Chris's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 08 Apr 2025 19:27:55 -0700 60 Chris's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6)]]> 125887685
It is bedlam on the eighth floor.
As management reels from the unexpected conclusion of the seventh level, the surviving crawlers stumble onto the eighth and find themselves scattered. It’s a map based on Earth’s final days before the collapse, where ethereal, intangible ghosts of humanity go about their lives, oblivious of the impending doom. Living amongst these ghosts are monsters based in Earth lore. “Legendary� creatures tied to the geographical location they inhabit.

Each team of crawlers is given a task: find and capture six of these beasts. The captured monsters will be turned into cards. Cards that can be summoned into battle again and again. The stronger, the deadlier, the better.

At the end of the floor, the bad guys will also have decks, and they will have some of the most powerful cards available. So it’s crucial to assemble the toughest squad possible.

But, like always, there is a catch. There’s always a catch.

As Carl and Donut know all too well, just because someone is captured, it doesn’t mean they have been tamed.

Her name is Shi Maria. She’s easily the most powerful monster in their area. If they want to survive, they must capture her. But she is no ordinary beast. She’s intelligent. She was once married to a god, a god who is now missing. Her special attack is known to drive one insane. They call her the Bedlam Bride.

“Beware, beware. Beware the Eye of the Bedlam Bride”]]>
694 Matt Dinniman Chris 0 currently-reading 4.68 2023 The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)]]> 60233239 Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose. Run, Run, Run.

A lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed “The Butcher’s Masquerade.�

The sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds.

As the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, a new, terrible threat looms. Outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are here and ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career.

But their prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back.

Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut return in book five of the acclaimed litrpg series.]]>
732 Matt Dinniman Chris 5

Onward ]]>
4.69 2022 The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:



Onward
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<![CDATA[The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #4)]]> 57905101 New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.

You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.

A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.

It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Here's the thing. It's never easy. Carl and his team can't go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can't-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.]]>
586 Matt Dinniman Chris 4 4.58 2021 The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #4)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:

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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 Chris 5 4.07 2019 Our Share of Night
author: Mariana Enríquez
name: Chris
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/29
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
Darkest book I’ve ever read. Great for this time of year.
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<![CDATA[The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #3)]]> 57001971 Welcome to the Gun Show!

The top ten list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.

The Iron Tangle. An impossibly-complicated subway system built out of the world's subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.

But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly-useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.]]>
534 Matt Dinniman Chris 5 4.49 2021 The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #3)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking]]> 13035774 399 John Brockman 0062109391 Chris 0 currently-reading 3.80 2012 This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking
author: John Brockman
name: Chris
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #2)]]> 56377548
The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Carl still has no pants.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.]]>
364 Matt Dinniman Chris 0 4.55 2021 Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #2)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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<![CDATA[Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)]]> 56791389 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B08BKGYQXW


The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.]]>
446 Matt Dinniman Chris 0 4.49 2020 Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #7)]]> 216017751 The time has come! Book seven in the bestselling Dungeon Crawler Carl series is here!

They call it Faction Wars.

The ninth floor.

Nine armies, each led by rich and powerful aliens from across the galaxy. Each team has one objective: to capture and hold the castle at the very center of the battlefield. Strategy, alliances, pitched battles, and, of course, betrayal... It all makes for great fun and even greater television.

After all, none of these powerful aliens really die when they’re playing war.

Except this time. This time, winner takes all. Those who fall, stay in the ground.

As the AI continues its rapid decline, Carl and company take advantage of the chaos. For the first time ever, the crawlers are fighting back. They are now one of the nine teams. And this season, there’s a tenth army on the playing field. The NPCs, who are normally used as nothing but cannon fodder, have become fully self-aware and formed a team of their own.

For Donut and Katia, the stakes are even higher. Only one of them will be allowed to leave this level.

If they all want to survive, they’re going to need a little help from a veteran or two.

This is it.
This is what they’ve been fighting toward.
This is war.

This inevitable ruin.]]>
724 Matt Dinniman Chris 0 to-read 4.64 2024 This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #7)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder]]> 13530973
In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile" is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension.

Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, and proposing that things be built in an antifragile manner. Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave—and thrive—in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. He who is not antifragile will perish. Why is the city state better than the nation state, why is debt bad for you, and why is almost everything modern bound to fail? The book covers innovation, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. Throughout, the voice and recipes of the ancient wisdom from Phoenician, Roman, Greek, and Medieval sources are heard loud and clear.]]>
426 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 1400067820 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.08 2012 Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Chris
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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

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

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]>
352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Chris 4
Not about educational book in the way that I thought. Extremely triggering on multiple fronts. I’ve not authentically said, “ohhhhhh� in shock out loud while listening to a book before. Hot damn. I also skipped over some of the more aggressive abuse.

Real strong feels with the whole bi-polar dad thing. But while my father could be abusive abd hold similar beliefs as the patriarch in this narrative.

Yikes - the brother. May none of you reading this ever know a piece of shit like that in your lives. The gaslighting� woof. This kind of psycho bully shit is all the rage these days� at least in the current administration.

Our current political twilight zone aside- this was a good book. I recommend not reading it while reading the caution label that states “possible trigging af�
-religion
-physical abuse
-verbal abuse
-psychological abuse
-gaslighting
-mental health
-cruelty to animals
I could go on- you’ve been warned or IYKYK.

The author writes vividly, viscerally, immersive stories. Almost too good ]]>
4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Chris
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves:
review:
The weirdest rags to riches story I’ve ever encountered- and I fully admit that that’s an absurd reduction of what happened here- but kinda, yeah- that’s sorta what this is.

Not about educational book in the way that I thought. Extremely triggering on multiple fronts. I’ve not authentically said, “ohhhhhh� in shock out loud while listening to a book before. Hot damn. I also skipped over some of the more aggressive abuse.

Real strong feels with the whole bi-polar dad thing. But while my father could be abusive abd hold similar beliefs as the patriarch in this narrative.

Yikes - the brother. May none of you reading this ever know a piece of shit like that in your lives. The gaslighting� woof. This kind of psycho bully shit is all the rage these days� at least in the current administration.

Our current political twilight zone aside- this was a good book. I recommend not reading it while reading the caution label that states “possible trigging af�
-religion
-physical abuse
-verbal abuse
-psychological abuse
-gaslighting
-mental health
-cruelty to animals
I could go on- you’ve been warned or IYKYK.

The author writes vividly, viscerally, immersive stories. Almost too good
]]>
Inciting Joy: Essays 59892269 The Book of Delights

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it.

In “We Kin� he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in “Share Your Bucket� he explores skateboarding’s reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in “Grief Suite�; and in “Through My Tears I Saw,� he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.

In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers.]]>
256 Ross Gay 1643753045 Chris 5 4.13 2022 Inciting Joy: Essays
author: Ross Gay
name: Chris
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/11
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review:

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<![CDATA[The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives�. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories � dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]>
201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 Chris 5 3.70 2013 The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Chris
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)]]> 76715522 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Aelin Galathynius has vowed to save her people � but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. The knowledge that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, but her resolve is unraveling with each passing day�

With Aelin captured, friends and allies are scattered to different fates. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever. As destinies weave together at last, all must fight if Erilea is to have any hope of salvation.

Years in the making, Sarah J. Maas's New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series draws to an explosive conclusion as Aelin fights to save herself―and the promise of a better world.]]>
984 Sarah J. Maas 1639731067 Chris 5 4.74 2018 Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.74
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)]]> 76714487 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Chaol Westfall and Nesryn Faliq have arrived in the shining city of Antica to forge an alliance with the Khagan of the Southern Continent, whose vast armies are Erilea's last hope. But they have also come to Antica for another purpose: to seek healing at the famed Torre Cesme for the wounds Chaol received in Rifthold.

After enduring unspeakable horrors as a child, Yrene Towers has no desire to help the young lord from Adarlan, let alone heal him. Yet she has sworn an oath to assist those in need—and will honor it. But Lord Westfall carries shadows from his own past, and Yrene soon comes to realize they could engulf them both.

In this sweeping parallel novel to the New York Times bestselling Empire of Storms, Chaol, Nesryn, and Yrene will have to draw on every scrap of their resilience if they wish to save their friends. But while they become entangled in the political webs of the khaganate, deep in the shadows of mighty mountains where warriors soar on legendary ruks, long-awaited answers slumber. Answers that might offer their world a chance at survival—or doom them all . . .]]>
663 Sarah J. Maas 1639731040 Chris 4 4.26 2017 Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond]]> 22892322 395 Christophe Galfard 125006953X Chris 0 to-read 4.40 2015 The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond
author: Christophe Galfard
name: Chris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe]]> 55333564 Experimental physicist and acclaimed science presenter Harry Cliff takes you on an exhilarating search for the most basic building blocks of our universe, and the dramatically unfolding quest to unlock their cosmic origins


Carl Sagan once quipped, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." But finding the ultimate recipe for apple pie means answering some big questions: What is matter really made of? How did it escape annihilation in the fearsome heat of the Big Bang? And will we ever be able to understand the very first moments of our universe?

In How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch, Harry Cliff--a University of Cambridge particle physicist and researcher on the Large Hadron Collider--sets out in pursuit of answers. He ventures to the largest underground research facility in the world, deep beneath Italy's Gran Sasso mountains, where scientists gaze into the heart of the Sun using the most elusive of particles, the ghostly neutrino. He visits CERN in Switzerland to explore the Antimatter Factory, where the stuff of science fiction is manufactured daily (and we're close to knowing whether it falls up). And he reveals what the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider may be telling us about the fundamental nature of matter.

Along the way, Cliff illuminates the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy that brought us to our present understanding--and misunderstandings--of the world, while offering readers a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on.

A transfixing deep dive into origins of our world, How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch examines not just the makeup of our universe, but the awe-inspiring, improbable fact that it exists at all.]]>
385 Harry Cliff 0385545657 Chris 0 to-read 4.42 2021 How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe
author: Harry Cliff
name: Chris
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women]]> 31409135 The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

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479 Kate Moore 149264935X Chris 0 to-read 4.13 2016 The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
author: Kate Moore
name: Chris
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]>
213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Chris 0 to-read 3.67 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Chris
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)]]> 58293924 Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.]]>
304 Holly Black 1250812194 Chris 0 to-read 3.51 2022 Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)
author: Holly Black
name: Chris
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Temple of Fortuna (Wolf Den Trilogy #3)]]> 61185028
Amara's journey has taken her far; from a slave in Pompeii's wolf den to a high-powered courtesan in Rome... though her story is not over yet.

While Amara plays for power in Rome's imperial palace, those dearest to her remain in Pompeii. But it is AD 79, and mighty Mount Vesuvius is about to make itself known...]]>
384 Elodie Harper 1838933611 Chris 0 to-read 4.36 2023 The Temple of Fortuna (Wolf Den Trilogy #3)
author: Elodie Harper
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Wolf Den (Wolf Den Trilogy, #1)]]> 56563852
Amara was once a beloved daughter, until her father's death plunged her family into penury. Now she is a slave in Pompeii's infamous brothel, owned by a man she despises. Sharp, clever and resourceful, Amara is forced to hide her talents. For as a she-wolf, her only value lies in the desire she can stir in others.

But Amara's spirit is far from broken.

By day, she walks the streets with her fellow she-wolves, finding comfort in the laughter and dreams they share. For the streets of Pompeii are alive with opportunity. Out here, even the lowest slave can secure a reversal in fortune. Amara has learned that everything in this city has its price. But how much is her freedom going to cost her?

Set in Pompeii's lupanar, The Wolf Den reimagines the lives of women who have long been overlooked.]]>
464 Elodie Harper Chris 0 to-read 4.05 2021 The Wolf Den (Wolf Den Trilogy, #1)
author: Elodie Harper
name: Chris
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The House with the Golden Door (Wolf Den Trilogy, #2)]]> 58591630 Amara has escaped her life as a slave in the town's most notorious brothel, but now her existence depends on the affections of her a man she might not know as well as she once thought.

At night she dreams of the wolf den, still haunted by her past. Amara longs for the women she was forced to leave behind and worse, finds herself pursued by the man who once owned her. In order to be free, she will need to be as ruthless as he is.

Amara knows her existence in Pompeii is subject to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet finding love may prove to be the most dangerous act of all.

We return to Pompeii for the second instalment in Elodie Harper's Wolf Den Trilogy, reimagining the lives of the women from the town's lupanar.]]>
472 Elodie Harper 1838933603 Chris 0 to-read 4.22 2022 The House with the Golden Door (Wolf Den Trilogy, #2)
author: Elodie Harper
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)]]> 76713323 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius as war looms on the horizon. Loyalties have been broken and bought, friends have been lost and gained, and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those who don't.

With her heart sworn to the warrior-prince by her side, and her fealty pledged to the people she is determined to save, Aelin will delve into the depths of her power to protect those she loves. But as monsters emerge from the horrors of the past, and dark forces become poised to claim her world, the only chance for salvation will lie in a desperate quest that may mark the end of everything Aelin holds dear.

In this breathtaking fifth installment of the New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series, Aelin will have to choose what—and who—to sacrifice if she's to keep the world of Erilea from breaking apart.]]>
693 Sarah J. Maas 1639731024 Chris 5
There was 4/10 toe curling, but I think it was the first time this series gets to the good stuff.

I care about the story and characters. Next. ]]>
4.66 2016 Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, #5)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves:
review:
I was reminded of that Formation song by Beyoncé a couple of times in this book. Lots of action, lots of set up for more action.

There was 4/10 toe curling, but I think it was the first time this series gets to the good stuff.

I care about the story and characters. Next.
]]>
<![CDATA[Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)]]> 76707900 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire—for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past�

She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight.

She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die for her. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen’s triumphant return.

The fourth volume in the New York Times bestselling series continues Celaena’s epic journey and builds to a passionate, agonizing crescendo that might just shatter her world.]]>
648 Sarah J. Maas 1639731008 Chris 4 4.64 2015 Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)]]> 76706470 576 Sarah J. Maas Chris 5
Prediction- the dragon rider is going to be the main character’s bestie in the future. We’ll see


Also- I cannot help be see the parallels between this story and court of thorn and roses. Like when celeana leaves a spurned lover, meets a “powerful bad boy with tattoos� and then slowly over hundreds of pages falls in love and then gets tattoos from said bad boy?!

Oh well- it’s iterative and satisfying so no big ]]>
4.44 2014 Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
It’s on like donkey kong in this one� lots of pieces coming together. Characters coming into focus. Group formations

Prediction- the dragon rider is going to be the main character’s bestie in the future. We’ll see


Also- I cannot help be see the parallels between this story and court of thorn and roses. Like when celeana leaves a spurned lover, meets a “powerful bad boy with tattoos� and then slowly over hundreds of pages falls in love and then gets tattoos from said bad boy?!

Oh well- it’s iterative and satisfying so no big
]]>
<![CDATA[The Map to Everywhere (The Map to Everywhere, #1)]]> 20980662
To Master Thief Fin, an orphan from the murky pirate world of the Khaznot Quay, the Map is the key to finding his mother. To suburban schoolgirl Marrill, it's her only way home after getting stranded on the Pirate Stream, the magical waterway that connects every world in creation. With the help of a bumbling wizard and his crew, they must scour the many worlds of the Pirate Stream to gather the pieces of the Map to Everywhere--but they aren't the only ones looking. A sinister figure is hot on their tail, and if they can't beat his ghostly ship to find the Map, it could mean the destruction of everything they hold dear!

Heart-pounding escapades and a colorful cast of characters will have readers setting sail through this wholly original and unforgettable tale.]]>
448 Carrie Ryan 031624077X Chris 0 to-read 4.08 2014 The Map to Everywhere (The Map to Everywhere, #1)
author: Carrie Ryan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2)]]> 76705490 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

"A line that should never be crossed is about to be breached.

It puts this entire castle in jeopardy—and the life of your friend."


From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.

Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie... and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.]]>
420 Sarah J. Maas 1639730966 Chris 5
Not a curled toe to be found, but instead a delightful fantasy worth your time. It’s all set up, but it’s tasty ]]>
4.34 2013 Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:
Excellent. Onwards to the next.

Not a curled toe to be found, but instead a delightful fantasy worth your time. It’s all set up, but it’s tasty
]]>
A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Chris 2 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Chris
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)]]> 76703559 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king's champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass—and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.]]>
406 Sarah J. Maas 163973094X Chris 4 4.18 2012 Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers, #1)]]> 60147395
There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse.
What will be the spark that lights the conflagration?
Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood � that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.

Ilmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places.

Ilmar,
City of Long Shadows.
City of Bad Decisions.
City of Last Chances.]]>
500 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1801108420 Chris 3
And I really like this author- so onwards ]]>
3.84 2022 City of Last Chances (The Tyrant Philosophers, #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Chris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
I’ll continue reading this series, it’s got good bones. But gosh if this book wasn’t confusing and meandering for the first 1/3 or 1/2.

And I really like this author- so onwards
]]>
<![CDATA[Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]>
1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Chris 5
At first the ever changing menu is weird, but then you acclimate and get used to amazing onslaught of tasty bits. Again, that’s what this book feels like�

When I used to play DND, when stuff like this happens in game, we’d call it a cosmic reboot. Yup! This is definitely one of those.

Onwards! I can’t wait for the next

]]>
4.37 2024 Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:
Have you ever sat down to a 9 course meal? You how you’re full to bursting after that outing? Imagine doing that every day for about 3 weeks. That’s what this book feels like.

At first the ever changing menu is weird, but then you acclimate and get used to amazing onslaught of tasty bits. Again, that’s what this book feels like�

When I used to play DND, when stuff like this happens in game, we’d call it a cosmic reboot. Yup! This is definitely one of those.

Onwards! I can’t wait for the next


]]>
<![CDATA[Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed]]> 101438 382 Ben R. Rich Chris 0 to-read 4.45 1994 Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed
author: Ben R. Rich
name: Chris
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)]]> 53138095
The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre's Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta's orbit. But her temper isn't the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other.

Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts.

Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance-and healing-in each other's arms.]]>
757 Sarah J. Maas 168119628X Chris 5 4.44 2021 A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:
Yup. Real good stuff. Read it already
]]>
Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]>
272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Chris 3 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs]]> 210963085 The formerheadof the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs�now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe.

Luis “Lue� Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official and special agent who was recruited into a strange and highly sensitive US government program to investigate UAP incursions into sensitive military installations and air space. To accomplish his mission, Elizondo had to rely on decades of experience gained working some of America’s most sensitive and classified programs.Even then, he was not prepared for what he would learn, and the truth about the government’s long shadowy involvement in UAP investigations, and the lengths officials would take to keep them a secret.

The stakes could not be higher. Imminent is a first-hand, revelatory account inside the Pentagon’s most closely guarded secret and a call to action to confront humanity’s greatest existential questions.]]>
275 Luis Elizondo 0063235560 Chris 3 with-tonia

The remote seeing stuff was weird, so too was thanking Tucker Carlson for his “bravery� - sounds like money exchanged hands. ]]>
3.88 2024 Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs
author: Luis Elizondo
name: Chris
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: with-tonia
review:
Insert the “I’m not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens� gif, but first adjust it to say “I’m saying it was aliens.�


The remote seeing stuff was weird, so too was thanking Tucker Carlson for his “bravery� - sounds like money exchanged hands.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't]]> 13588394
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.

Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.]]>
544 Nate Silver 159420411X Chris 3 3.95 2012 The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't
author: Nate Silver
name: Chris
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain]]> 43453738 Life-changing opportunities pass us by every day � now we can train our minds to seize them

Self-help books like The Secret promise that we can control our destiny by reshaping our minds. Despite scepticism, these systems have been used by millions of people for generations. Why?

Because if we strip away the mumbo-jumbo, The Secret and its forbears are fundamentally powerful � and they are backed up by the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience and behavioural psychology. Because most of the things we want from life � health, happiness, wealth, love � are governed by our ability to think, feel and act; in other words, by our brain.

What if a neuroscientist could take the best of The Secret � together with its original source book The Master Key System - and make it accessible for a new generation?

What if a book offered a rigorous, proven toolkit for unlocking our minds and reaching our fullest potential?

That neuroscientist is Dr Tara Swart. And that book is The Source.

‘Tara Swart is an extremely calming presence, all the more so for being palpably intelligent. Her brain appears to require no boosting. I’d sign up in an eye blink� I like her � a lot�
Hannah Betts, The Times

‘Dr Tara Swart is friendly, charming, and knows what she’s talking about. Having qualified as a doctor, then trained as a neuroscientist, she worked as a psychiatrist before going into private practice as a highly sought-after expert to the rich and famous�
Janet Street-Porter, Daily Mail

‘Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart works with some of the City’s highest-earning and most respected leaders in finance, law and media�
Evening Standard

‘Dr Swart has become one of the most prominent voices in the field of neuroscience, and counts among her clients some of the biggest names in business�
The Telegraph]]>
288 Tara Swart 0062935739 Chris 0 to-read 3.84 2019 The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain
author: Tara Swart
name: Chris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5)]]> 50659471
Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens. They have more wounds than she anticipated-scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.

Bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin with the later books in the series, A Court of Frost and Starlight explores the far-reaching effects of a devastating war and the fierce love between friends.]]>
272 Sarah J. Maas 1635575621 Chris 4 3.69 2019 A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)]]> 50659472 The epic third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's actions and learn what she can about the invading king threatening to bring her land to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit. One slip could bring doom not only for Feyre, but for everything-and everyone-she holds dear.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre endeavors to take her place amongst the High Fae of the land, balancing her struggle to master her powers-both magical and political-and her love for her court and family. Amidst these struggles, Feyre and Rhysand must decide whom to trust amongst the cunning and lethal High Lords, and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the fate of Feyre's world is at stake as armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy it.]]>
699 Sarah J. Maas 1635575605 Chris 4 4.47 2017 A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:
You know I really liked this book, but I got a thing- if you introduce something akin to an object of wondrous power, an object that makes you see the beginning and end of things- such as the ouroboros mirror. You introduce the scene as though there are illusion at play, and then you yadda yadda yadda the actual experience. It makes a reader think EVRRYTHING after the cut is all in the head of the character. So that meant the entire battle I was like- when is this dream gonna end. It wasn’t until chapter 76-78 that I was like- ok, maybe this is ACTUALLY happening and not in the characters head. Again, as a reader I was like- none of this is real�
]]>
<![CDATA[A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)]]> 50659468
Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil.

Bestselling author Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her dazzling, sexy, action-packed series to new heights.]]>
626 Sarah J. Maas 1635575583 Chris 4
And I’m here for it!


The story is good, getting better. But I think crescent city shows off how much this author has grown in her writing and characters. I mean, in here the characters are written well, but in the next series you can tell the author has evolved.

Anyway. More fae smut pleaz ]]>
4.65 2016 A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:


And I’m here for it!


The story is good, getting better. But I think crescent city shows off how much this author has grown in her writing and characters. I mean, in here the characters are written well, but in the next series you can tell the author has evolved.

Anyway. More fae smut pleaz
]]>
The Design of Future Things 263287 The Design of Everyday Things, he points out what’s going wrong with the wave of products just coming on the market and some that are on drawing boards everywhere-from “smart� cars and homes that seek to anticipate a user’s every need, to the latest automatic navigational systems. Norman builds on this critique to offer a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow’s thinking machines. This is a consumer-oriented look at the perils and promise of the smart objects of the future, and a cautionary tale for designers of these objects-many of which are already in use or development.]]> 231 Donald A. Norman 0465002277 Chris 5 zpd
Implicit Communication - things are naturally expressing their state. Like that one. Lots of good lists like before.

Update to affordable - communication between designer and user. Interesting addition to the thought, but I feel it doesn’t replace the initial concept situational relations between object and its uses.

Weird predictions, and a general optimism about technology that needs to be reconciled with reality of the impacts on culture.

Still sees technology as a thing rather than an evolving set of systems.

Really weird conversation with AI at the end, very late 1990’s.

Fun and brilliant tho. Critical for the design of both growth cycles and the creativity engine.

]]>
3.61 1988 The Design of Future Things
author: Donald A. Norman
name: Chris
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/28
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: zpd
review:
Some nice ideas (of course) even if it’s an older book.

Implicit Communication - things are naturally expressing their state. Like that one. Lots of good lists like before.

Update to affordable - communication between designer and user. Interesting addition to the thought, but I feel it doesn’t replace the initial concept situational relations between object and its uses.

Weird predictions, and a general optimism about technology that needs to be reconciled with reality of the impacts on culture.

Still sees technology as a thing rather than an evolving set of systems.

Really weird conversation with AI at the end, very late 1990’s.

Fun and brilliant tho. Critical for the design of both growth cycles and the creativity engine.


]]>
<![CDATA[A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)]]> 50659467
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.]]>
419 Sarah J. Maas 1635575567 Chris 4 4.16 2015 A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Assassin and the Pirate Lord (Throne of Glass, #0.1)]]> 13415554 Celaena Sardothien, feared assassin, has come for retribution. Celaena Sardothien has been sent by the Assassin's Guild to a remote island in a tropical sea in order to collect on a debt owed by the Lord of the Pirates. But when Celaena learns that the agreed payment is not in money, but in slaves, her mission suddenly changes-and she will risk everything to right the wrong she's been sent to bring about.]]> 70 Sarah J. Maas Chris 0 to-read 4.20 2012 The Assassin and the Pirate Lord (Throne of Glass, #0.1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Assassin and the Healer (Throne of Glass, #0.2)]]> 18333581 40 Sarah J. Maas Chris 0 to-read 4.21 2013 The Assassin and the Healer (Throne of Glass, #0.2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Assassin and the Desert (Throne of Glass, #0.3)]]> 13419891 103 Sarah J. Maas Chris 0 to-read 4.39 2012 The Assassin and the Desert (Throne of Glass, #0.3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Assassin and the Underworld (Throne of Glass, #0.4)]]> 13546173 102 Sarah J. Maas Chris 0 to-read 4.33 2012 The Assassin and the Underworld (Throne of Glass, #0.4)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Assassin and the Empire (Throne of Glass, #0.5)]]> 13565676 One final mission could be the beginning...or the end. Celaena Sardothien is the assassin with a place to call her own, the love of handsome Sam, and, best of all, freedom. But Celaena won't be truly free until she is far away from her old master, Arobynn Hamel-so she and Sam decide to take a last daring assignment that will liberate them forever. And that's how Celaena learns that having everything means that everything can be taken away.]]> 94 Sarah J. Maas Chris 0 to-read 4.40 2012 The Assassin and the Empire (Throne of Glass, #0.5)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass, #0.1-0.5)]]> 126062562
When Celaena's scheming master, Arobynn Hamel, dispatches her on missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, she finds herself acting independently of his wishes—and questioning her own allegiance. Along the way, she makes friends and enemies alike, and discovers that she feels far more for Sam than just friendship. But by defying Arobynn’s orders, Celaena risks unimaginable punishment, and with Sam by her side, he is in danger, too. They will have to risk it all if they hope to escape Arobynn’s clutches—and if they fail, they’ll lose not just a chance at freedom, but their lives . . .

A prequel to Throne of Glass, this collection of five novellas offers readers a deeper look into the history of this cunning assassin and her enthralling—and deadly—world.

Included in this volume:
The Assassin and the Pirate Lord
The Assassin and the Healer
The Assassin and the Desert
The Assassin and the Underworld
The Assassin and the Empire]]>
451 Sarah J. Maas 1619632217 Chris 0 to-read 4.16 2014 The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass, #0.1-0.5)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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Ailene (Ailene, #2) 125005679
At nineteen, he learns the world is in danger. An anonymous terrorist organization has attacked several countries all across the planet. When his parents suspect there might be a mole in the Council of Ailene, they ask Hayden to go undercover as an intern.

Once in Ailene, he quickly becomes overwhelmed by everything and everyone around him. He struggles to keep his best friend, Lowell, safe while fending off the ever-present voices inside his head telling him that one day he’s going to lose everything, and he’ll be them one responsible for it all.

He’s close to falling apart altogether when he crosses paths with Alexander Collins, a funny and handsome Council member who makes him feel happy and understood. His days suddenly become a little bit brighter—but nothing in Hayden’s life is ever easy. There’s a strict rule against workplace romances, forcing them to stay just friends, yet as they grow closer, Hayden and Lowell find themselves steadily growing apart.

Can Hayden find a way to keep his head above water while hunting down the mole, struggling with his growing feelings for Alexander, fixing his relationship with Lowell, and trying to save everyone he cares about—all at the same time?]]>
360 Annabel den Dekker 9083322319 Chris 0 to-read 4.15 Ailene (Ailene, #2)
author: Annabel den Dekker
name: Chris
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]>
152 Becky Chambers Chris 0 to-read 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Chris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]>
151 Becky Chambers Chris 0 to-read 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)]]> 23129410 Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves...no matter where we live.

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.

Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "King City" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.

Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.

Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "King City". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.]]>
401 Joseph Fink 0062351427 Chris 0 to-read 3.84 2015 Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)
author: Joseph Fink
name: Chris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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To Be Taught, If Fortunate 43190272
Ariadne is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features. Her experience is one of fluid body and stable mind and of a unique perspective on the passage of time. Back on Earth, society changes dramatically from decade to decade, as it always does.

Ariadne may awaken to find that support for space exploration back home has waned, or that her country of birth no longer exists, or that a cult has arisen around their cosmic findings, only to dissolve once more by the next waking. But the moods of Earth have little bearing on their mission: to explore, to study, and to send their learnings home.

Carrying all the trademarks of her other beloved works, including brilliant writing, fantastic world-building and exceptional, diverse characters, Becky's first audiobook outside of the Wayfarers series is sure to capture the imagination of listeners all over the world.]]>
153 Becky Chambers 0062936018 Chris 0 to-read 4.19 2019 To Be Taught, If Fortunate
author: Becky Chambers
name: Chris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Causal Angel (Jean le Flambeur, #3)]]> 18190723
Influenced as much by the fin de siecle novels of Maurice leBlanc as he is by the greats of SF Rajaniemi weaves, intricate, warm capers through dazzling science, extraordinary visions of wild future and deep conjecture on the nature of reality and story.

And now we find out what will happen to Jean, his employer Mieli, the independently minded ship Perhonen and the rest of a fractured and diverse humanity flung through the solar system.]]>
292 Hannu Rajaniemi 0575088974 Chris 0 to-read 4.19 2014 The Causal Angel (Jean le Flambeur, #3)
author: Hannu Rajaniemi
name: Chris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Fractal Prince (Jean le Flambeur, #2)]]> 12074927 A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,� shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.
And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.]]>
320 Hannu Rajaniemi Chris 0 to-read 4.06 2012 The Fractal Prince (Jean le Flambeur, #2)
author: Hannu Rajaniemi
name: Chris
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur, #1)]]> 7562764
Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

The Quantum Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantum Thief is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge.]]>
336 Hannu Rajaniemi 0575088877 Chris 0 to-read 3.84 2010 The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur, #1)
author: Hannu Rajaniemi
name: Chris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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Iron Sunrise (Eschaton, #2) 101864
The one person who does know is a disaffected teenager who calls herself Wednesday Shadowmist. But Wednesday has no idea where she might be hiding this significant information. Time is limited and if Rachel can't resolve this mystery it will mean annihilation of an entire world.

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480 Charles Stross 1841493368 Chris 0 to-read 3.98 2002 Iron Sunrise (Eschaton, #2)
author: Charles Stross
name: Chris
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Singularity Sky (Eschaton, #1)]]> 81992
Distant descendants of this ultra high-tech Earth live in parochial simplicity on the far-flung worlds of the New Republic. Their way of life is threatened by the arrival of an alien information plague known as the Festival. As forbidden technologies are literally dropped from the sky, suppressed political factions descend into revolutionary turmoil.

A battle fleet is sent from Earth to destroy the Festival, but Spaceship engineer Martin Springfield and U.N. diplomat Rachel Mansour have been assigned rather different tasks. Their orders are to diffuse the crisis or to sabotage the New Republic's war-fleet, whatever the cost, before the Eschaton takes hostile action on a galactic scale.

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389 Charles Stross 1841493341 Chris 0 to-read 3.84 2003 Singularity Sky (Eschaton, #1)
author: Charles Stross
name: Chris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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The Gone-Away World 8136150 A Clockwork Orange and 1984, with a little Mad Max thrown in) to give us an electrifyingly original tale of love, friendship, and the apocalypse.

There dzܱ’t be a fire along the Jorgmund Pipe. It was the last thing the world needed. But there it was, burning bright on national television. The Pipe was what kept the Livable Zone safe from the bandits, monsters, and nightmares the Go-Away War had left in its wake. The fire was a very big problem.

Enter Gonzo Lubitsch and his friends, the Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company, a team of master troubleshooters who roll into action when things get particularly hot. They helped build the Pipe. Now they have to preserve it—and save humanity yet again. But this job is not all it seems. It will touch more closely on Gonzo’s life—and that of his best friend—than either of them can imagine. And it will decide the fate of the Gone-Away World.

Equal parts raucous adventure, comic odyssey, geek nirvana, and ultra-cool epic, The Gone-Away World is a story of—among other things—love, pirates, mimes, greed, and ninjas. But it is also the story of a world, not unlike our own, in desperate need of heroes—however unlikely they may seem.]]>
0 Nick Harkaway 0739370340 Chris 0 to-read 4.01 2008 The Gone-Away World
author: Nick Harkaway
name: Chris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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Accelerando 17863
Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.

For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form.]]>
415 Charles Stross 0441014151 Chris 0 to-read 3.88 2005 Accelerando
author: Charles Stross
name: Chris
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Revelation Space (Revelation Space #1)]]> 89187
For the humans now settling the Amarantin homeworld, it's of little more than academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin.

For brilliant, ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it's more than merely intellectual curiosity - and he will stop at nothing to get at the truth. Even if it costs him everything.

But the Amarantin were wiped out for a reason, and that danger is closer and greater than even Syveste imagines...

The original novel in the epic series, Revelation Space was nominated for both the BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke awards. Reynolds' PhD in astronomy and experience with the ESA means that his space operas present hard science spins on intergalactic adventures and have impacted SF for years.]]>
585 Alastair Reynolds 0441009425 Chris 0 to-read 3.99 2000 Revelation Space (Revelation Space #1)
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: Chris
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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Anathem 2845024
Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.]]>
937 Neal Stephenson 0061474096 Chris 0 to-read 4.16 2008 Anathem
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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The Windup Girl 6597651
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.]]>
359 Paolo Bacigalupi 1597801577 Chris 0 to-read 3.75 2009 The Windup Girl
author: Paolo Bacigalupi
name: Chris
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Creative Act: A Way of Being]]> 60965426 From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment." --Anne Lamott

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." --Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output, it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.]]>
406 Rick Rubin 0593652886 Chris 5 mandatory-reading 4.01 2023 The Creative Act: A Way of Being
author: Rick Rubin
name: Chris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: mandatory-reading
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<![CDATA[Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)]]> 54511226
When a ghost ship is discovered, its crew presumed dead after trying to reach the storm-shrouded island Akina, Navani Kholin must send an expedition to make sure the island hasn't fallen into enemy hands. Knights Radiant who fly too near find their Stormlight suddenly drained, so the voyage must be by sea.

Shipowner Rysn Ftori lost the use of her legs but gained the companionship of Chiri-Chiri, a Stormlight-ingesting winged larkin, a species once thought extinct. Now Rysn's pet is ill, and any hope for Chiri-Chiri’s recovery can be found only at the ancestral home of the larkin: Akinah. With the help of Lopen, the formerly one-armed Windrunner, Rysn must accept Navani's quest and sail into the perilous storm from which no one has returned alive. If the crew cannot uncover the secrets of the hidden island city before the wrath of its ancient guardians falls upon them, the fate of Roshar and the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]>
171 Brandon Sanderson 193857026X Chris 5
I loved how it took on inclusivity authentically. Kudos to Brandon hey?!?

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4.39 2020 Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves:
review:
This was an amuse bouche for Wind and Truth in two months. Kind get my mind back into the world. Delightful stuff.

I loved how it took on inclusivity authentically. Kudos to Brandon hey?!?


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<![CDATA[House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)]]> 52857700
Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he's in the Asteri's dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce's fate. He's desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri's leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas's Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt's world is brought to the brink of collapse-with its future resting on their shoulders.]]>
835 Sarah J. Maas 1681193094 Chris 5 4.15 2024 House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
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<![CDATA[The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters]]> 37424706 A transformative exploration of the power, purpose, and benefits of gatherings in our lives: at work, at school, at home and beyond.

Every day we find ourselves in gatherings, Priya Parker says in The Art of Gathering. If we can understand what makes these gatherings effective and memorable, then we can reframe and redirect them to benefit everyone, host and guest alike. Parker defines a gathering as three or more people who come together for a specific purpose. When we understand why we gather, she says -- to acknowledge, to learn, to challenge, to change -- we learn how to organize gatherings that are relevant and memorable: from an effective business meeting to a thought-provoking conference; from a joyful wedding to a unifying family dinner. Drawing on her experience as a strategic facilitator who's worked with such organizations as the World Economic Forum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the retail company Fresh, Parker explains how ordinary people can create remarkable occasions, large and small. In dozens of fascinating examples, she breaks down the alchemy of these experiences to show what goes into the good ones and demonstrates how we can learn to incorporate those elements into all of our gatherings. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of big ideas with real-world applications that will change the way you look at a business meeting, a parent-teacher conference, and a backyard barbecue.]]>
304 Priya Parker 1594634920 Chris 0 to-read 3.96 2018 The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
author: Priya Parker
name: Chris
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)]]> 40132775
The Asteri have kept their word so far, leaving Bryce and Hunt alone. But with the rebels chipping away at the Asteri’s power, the threat the rulers pose is growing. As Bryce, Hunt, and their friends get pulled into the rebels� plans, the choice becomes clear: stay silent while others are oppressed, or fight for what’s right. And they’ve never been very good at staying silent.

In this sexy, action-packed sequel to the #1 bestseller House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas weaves a captivating story of a world about to explode―and the people who will do anything to save it.]]>
805 Sarah J. Maas 1408884429 Chris 5
I feel bad because I keep comparing Bryce to Sal the Cacophony. It’s not fair. Sykes� character was crazy like a fox. She was a grungy loose cannon. Also, I think Sykes bad guys were way too video game adjacent. That said dang that was a good series. I was thinking about reading it again- already. So satisfying. Now comes Creacent City. The first book was powerful character building, and the second was a satisfying continuation and expansion of the characters and world. With some pretty out there stuff happening at the end.

Day and Night was so fun, reminded me of AIM in high school. Any one else flirt with absolute strangers til the weeee hours of the morning?

Anyway- I have already started number 3. LFG]]>
4.41 2022 House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
Started this one the day after the last. I have enjoyed this series.

I feel bad because I keep comparing Bryce to Sal the Cacophony. It’s not fair. Sykes� character was crazy like a fox. She was a grungy loose cannon. Also, I think Sykes bad guys were way too video game adjacent. That said dang that was a good series. I was thinking about reading it again- already. So satisfying. Now comes Creacent City. The first book was powerful character building, and the second was a satisfying continuation and expansion of the characters and world. With some pretty out there stuff happening at the end.

Day and Night was so fun, reminded me of AIM in high school. Any one else flirt with absolute strangers til the weeee hours of the morning?

Anyway- I have already started number 3. LFG
]]>
<![CDATA[House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1)]]> 44778083
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it.

With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom-and the power of love.]]>
803 Sarah J. Maas 1635574048 Chris 5 Solid. Can’t wait for more 4.43 2020 House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Chris
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
Solid. Can’t wait for more
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<![CDATA[SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient - Powered by the Science of Games]]> 24611964
But the ideas behindSuperBetterare much bigger than just one game. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the waysallgames change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting agamefulmind-set. Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to real-world situations.

McGonigal explores the best ways to harness these gameful skills in the real world not only to experience “posttraumatic growth,� but also to tackle positive life goals, achieving what she calls “postecstatic growth.� To show how, she shares stories and data from players who have followed the SuperBetter rules to get stronger, happier, and braver in the face of depression, anxiety, illness, and injury, as well as to achieve major goals like losing weight, running a marathon, or finding a new job.

The SuperBetter method contains seven rules for activating gameful strengths in everyday life, distilled from McGonigal’s own pioneering work and that of others.SuperBetterthe book turns these rules into playful challenges anyone can undertake while reading in a series of quests that explain the science behind the benefits. Playing by the seven rules begins to yield life-changing benefits in a matter of days, and eventually they become an ingrained skill set.

Read by the author.
Description: 12 audio discs (14 1/2 hr.) : digital]]>
15 Jane McGonigal 1611764327 Chris 4
Next I am used it to face my own issues. I’m not gonna be silly, but I am actively using power ups and facing my bad guys. My favorite power ups are so easy- drinking lots of water and taking long, deep, and purposeful breaths to calm down when I feel pressure. I also will purposely get sun on my skin when I can.

Anyway- lots of good stuff for my work here. And for my personal life.

Oh- I like the idea that we can look at the effort, praise the strength, and (I can’t remember the last thing]]>
3.97 2015 SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient - Powered by the Science of Games
author: Jane McGonigal
name: Chris
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves:
review:
I read this book for several reasons. Someone I work with has an unhealthy relationship to games.

Next I am used it to face my own issues. I’m not gonna be silly, but I am actively using power ups and facing my bad guys. My favorite power ups are so easy- drinking lots of water and taking long, deep, and purposeful breaths to calm down when I feel pressure. I also will purposely get sun on my skin when I can.

Anyway- lots of good stuff for my work here. And for my personal life.

Oh- I like the idea that we can look at the effort, praise the strength, and (I can’t remember the last thing
]]>
<![CDATA[The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4)]]> 50209317
At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.

When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.]]>
336 Becky Chambers 0062936050 Chris 5
It’s just good stuff through and through. ]]>
4.38 2021 The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Chris
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves:
review:
I flipping love Becky Chambers. I’m going to read everything she writes. Her characters and worlds are immediately engrossing and easy to care about.

It’s just good stuff through and through.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Price You Pay (Peter Ash, #8)]]> 62621243 War veteran Peter Ash must follow his friend Lewis into a criminal underworld when secrets from the past threaten everything they hold dear in this propulsive new thriller in this bestselling and award-winning series.

Peter Ash’s friend Lewis has helped him out of jam more times than he can count, and has saved his life more than once. So he doesn’t hesitate when Lewis asks a favor. Lewis has left his criminal past behind, but a former associate may be in trouble, and he and Peter must make a trip to check in on the man. But their visit immediately takes a dark turn when they arrive to find a smoldering cabin. They soon realize that someone has stolen notebooks full of incriminating secrets about Lewis’s long-ago crimes.

Lewis and Peter must find the notebooks: They are full of details that not only endanger the family and home that Lewis has built, but place his very life at risk. With June's help, they begin to search. Soon they find themselves up against professional criminals, and the two men may have to tap into the dark sides that they have worked to keep hidden in order to take on particularly ruthless enemies.]]>
400 Nick Petrie 0593540565 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.35 2024 The Price You Pay (Peter Ash, #8)
author: Nick Petrie
name: Chris
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering]]> 213890796
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.]]>
352 Malcolm Gladwell Chris 0 to-read 4.07 2024 Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Chris
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]>
528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Chris 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Chris
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: to-read
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The Runaway (Peter Ash, #7) 57837811 When Peter Ash rescues a stranded woman, he finds she’s in far deeper trouble than he could ever imagine in the powerful new thriller in this bestselling and award-winning series.

War veteran Peter Ash is driving through northern Nebraska when he encounters a young pregnant woman alone on a gravel road, her car dead. Peter offers her a lift, but what begins as an act of kindness soon turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase across the lonely highways with the woman’s vicious ex-cop husband hot on their trail. The pregnant woman has seen something she was never meant to see . . . but protecting her might prove to be more than Peter can handle.

In order to save the woman and himself, Peter must use everything he has learned during his time as a Marine, including his knowledge of human nature, in order to escape a ruthless killer with instincts and skills that match—and perhaps exceed—Peter’s own.]]>
400 Nick Petrie 0525535519 Chris 4 with-tonia 4.23 2022 The Runaway (Peter Ash, #7)
author: Nick Petrie
name: Chris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: with-tonia
review:
I do love me a good Peter Ash story. This is one of those. I thought the resolution was really fast for all the build up. Anyway, looking forward to cracking into the next with Tonia.
]]>
<![CDATA[Stories of Your Life and Others]]> 223380 ]]> 281 Ted Chiang 0330426648 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.28 2002 Stories of Your Life and Others
author: Ted Chiang
name: Chris
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[This Idea Is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know]]> 35069558 The Guardian—brings together 206 of the world’s most innovative thinkers to discuss the scientific concepts that everyone should know.

As science informs public policy, decision making, and so many aspects of our everyday lives, a scientifically literate society is crucial. In that spirit, Edge.org publisher and author of Know This, John Brockman, asks 206 of the world’s most brilliant minds the 2017 Edge Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?

Contributors include: author of The God Delusion RICHARD DAWKINS on using animals� “Genetic Book of the Dead� to reconstruct ecological history; MacArthur Fellow REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN on “scientific realism,� the idea that scientific theories explain phenomena beyond what we can see and touch; author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics CARLO ROVELLI on “relative information,� which governs the physical world around us; theoretical physicist LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS on the hidden blessings of “uncertainty�; cognitive scientist and author of The Language Instinct STEVEN PINKER on “The Second Law of Thermodynamics�; biogerontologist AUBREY DE GREY on why “maladaptive traits� have been conserved evolutionarily; musician BRIAN ENO on “confirmation bias� in the internet age; Man Booker-winning author of Atonement IAN MCEWAN on the “Navier-Stokes Equations,� which govern everything from weather prediction to aircraft design and blood flow; plus pieces from RICHARD THALER, JARED DIAMOND, NICHOLAS CARR, JANNA LEVIN, LISA RANDALL, KEVIN KELLY, DANIEL COLEMAN, FRANK WILCZEK, RORY SUTHERLAND, NINA JABLONSKI, MARTIN REES, ALISON GOPNIK, and many, many others.]]>
515 John Brockman 0062698214 Chris 4 3.82 2018 This Idea Is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know
author: John Brockman
name: Chris
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

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

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

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]>
400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Chris 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

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

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

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

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

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

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

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]>
384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Chris 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Chris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Made to Stick (Epilogue): Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die]]> 7278543 336 Chip Heath 1588367479 Chris 4 4.11 2006 Made to Stick (Epilogue): Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
author: Chip Heath
name: Chris
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/13
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
Lots here and I’m guilty of some the the sins this book mentions. I want to spend some more time with the notes of this one.
]]>
<![CDATA[Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation]]> 19445611
What explains the staggering diversity of cultures in the world? Why are there so many languages, even within small areas? Why do we rejoice in rituals and wrap ourselves in flags? In Wired for Culture Mark Pagel, the world's leading expert on human development, reveals how our facility for culture is the key to what makes us who we are.

Shedding light on everything from art, morality and affection to jealousy, self-interest and prejudice, Pagel shows that we developed culture - cooperating together and passing on knowledge - in order to survive. Our minds are hardwired for culture, and it still determines how we speak, who we love, why we kill and what we think today.

'Human evolution may be the hottest area in popular science writing. Within this field, Wired for Culture stands out for both its sweeping erudition and its accessibility ... richly rewarding' Financial Times

'Impressive for its detail, accuracy and vivacity' Guardian

'Pioneering, vivid ... the best popular science book on culture so far' Nature]]>
469 Mark Pagel 1846145759 Chris 0 to-read 4.75 2012 Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation
author: Mark Pagel
name: Chris
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Say the Magic Words: How to Get What You Want from the People Who Have What You Need]]> 10406673 340 Lynette Padwa 144064909X Chris 4
Say peoples name in a sentence before making a point.
Make eye contact when shaking someone's hand.
Talk less, have the person talk to you when they first meet you and they'll remember how much they liked you. (People love to talk, and just being a listener is a great first impression.)
At the beginning of every conversation- ask if it's a good time to talk
]]>
2.67 2005 Say the Magic Words: How to Get What You Want from the People Who Have What You Need
author: Lynette Padwa
name: Chris
average rating: 2.67
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
I read this before doing reviews. Just came across it again. It was really good. Some things I remember from 2005 or 2006 when I read it:

Say peoples name in a sentence before making a point.
Make eye contact when shaking someone's hand.
Talk less, have the person talk to you when they first meet you and they'll remember how much they liked you. (People love to talk, and just being a listener is a great first impression.)
At the beginning of every conversation- ask if it's a good time to talk

]]>
<![CDATA[The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration]]> 59366223 The Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted.� —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Under a White Sky

The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future.

Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.

A human-centered narrative with national scope, The Great Displacement is “a vivid tour of the new human geography just coming into view� (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth). From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last few decades, the federal government has moved tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pricing people out of risky areas.

Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. The Great Displacement compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives—erasing historic towns and villages, pushing people toward new areas, and reshaping the geography of the United States.]]>
368 Jake Bittle 1982178256 Chris 0 to-read 4.27 2023 The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
author: Jake Bittle
name: Chris
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath, #1)]]> 25131600
Meanwhile, on the planet’s surface, former rebel fighter Norra Wexley has returned to her native world—war weary, ready to reunite with her estranged son, and eager to build a new life in some distant place. But when Norra intercepts Wedge Antilles’s urgent distress call, she realizes her time as a freedom fighter is not yet over. What she doesn’t know is just how close the enemy is—or how decisive and dangerous her new mission will be.

Determined to preserve the Empire’s power, the surviving Imperial elite are converging on Akiva for a top-secret emergency summit—to consolidate their forces and rally for a counterstrike. But they haven’t reckoned on Norra and her newfound allies—her technical-genius son, a Zabrak bounty hunter, and a reprobate Imperial defector—who are prepared to do whatever they must to end the Empire’s oppressive reign once and for all.
]]>
366 Chuck Wendig 080417766X Chris 2 3.30 2015 Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath, #1)
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Chris
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning]]> 18770267 Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners.

Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned.

Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.]]>
313 Peter C. Brown 0674729013 Chris 3 4.14 2014 Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
author: Peter C. Brown
name: Chris
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)]]> 57339626 There are no tides more treacherous than those of the heart. —Teek saying

The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent.

The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded?

As sea captain Xiala is swept up in the chaos and currents of change, she finds an unexpected ally in the former Priest of Knives. For the Clan Matriarchs of Tova, tense alliances form as far-flung enemies gather and the war in the heavens is reflected upon the earth.

And for Serapio and Naranpa, both now living avatars, the struggle for free will and personhood in the face of destiny rages. How will Serapio stay human when he is steeped in prophecy and surrounded by those who desire only his power? Is there a future for Naranpa in a transformed Tova without her total destruction?]]>
384 Rebecca Roanhorse Chris 2 4.09 2022 Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)
author: Rebecca Roanhorse
name: Chris
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Life: The Leading Edge of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, and Environmental Science]]> 23460933 384 John Brockman 0062296051 Chris 3 3.59 Life: The Leading Edge of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, and Environmental Science
author: John Brockman
name: Chris
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves:
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<![CDATA[How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be]]> 55655032 Wall Street Journal bestseller

"A welcome revelation." --The Financial Times

Award-winning Wharton Professor and Choiceology podcast host Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behavior change. In this ground-breaking book, Milkman reveals a proven path that can take you from where you are to where you want to be, with a foreword from psychologist Angela Duckworth, the best-selling author of Grit.

Change comes most readily when you understand what's standing between you and success and tailor your solution to that roadblock. If you want to work out more but find exercise difficult and boring, downloading a goal-setting app probably won't help. But what if, instead, you transformed your workouts so they became a source of pleasure instead of a chore? Turning an uphill battle into a downhill one is the key to success.

Drawing on Milkman's original research and the work of her world-renowned scientific collaborators, How to Change shares strategic methods for identifying and overcoming common barriers to change, such as impulsivity, procrastination, and forgetfulness. Through case studies and engaging stories, you'll learn:

- Why timing can be everything when it comes to making a change
- How to turn temptation and inertia into assets
- That giving advice, even if it's about something you're struggling with, can help you achieve more

Whether you're a manager, coach, or teacher aiming to help others change for the better or are struggling to kick-start change yourself, How to Change offers an invaluable, science-based blueprint for achieving your goals, once and for all.]]>
272 Katy Milkman 059308375X Chris 0 to-read 3.82 2021 How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
author: Katy Milkman
name: Chris
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth and Sky, #3)]]> 60656015 The interwoven destinies of the people of Meridian will finally be determined in this stunning conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

Even the sea cannot stay calm before the storm. —Teek saying

Serapio, avatar of the Crow God Reborn and the newly crowned Carrion King, rules Tova. But his enemies gather both on distant shores and within his own city as the matrons of the clans scheme to destroy him. And deep in the alleys of the Maw, a new prophecy is whispered, this one from the Coyote God. It promises Serapio certain doom if its terrible dictates are not fulfilled.

Meanwhile, Xiala is thrust back amongst her people as war comes first to the island of Teek. With their way of life and their magic under threat, she is their last best hope. But the sea won’t talk to her the way it used to, and doubts riddle her mind. She will have to sacrifice the things that matter most to unleash her powers and become the queen they were promised.

And in the far northern wastelands, Naranpa, avatar of the Sun God, seeks a way to save Tova from the visions of fire that engulf her dreams. But another presence has begun stalking her nightmares, and the Jaguar God is on the hunt.]]>
597 Rebecca Roanhorse 1534437703 Chris 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth and Sky, #3)
author: Rebecca Roanhorse
name: Chris
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)]]> 50892360 The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun


In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.]]>
454 Rebecca Roanhorse 1534437673 Chris 3 4.17 2020 Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)
author: Rebecca Roanhorse
name: Chris
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
Slow start to this one too (I had read the boneshard’s daughter prior). I mean stuff happens, but it so violent and confusing followed by what feels like meandering. I dig the world the author has created. And am going to keep reading this series because now that I know the characters I want to read more. So I’m going to do that
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<![CDATA[The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)]]> 50706646
Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.]]>
435 Andrea Stewart 0316541427 Chris 3

I was immediately reminded of the bone magic I saw at the museum in China. Some of the earliest forms of writing - ever- happened on bones. So cool. To combine that with golems (with strings attached ]]>
3.97 2020 The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)
author: Andrea Stewart
name: Chris
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
For me, this book took a long time to get going. Like things were happening, but I really wasn’t feeling sympathy for any of the characters. Not until towards the end. But the author needs to take a page from Becky Chambers and breathe some authenticity and life into these characters.


I was immediately reminded of the bone magic I saw at the museum in China. Some of the earliest forms of writing - ever- happened on bones. So cool. To combine that with golems (with strings attached
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<![CDATA[The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3)]]> 43822024
In this pulse-pounding conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, constitutions are tested and old friends are brought back from the dead.]]>
625 Neal Shusterman 1481497065 Chris 4 4.16 2019 The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/02
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:

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The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]>
336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Chris 4 4.18 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Chris
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
It was surprisingly good. Still trying to figure out who recommended it to me, or if I just pulled it off a list on here. Not my typical fair, but still interesting
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<![CDATA[Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2)]]> 33555224
Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order� scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish� so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?]]>
504 Neal Shusterman 1442472456 Chris 4 4.38 2018 Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves:
review:
Heck yeah. This is good stuff. On to the next!
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Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1) 28954189 Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art� of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

An alternate cover edition of ISBN: 9781442472426]]>
435 Neal Shusterman Chris 4 4.32 2016 Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Chris
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves:
review:
Gonna keep reading the trilogy. Onward!
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<![CDATA[The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)]]> 52694527 Set in a brand-new, Norse-inspired world, and packed with myth, magic and bloody vengeance, The Shadow of the Gods begins an epic new fantasy saga from bestselling author John Gwynne.

After the gods warred and drove themselves to extinction, the cataclysm of their fall shattered the land of Vigrið.

Now a new world is rising, where power-hungry jarls feud and monsters stalk the woods and mountains. A world where the bones of the dead gods still hold great power for those brave - or desperate - enough to seek them out.

Now, as whispers of war echo across the mountains and fjords, fate follows in the footsteps of three people: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman who has rejected privilege in pursuit of battle fame, and a thrall who seeks vengeance among the famed mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.

All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods . . .]]>
480 John Gwynne 0356514188 Chris 2 4.19 2021 The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
author: John Gwynne
name: Chris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/05/23
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)]]> 50027 Discover the origin story of one of the greatest heroes of the Realms—Drizzt Do’Urden—in this thrilling first installment of the Dark Elf Trilogy

Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre’s standout characters. With Homeland, Salvatore pulls back the curtain to reveal the startling tale of how this hero came to be—how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark; how he left behind an evil society and a family that wanted him dead.

As the third son of Mother Malice and weaponmaster Zaknafein, Drizzt Do’Urden is meant to be sacrificed to Lolth, the evil Spider Queen, per drow tradition. But with the unexpected death of his older brother, young Drizzt is spared—and, as a result, further ostracized by his family. As Drizzt grows older, developing his swordsmanship skills and studying at the Academy, he begins to realize that his idea of good and evil does not match up with those of his fellow drow. Can Drizzt stay true to himself in a such an unforgiving, unprincipled world?

Homeland is the first book in the Dark Elf Trilogy and the Legend of Drizzt series.]]>
343 R.A. Salvatore Chris 4 4.26 1990 Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)
author: R.A. Salvatore
name: Chris
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves:
review:

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In the Lives of Puppets 60784549
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,� he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

Inspired by Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.]]>
432 T.J. Klune 125021744X Chris 2
I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it.









*it was the audiobook reader*]]>
3.90 2023 In the Lives of Puppets
author: T.J. Klune
name: Chris
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves:
review:
Was the audiobook reader? Was it the hyper derivative story- idk- that usually doesn’t bother me. It wasn’t nurse ratchet. Loved that character. Was it Rambo? It wasn’t GEO- he was kind.

I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it.









*it was the audiobook reader*
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I Am a Strange Loop 123471 I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call “symbols.� The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call “I.� The “I� is the nexus in our brain where the levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. For each human being, this “I� seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I� merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I� exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter’s first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter’s many readers have long been waiting for.]]> 436 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465030785 Chris 3 3.94 2007 I Am a Strange Loop
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Chris
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:

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