Ted Chiang 1101972122 Kai 0 4.22 2002 Stories of Your Life and Others
author: Ted Chiang
name: Kai
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> Exhalation 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang Kai 0 4.27 2019 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: Kai
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> Flights 36885304 Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Here I am --
World in your head --
Your head in the world --
Syndrome --
Cabinet of curiosities --
Seeing is knowing --
Seven years of trips --
Guidance from Cioran --
Kunicki: water (I) --
Benedictus, quivenit]]> 416 Olga Tokarczuk 0525534199 Kai 0 3.73 2007 Flights
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kai
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead]]> 42983724 WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk 0525541330 Kai 0 3.92 2009 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kai
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun, #1-2)]]> 40992 The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim.

The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.

The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly, and "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume.]]> 413 Gene Wolfe 0312890176 Kai 0 4.07 1994 Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun, #1-2)
author: Gene Wolfe
name: Kai
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)]]> 6101718
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.]]> 402 Lev Grossman 0670020559 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-fantasy 3.53 2009 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
author: Lev Grossman
name: Kai
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read, to-read-fantasy
review:

]]> The Devil in the White City 21996
Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.]]> 496 Erik Larson 0739303406 Kai 0 to-read-history, to-read 3.99 2003 The Devil in the White City
author: Erik Larson
name: Kai
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/15
shelves: to-read-history, to-read
review:

]]> The Children of Men 406161 Librarian note: This is a later printing of ISBN 0-307-27543-4 with a slightly different cover than the one used on the first printing. As Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ does not allow for more that one record per ISBN a record for the first printing was added without the ISBN.

Told with P. D. James’s trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future.

The human race has become infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.]]> 241 P.D. James 0307275434 Kai 0 3.57 1992 The Children of Men
author: P.D. James
name: Kai
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How To Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day Job With My Blog]]> 19649587
While his results are not typical, this book covers all the steps he took to make money from his blog over that two-year period.

Who this book is written for:

* Those who want to get started blogging
* Those who are already blogging but aren't making as much money as they'd like to.

Who this book is NOT written for:

* People looking for a get-rich-quick system that requires little effort.
* Experienced bloggers making over $1000/m (though the book will still probably be helpful, it isn't written to this audience)

Some of the topics covered in the book:

* 4 Steps to Start Blogging in 10 minutes
* Blogging Basics
* How to setup a Self-Hosted Blog
* The importance of a Customizable Wordpress theme
* 3 primary ways to earn from your blog
* How long does it take to make money from your blog?
* How to get traffic to your blog
* SEO Tips for bloggers
* How I increased Adsense earnings $1500/m in less than 3 months
* 7 helpful tools that made it all possible]]> 58 Bob Lotich 0989894509 Kai 3 3.27 2010 How To Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day Job With My Blog
author: Bob Lotich
name: Kai
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/08/06
date added: 2020/09/17
shelves:
review:
As someone who previously knew nothing about blogging, I found this to be a generally helpful little starter guide, though I plan to look into more in-depth resources before committing myself.
]]> <![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Kai 4 4.17 2000 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Kai
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/31
date added: 2020/07/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)]]> 37794149
Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.]]> 448 Arkady Martine 1529001587 Kai 0 4.08 2019 A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
author: Arkady Martine
name: Kai
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-science-fiction
review:

]]> Batman: Last Knight on Earth 44143189
Corresponde a Batman: Last Knight on Earth #1-3.

Formato: Libro | 17x24 cm]]> 184 Scott Snyder 1779506406 Kai 0 3.61 2019 Batman: Last Knight on Earth
author: Scott Snyder
name: Kai
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires]]> 44074800 Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.]]> 410 Grady Hendrix Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.78 2020 The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Kai
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/01
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> Harleen 52713814
A young psychiatrist with a potential cure for the madness that haunts Gotham City, Dr. Harleen Quinzel must prove her revolutionary theory to a skeptical establishment by delving into the disturbed minds of Arkham Asylum's deadliest inmates. But the more time she spends with her criminally insane subjects, the closer she is drawn to one patient in particular--and the further she falls away from reality. The birth of legendary antihero Harley Quinn and the shocking origins of her twisted romance with the Joker are revealed in Harleen, a stunning new tale of love and obsession written and illustrated by renowned comics storyteller Stjepan Sejic (Aquaman: Underworld, Sunstone).

Collects: Harleen #1-3.]]> 208 Stjepan Šejić 1779501110 Kai 0 4.52 2020 Harleen
author: Stjepan Šejić
name: Kai
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

]]> 1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-history 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: Kai
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/11
shelves: to-read, to-read-history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague]]> 41817537

To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable—or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk.


In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread—the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.]]> 304 David K. Randall 0393609456 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-history 4.03 2019 Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague
author: David K. Randall
name: Kai
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/11
shelves: to-read, to-read-history
review:

]]> Wanderers (Wanderers, #1) 32603079
For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them--and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.]]> 845 Chuck Wendig 039918211X Kai 0 to-read, to-read-horror 3.94 2019 Wanderers (Wanderers, #1)
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Kai
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/09
shelves: to-read, to-read-horror
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)]]> 45183786
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia's been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact's secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there's nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving--and at stopping the deadly transformation that's under way--Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact's power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

In a city that runs on industrialized magic, a secret war will be fought to overwrite reality itself--the first in a dazzling new series from City of Stairs author Robert Jackson Bennett. ]]> 512 Robert Jackson Bennett 0525573844 Kai 0 to-read 4.20 2018 Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Kai
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)]]> 37751333 389 Richard K. Morgan 0345457684 Kai 0 to-read 3.91 2002 Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)
author: Richard K. Morgan
name: Kai
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)]]> 42074525
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.]]> 437 N.K. Jemisin Kai 0 to-read, to-read-fantasy 3.83 2020 The City We Became (Great Cities, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Kai
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/03
shelves: to-read, to-read-fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Long 'til Black Future Month?]]> 40855636 400 N.K. Jemisin 0316491349 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-fantasy 4.27 2018 How Long 'til Black Future Month?
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Kai
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/03
shelves: to-read, to-read-fantasy
review:

]]> The Glass Hotel 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 Kai 0 3.66 2020 The Glass Hotel
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Kai
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/03
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> The Annotated Lolita 7606
The Annotated Lolita is the definitive annotated text of the modern classic, written by one of the most punning and allusive writers in English since James Joyce. It assiduously glosses Lolita's extravagant wordplay and its frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross references.
--back cover]]> 457 Vladimir Nabokov 0679727299 Kai 4 4.20 1955 The Annotated Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Kai
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2014/09/17
date added: 2020/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51227088 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City delivers a startlingly fresh portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz

On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons (30,000 of them Londoners) and destroying two million homes. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--that she was willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinksmanship but also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country house, Chequers, and his wartime residence, Ditchley, where Churchill and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, including recently declassified files, intelligence reports, and personal diaries only now available, Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their daughters, Sarah, Diana, and the youngest, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; her illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his dangerously observant private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Federick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when--in the face of unrelenting horror--Churchill's eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.]]> 585 Erik Larson Kai 0 to-read 4.28 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Kai
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Kai 0 to-read, to-read-history 4.30 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Kai
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/11
shelves: to-read, to-read-history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[These Truths: A History of the United States]]> 43726521 New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,� Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?


These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction� will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,� Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.]]> 960 Jill Lepore 0393357422 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-history 4.38 2018 These Truths: A History of the United States
author: Jill Lepore
name: Kai
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/26
shelves: to-read, to-read-history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets, Dreadful Orbits, and the Origins of the Night Sky]]> 42118041
In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot. Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon. InĚý When the Earth Had Two Moons , esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued,Ěý When the Earth Had Two Moons Ěýis not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here―and billions of miles from home.]]> 368 Erik Asphaug 0062657925 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-science 3.89 2008 When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets, Dreadful Orbits, and the Origins of the Night Sky
author: Erik Asphaug
name: Kai
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/22
shelves: to-read, to-read-science
review:

]]> DCeased 46021336 What happens to the World's Finest if the world ends? With death spreading across the planet, who will live and who will turn in this apocalyptic tale of heroism, sacrifice and annihilation?

It's the end of the world as we know it!

Six hundred million people worldwide are instantly turned into violent, monstrous engines of destruction when their minds are recoded with a corrupted Anti-Life Equation from Apokolips. The heroes of Earth are fighting a losing battle to save humanity, save the world and save themselves, in one of the most shocking tales ever told in the DC Universe.

Fighting time, each other and all of humanity, Earth's greatest heroes must rally together for what may very well be their last chance to save the world from the most terrible plague humanity has ever seen. The Anti-Life Equation has been released and is ravaging the world at the viral speed of social media. Once exposed, victims lose their minds, violently attacking all around them.

The heroes of Earth are fighting a losing battle to save the world...and themselves! With time running out, who will live and who will die in this apocalyptic tale of heroism, sacrifice and annihilation?

Collects issues #1-6 and DCeased: A Good Day to Die #1]]> 236 Tom Taylor 1401294405 Kai 0 4.14 2019 DCeased
author: Tom Taylor
name: Kai
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/16
shelves: to-read, to-read-comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom]]> 43822836
“Extraordinary…a great American biography� ( The New Yorker ) of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.

As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818�1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.

Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, using his own story to condemn slavery. By the Civil War, Douglass had become the most famed and widely travelled orator in the nation. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. After the war he sometimes argued politically with younger African Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights.

In this “cinematic and deeply engaging� ( The New York Times Book Review ) biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historian have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. “Absorbing and even moving…a brilliant book that speaks to our own time as well as Douglass’s� ( The Wall Street Journal ), Blight’s biography tells the fascinating story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. “David Blight has written the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass…a powerful portrait of one of the most important American voices of the nineteenth century� ( The Boston Globe ).

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Frederick Douglass won the Bancroft, Parkman , Los Angeles Times (biography), Lincoln, Plutarch, and Christopher awards and was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Time.]]> 769 David W. Blight 1416590323 Kai 0 to-read 4.41 2018 Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
author: David W. Blight
name: Kai
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Life and Fate (Stalingrad, #2)]]> 537524
Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope.

Life and Fate juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers� nests, scientific laboratories and the Gulag, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of characters ranging from a boy on his way to the gas chambers to Hitler and Stalin themselves.

This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.]]> 904 Vasily Grossman 1590172019 Kai 0 4.54 1960 Life and Fate (Stalingrad, #2)
author: Vasily Grossman
name: Kai
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/05
shelves: to-read, to-read-fiction-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself]]> 10127008
The relentless pursuit of high self-esteem has become a virtual religion—and a tyrannical one at that. Our ultracompetitive culture tells us we need to be constantly above average to feel good about ourselves, but there is always someone more attractive, successful, or intelligent than we are. And even when we do manage to grab hold of high self-esteem for a brief moment, we can't seem to keep it. Our sense of self-worth goes up and down like a ping-pong ball, rising and falling in lockstep with our latest success or failure.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to self-esteem that many experts believe is a better and more effective path to happiness: self-compassion. The research of Dr. Kristin Neff and other leading psychologists indicates that people who are compassionate toward their failings and imperfections experience greater well-being than those who repeatedly judge themselves. The feelings of security and self-worth provided by self-compassion are also highly stable, kicking in precisely when self-esteem falls down. This book powerfully demonstrates why it's so important to be self-compassionate and give yourself the same caring support you'd give to a good friend.

This groundbreaking work will show you how to let go of debilitating self-criticism and finally learn to be kind to yourself. Using solid empirical research, personal stories, practical exercises, and humor, Dr. Neff—the world's foremost expert on self-compassion—explains how to heal destructive emotional patterns so that you can be healthier, happier, and more effective. Engaging, highly readable, and eminently accessible, this book has the power to change your life.]]> 320 Kristin Neff 0061733512 Kai 0 to-read, to-read-self-help 4.11 2011 Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
author: Kristin Neff
name: Kai
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-self-help
review:

]]>