Yi's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 18 Mar 2023 09:55:35 -0700 60 Yi's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway]]> 8438277 The Runaways, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart as Cherie Currie and Joan Jett.]]> 388 Cherie Currie 0061998079 Yi 0 4.00 2010 Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway
author: Cherie Currie
name: Yi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/18
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Carol 25622850
Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, Carol tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany—the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. Carol is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

This authorized edition includes an afterword by Patricia Highsmith. Previously titled The Price of Salt.]]>
304 Claire Morgan 0393352684 Yi 5 4.02 1952 Carol
author: Claire Morgan
name: Yi
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/05
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<![CDATA[Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter]]> 6482679 Yakuza Moon is the shocking, yet intensely moving memoir of 37-year-old Shoko Tendo, who grew up the daughter of a yakuza boss. Tendo lived her life in luxury until the age of six, when her father was sent to prison and her family fell into terrible debt. Bullied by classmates and terrorized at home by a father who became a drunken, violent monster after his release from prison, Tendo rebelled. A regular visitor to nightclubs at the age of 12, she soon became a drug addict and a member of a girl gang. At 15 she was sentenced to eight months in a juvenile detention center.

Adulthood brought big bucks and glamour when Tendo started working as a bar hostess during Japan's booming bubble economy of the nineteen-eighties. But among her many rich and loyal patrons there were also abusive clients, one of whom beat her so badly that her face was left permanently scarred. When her mother died, Tendo plunged into such a deep depression that she tried to commit suicide twice.
Tendo takes us through the bad times with warmth and candor, and gives a moving and inspiring account of how she overcame a lifetime of discrimination and hardship. Getting tattooed, from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes, with a design centered on a geisha with a dagger in her mouth, was an act that empowered her to start making changes in her life. She quit her job as a hostess. On her last day at the bar she looked up at the full moon, a sight she never forgot. The moon became a symbol of her struggle to become whole, and the title of the book she wrote as an epitaph for herself and her family.]]>
196 Shōko Tendō 477003086X Yi 4 3.69 2004 Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter
author: Shōko Tendō
name: Yi
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/06/14
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<![CDATA[A Lover's Discourse: Fragments]]> 380994 A Lover's Discourse, at its 1978 publication, was revolutionary: Roland Barthes made unprecedented use of the tools of structuralism to explore the whimsical phenomenon of love. Rich with references ranging from Goethe's Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover's Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.]]> 234 Roland Barthes 0374521611 Yi 0 to-read 4.43 1977 A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
author: Roland Barthes
name: Yi
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/05/18
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The Price of Salt 52258 The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by an erotic epiphany - the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to stalk the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol in a choice between her daughter and her lover.]]> 262 Claire Morgan 0393325997 Yi 4 4.03 1952 The Price of Salt
author: Claire Morgan
name: Yi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1952
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/13
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Eileen 23453099 So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.

This is the story of how I disappeared.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature. Ottessa Moshfegh is also the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World: Stories, and McGlue.]]>
260 Ottessa Moshfegh 1594206627 Yi 0 currently-reading 3.57 2015 Eileen
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Yi
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/05/13
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<![CDATA[On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas)]]> 97412 106 Seneca 0143036327 Yi 0 to-read 4.20 49 On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas)
author: Seneca
name: Yi
average rating: 4.20
book published: 49
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/04/28
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<![CDATA[The World as Will and Representation, Volume I]]> 19506 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is one of the most important philosophical works of the nineteenth century, the basic statement of one important stream of post-Kantian thought. It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest work. Conceived and published before the philosopher was 30 and expanded 25 years later, it is the summation of a lifetime of thought.

For 70 years, the only unabridged English translation of this work was the Haldane-Kemp collaboration. In 1958, a new translation by E. F. J. Payne appeared that decisively supplanted the older one. Payne's translation is superior because it corrects nearly 1,000 errors and omissions in the Haldane-Kemp translation, and it is based on the definitive 1937 German edition of Schopenhauer's work prepared by Dr. Arthur Hübscher. Payne's edition is the first to translate into English the text's many quotations in half a dozen languages. It is thus the most useful edition for the student or teacher.]]>
534 Arthur Schopenhauer 0486217612 Yi 0 to-read 4.21 1818 The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
author: Arthur Schopenhauer
name: Yi
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1818
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits]]> 451565 428 Friedrich Nietzsche 0521567041 Yi 0 to-read 4.23 1878 Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Yi
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1878
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/04/28
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<![CDATA[People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman]]> 8491980
Lucie Blackman - tall, blonde, and 21 years old - stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000, and disappeared forever. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave.

The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl, involving Japanese policemen, British private detectives, Australian dowsers and Lucie's desperate, but bitterly divided, parents. As the case unfolded, it drew the attention of prime ministers and sado-masochists, ambassadors and con-men, and reporters from across the world. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult, or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work, as a 'hostess' in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve?

Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, has followed the case since Lucie's disappearance. Over the course of a decade, he has travelled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story, fought off a legal attack in the Japanese courts, and worked undercover as a barman in a Roppongi strip club. He has talked exhaustively to Lucie's friends and family and won unique access to the Japanese detectives who investigated the case. And he has delved into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime-Joji Obara, described by the judge as 'unprecedented and extremely evil'. With the finesse of a novelist, he reveals the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate.

People Who Eat Darkness is, by turns, a non-fiction thriller, a courtroom drama and the biography of both a victim and a killer. It is the story of a young woman who fell prey to unspeakable evil, and of a loving family torn apart by grief. And it is a fascinating insight into one of the world's most baffling and mysterious societies, a light shone into dark corners of Japan that the rest of the world has never glimpsed before.]]>
404 Richard Lloyd Parry 0224079174 Yi 0 currently-reading 3.73 2010 People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman
author: Richard Lloyd Parry
name: Yi
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/06/20
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Coin Locker Babies 14289
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.

Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.

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393 Ryū Murakami 4770028962 Yi 0 3.82 1980 Coin Locker Babies
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/06/20
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<![CDATA[Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1)]]> 12000020
But against all odds, when Ari and Dante meet, they develop a special bond that will teach them the most important truths of their lives, and help define the people they want to be. But there are big hurdles in their way, and only by believing in each other—and the power of their friendship—can Ari and Dante emerge stronger on the other side.]]>
390 Benjamin Alire Sáenz 1442408928 Yi 0 to-read 4.29 2012 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1)
author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
name: Yi
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/12/20
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<![CDATA[Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing]]> 26044427
For the first time Nicolas Winding Refn, writer, producer and director of the PUSHER films, BRONSON, VALHALLA RISING, DRIVE, ONLY GOD FORGIVES and THE NEON DEMON, trawls through his unique collection of rare American film posters to unfold ways the viewer validates and actualises the presentation of key images into their own personal reality.

From the vintage visuals of SPIKED HEELS AND BLACK NYLONS, OBSCENE HOUSE and ALICE IN ACIDLAND to THE TWISTED SEX, TORTURE ME KISS ME and ZERO IN AND SCREAM – to name just a few of the tantalizing film titles showcased – the controversial Danish icon constructs a whole new way of looking at the key artwork and shameless hyperbole thought up in the back alley gutters of the exploitation industry.

Now the celebrated film-maker makes complicit voyeurs of us all by editing his exceptional collection of little-seen and vivid front-of-house displays into an extraordinary creation to match the observation sensations explored in his own pioneering screen work.

Comprehensive historical context is provided by author Alan Jones for each poster, and every production detail has been meticulously overseen by Winding Refn himself - this book encapsulates everything he knows about eyewitness confrontation on a heart-felt journey into the art and act of seeing.

Cover art concept by Jay Shaw of renowned contemporary movie poster design company Mondo.]]>
324 Alan Jones 1903254795 Yi 0 to-read 4.40 2015 Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing
author: Alan Jones
name: Yi
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/11/30
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<![CDATA[Images for a Generation Doomed: The Films and Career of Gregg Araki]]> 13758659 140 0739139983 Yi 0 to-read 3.67 2009 Images for a Generation Doomed: The Films and Career of Gregg Araki
author: Kylo-Patrick R. Hart Texas Christian University
name: Yi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/11/22
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Kiss of the Spider Woman 588242 281 Manuel Puig Yi 0 to-read 3.99 1976 Kiss of the Spider Woman
author: Manuel Puig
name: Yi
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/06
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<![CDATA[The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living]]> 336474
Hung over, beaten by the unforgiving sun, bitter at his estranged wife, and dreading the day’s docket of petty criminal cases, Judge Evers Wheeling is in need of something on the morning he's accosted by Ruth Esther English. Ruth Esther's strange story certainly is something, and Judge Wheeling finds himself in uncharted territory. Reluctantly agreeing to help Ruth Esther retrieve some stolen money, he recruits his pot-addled brother and a band of merry hangers-on for the big adventure. Raucous road trips, infidelity, suspected killers, winning Lotto tickets, drunken philosophical rants, and at least one naked woman tied to a road sign ensue in The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, one part legal thriller, one part murder mystery, and all parts all wild.]]>
352 Martin Clark 0375707093 Yi 0 to-read 3.53 2000 The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living
author: Martin Clark
name: Yi
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/05
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A Stranger in this World 394049 192 Kevin Canty 0679763945 Yi 0 to-read 3.95 1994 A Stranger in this World
author: Kevin Canty
name: Yi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/04
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Falling Angel 12787
With a new foreword by Ridley Scott, an introduction by the late James Crumley, and a new afterword by the author and a bonus short story, plus a letter from Stephen King, the first time that the letter has ever been published in its complete form.

The hardcover edition is limited to just 300 copies and is signed by William Hjortsberg. Bound in cloth with a dustjacket with the original Stanislaw Zagorski wraparound dustjacket printed against a black background with spot varnish.]]>
302 William Hjortsberg 1933618086 Yi 0 to-read 3.95 1978 Falling Angel
author: William Hjortsberg
name: Yi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/03
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Cruising 596573 Cruising by Gerald Walker 192 Gerald Walker 0812813235 Yi 0 to-read 3.51 1970 Cruising
author: Gerald Walker
name: Yi
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/01
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<![CDATA[Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video]]> 656236 624 Raymond Murray 0452276276 Yi 0 to-read 4.19 1994 Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video
author: Raymond Murray
name: Yi
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/09/01
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Naomi 34462 ?
When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the na?ve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.]]>
237 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 0375724745 Yi 0 to-read 3.70 1924 Naomi
author: Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
name: Yi
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/20
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Seven Japanese Tales 34463 320 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 0679761071 Yi 0 to-read 3.88 1963 Seven Japanese Tales
author: Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
name: Yi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/20
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Torso 1264554 280 Brian Michael Bendis 1582406979 Yi 0 to-read 3.88 2000 Torso
author: Brian Michael Bendis
name: Yi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/20
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<![CDATA[Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination]]> 196150 222 Edogawa Rampo 0804803196 Yi 0 to-read 4.07 1956 Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination
author: Edogawa Rampo
name: Yi
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/10
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Naoko 201271 Naoko, a major bestseller and film in Japan, is a poignant and wily take on gender relations from a master of the detective story. Expertly and seamlessly interweaving the real and the unreal, Naoko involves a regular guy whose world is rocked when his wife dies in a bus accident. His young daughter survives, but seems to be inhabited by her mother’s personality.]]> 288 Keigo Higashino 1932234071 Yi 0 to-read 3.86 1998 Naoko
author: Keigo Higashino
name: Yi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/10
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Thirst for Love 6725882 200 Yukio Mishima 0099530279 Yi 0 to-read 3.51 1950 Thirst for Love
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Yi
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1950
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/10
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The Face of Another 10000 The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him.

His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.]]>
238 Kōbō Abe 0375726535 Yi 0 to-read 3.78 1964 The Face of Another
author: Kōbō Abe
name: Yi
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/08/10
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Fragments of Horror 23705532
Ma no Kakera (魔の断片, also titled Shard of Evil or Fragments of Horror), is a series of short stories by Junji Ito.
It began serialization in the first issue of the revived Nemuki+ (ネムキプラス) magazine on April 13, 2013. It was subsequently published as a collection in Japan in June 2014, with the final story, "Whispering Woman", having been previously published in Shinkan (シンカン) rather than Nemuki+. In December 2014, it was licensed by VIZ Media to be released in English in June 2015, under the "Fragments of Horror" title.

Chapters:

Futon (Blanket)
Haunted Wood Mansion
Tomio: Red Turtleneck
Lingering Farewell
Dissection Girl
Black Bird
Magami Nanakuse
Whispering Woman]]>
224 Junji Ito 1421580799 Yi 0 to-read 4.11 2014 Fragments of Horror
author: Junji Ito
name: Yi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/06/30
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<![CDATA[Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis]]> 20256746
Freda adjusted to this fate with an ease that stunned a heartbroken Alice. Her desperation grew with each unanswered letter—and her father’s razor soon went missing. On January 25, Alice publicly slashed her ex-fiancée’s throat. Her same-sex love was deemed insane by her father that very night, and medical experts agreed: This was a dangerous and incurable perversion. As the courtroom was expanded to accommodate national interest, Alice spent months in jail—including the night that three of her fellow prisoners were lynched (an event which captured the attention of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells). After a jury of "the finest men in Memphis" declared Alice insane, she was remanded to an asylum, where she died under mysterious circumstances just a few years later.

Alice + Freda Forever recounts this tragic, real-life love story with over 100 illustrated love letters, maps, artifacts, historical documents, newspaper articles, courtroom proceedings, and intimate, domestic scenes—painting a vivid picture of a sadly familiar world.]]>
223 Alexis Coe 1936976609 Yi 0 to-read 3.30 2014 Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis
author: Alexis Coe
name: Yi
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/06/12
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<![CDATA[Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish]]> 16099190 From the incomparable David Rakoff, a poignant, beautiful, witty and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the 20th Century.

David Rakoff, who died in 2012 at the age of 47, ?built a deserved reputation as one of the finest and funniest essayists of our time.? This intricately woven novel, written with humour, sympathy and tenderness, proves him the master of an altogether different art form.

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish leaps cities and decades as Rakoff, a Canadian who became an American citizen, sings the song of his adoptive homeland--a country whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

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115 David Rakoff 038553521X Yi 0 to-read 3.91 2013 Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish
author: David Rakoff
name: Yi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/06/07
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Mysterious Skin 92365
During the following years he slowly recalls details from that night, but these fragments are not enough to explain what happened to him, and he begins to believe that he may have been the victim of an alien encounter. Neil McCormick is fully aware of the events from that summer of 1981. Wise beyond his years, curious about his developing sexuality, Neil found what he perceived to be love and guidance from his baseball coach. Now, ten years later, he is a teenage hustler, a terrorist of sorts, unaware of the dangerous path his life is taking. His recklessness is governed by idealized memories of his coach, memories that unexpectedly change when Brian comes to Neil for help and, ultimately, the truth.]]>
292 Scott Heim 0060841699 Yi 0 to-read 4.15 1995 Mysterious Skin
author: Scott Heim
name: Yi
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/01
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Cosmos 15584
Cosmos is a metaphysical noir thriller narrated by Witold, a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns. On his way to a relaxing vacation he meets the despondent Fuks. As they set off together for a family-run pension in the Carpathian Mountains they discover a dead bird hanging from a string. Is this a strange but meaningless occurrence or is it the beginning of a string of bizarre events? As the young men become embroiled in the Chekhovian travails of the family running the pension, Grombrowicz creates a gripping narrative where the reader questions who is sane and who is safe?]]>
189 Witold Gombrowicz 0300108486 Yi 0 to-read 4.05 1965 Cosmos
author: Witold Gombrowicz
name: Yi
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/18
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Carmilla 48037
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.]]>
108 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 0809510839 Yi 0 to-read 3.88 1872 Carmilla
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: Yi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/03
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<![CDATA[Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film]]> 293192 260 Carol J. Clover 0691006202 Yi 0 to-read 4.02 1992 Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
author: Carol J. Clover
name: Yi
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/03
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White Bird in a Blizzard 205014 When Katrina Connors' mother walks out on her family, Kat is surprised but not shocked; the whole year she has been "becoming sixteen" - falling in love with the boy next door, shedding her babyfat, discovering sex - her mother has been slowly withdrawing.

As Kat and her impassive father pick up the pieces of their daily lives, she finds herself curiously unaffected by her mother's absence. But in dreams that become too real to ignore, she's haunted by her mother's cries for help.

Finally, she must act on her instinct that something violent and evil has occurred - a realization that brings Kat to a chilling discovery.

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240 Laura Kasischke 0786863668 Yi 0 to-read 3.55 1999 White Bird in a Blizzard
author: Laura Kasischke
name: Yi
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/02/09
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Autofiction 922713
Prizewinning author Hitomi Kanehara's sensational novel, Autofiction, follows Rin's life backwards through time from this moment so that we see her when she is eighteen, sixteen and finally fifteen, and a picture of the dark heart and violent past of this disturbed young woman gradually develops.]]>
216 Hitomi Kanehara 0099515989 Yi 2 3.23 2006 Autofiction
author: Hitomi Kanehara
name: Yi
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2006
rating: 2
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Snakes And Earrings 224439 121 Hitomi Kanehara 0452287316 Yi 3 3.22 2003 Snakes And Earrings
author: Hitomi Kanehara
name: Yi
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The Diving Pool: Three Novellas]]> 1337973
Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.]]>
164 Yōko Ogawa 0312426836 Yi 2 3.75 1990 The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Yi
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1990
rating: 2
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Revenge 16032127 Yoko Ogawa.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.

Macabre, fiendishly clever, and with a touch of the supernatural, Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge creates a haunting tapestry of death—and the afterlife of the living.]]>
162 Yōko Ogawa Yi 3 3.91 1998 Revenge
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Yi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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Audition 3392668
Of the thousands who apply, Aoyama only has eyes for Yamasaki Asami, a young, beautiful, delicate and talented ballerina with a turbulent past. But there is more to her than Aoyama, blinded by his infatuation, can see, and by the time he discovers the terrifying truth it may be too late…

Ryu Murakami delivers his most subtle and disturbing novel yet, confirming him as Japan’s master of the psycho-thriller.]]>
208 Ryū Murakami 0747589488 Yi 3 3.50 1997 Audition
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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Hello Kitty Must Die 7187820
To escape the burden of carrying her family's honor, Fiona decides to take her own virginity. In the process, she makes a surprising discovery that reunites her with a long-lost friend, Sean Killroy. Sean introduces her to a dark world of excitement, danger, cunning, and cruelty, pushing her to the limits of her own morality. But Fiona's father throws her new life into disarray when he dupes her into an overnight trip that results in a hasty engagement to Don Koo, the spoiled son of a wealthy chef.

Determined to thwart her parents' plans to marry her off into Asian suburbia, Fiona seeks her freedom at any price. How far will she go to bury the Hello Kitty stereotype forever? Fiona's journey of self-discovery is biting and clever as she embraces her true nature and creates her own version of the American Dream, eliminating--without fear or remorse--anyone who stands in her way.]]>
320 Angela S. Choi 1935562029 Yi 3 3.42 2010 Hello Kitty Must Die
author: Angela S. Choi
name: Yi
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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Sputnik Sweetheart 9557 alternate cover can be found here

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.

Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...]]>
229 Haruki Murakami 0099448475 Yi 4 3.85 1999 Sputnik Sweetheart
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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Out 25365
The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako's own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.

The complex yet riveting narrative seamlessly combines a convincing glimpse into the grimy world of Japan's yakuza with a brilliant portrayal of the psychology of a violent crime and the ensuing game of cat-and-mouse between seasoned detectives and a group of determined but inexperienced criminals. Kirino has mastered a Thelma and Louise kind of graveyard humor that illuminates her stunning evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendship that bolsters them in the aftermath.]]>
400 Natsuo Kirino 1400078377 Yi 4 3.95 1997 Out
author: Natsuo Kirino
name: Yi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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Grotesque 25366
Shedding light on the most hidden precincts of Japanese society today, Grotesque is both a psychological investigation into the female psyche and a work of noir fiction that confirms Natsuo Kirino’s electrifying gifts.]]>
480 Natsuo Kirino 1400044944 Yi 3 3.76 2003 Grotesque
author: Natsuo Kirino
name: Yi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square]]> 374226 In a bygone era, when Times Square was crammed with porn shops, gun stores, and drug pushers, disenfranchised moviegoers flocked to the grindhouses along 42nd Street. If the gore epics, women-in-prison films, and shockumentaries showcased within their mildewed walls didn't live up to their outrageous billing, the audience shouted, threw food, and even vandalized the theaters. For dedicated lovers of extreme cinema, buying a movie ticket on the Deuce meant putting your life on the line.
Authors Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford came to know those grindhouses better than anyone else, and although the theaters were gone by the mid-1980s, the films remained. In Sleazoid Express, Landis and Clifford reproduce what no home video can -- the experience of watching an exploitation film in its original fight-for-your-life Deuce setting. Both a travelogue of the infamous grindhouses of yore and a comprehensive overview of the sleaze canon, Sleazoid Express offers detailed reviews of landmark exploitation classics and paints intimate portraits of directors whose notorious creations played the back end of triple bills for years on end. With wit, intelligence, and an unflinching eye, Landis and Clifford offer the definitive document of cinema's most intense and shocking moments as they came to life at a legendary place.]]>
336 Bill Landis 0743215834 Yi 0 to-read 4.16 2002 Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square
author: Bill Landis
name: Yi
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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Film Posters: Exploitation 1866396 191 Graham Marsh 3822856258 Yi 0 to-read 4.01 2005 Film Posters: Exploitation
author: Graham Marsh
name: Yi
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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Cloud in Trousers 159502 122 Christopher Doyle 1889195332 Yi 0 to-read 4.43 1998 Cloud in Trousers
author: Christopher Doyle
name: Yi
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Christopher Doyle - Buenos Aires]]> 6715948 224 Christopher Doyle 4795280665 Yi 0 to-read 4.55 1997 Christopher Doyle - Buenos Aires
author: Christopher Doyle
name: Yi
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Christopher Doyle's Photographic Journal of Happy Together]]> 6203166 0 Christopher Doyle 9628114247 Yi 0 to-read 4.50 Christopher Doyle's Photographic Journal of Happy Together
author: Christopher Doyle
name: Yi
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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Spiral (Ring, #2) 123479
You don't know what the RING is yet. The terms of the curse of the videotape undergo a jaw-dropping reconfiguration in this novel, the horror master's stunning reinvention of his own bestselling tale. Spiral is written as a stand-alone work; for Ring fans, its' a sequel that redefines the word.]]>
281 Kōji Suzuki 1932234160 Yi 0 3.77 1995 Spiral (Ring, #2)
author: Kōji Suzuki
name: Yi
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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The Consumer 676920 233 Michael Gira 1880985268 Yi 0 to-read 3.71 1995 The Consumer
author: Michael Gira
name: Yi
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary's Baby, #1)]]> 228296
Suppose that only after you became pregnant did you begin to suspect the building harbored a diabolically evil group of devil worshippers who had mastered the arts of black magic and witchcraft.

Suppose that this satanic conspiracy set out to claim not only your husband but your baby.

Well, that's what happened to Rosemary... Or did it...?]]>
308 Ira Levin 0451194004 Yi 0 to-read 4.04 1967 Rosemary’s Baby (Rosemary's Baby, #1)
author: Ira Levin
name: Yi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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Forbidden 7600924
Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.]]>
418 Tabitha Suzuma 1862308160 Yi 0 to-read 3.96 2010 Forbidden
author: Tabitha Suzuma
name: Yi
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Yi 0 to-read 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Yi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A Disturbed Girl's Guide to Curing Boredom]]> 11968674 238 James Howell 0956926002 Yi 0 to-read 3.76 2011 A Disturbed Girl's Guide to Curing Boredom
author: James Howell
name: Yi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]>
607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 Yi 3 4.16 1994 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 3
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Filth 23966
There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . .

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393 Irvine Welsh 0393318680 Yi 0 to-read 3.81 1998 Filth
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Yi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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The Room 50274 288 Hubert Selby Jr. 0714530387 Yi 0 to-read 3.72 1971 The Room
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Yi
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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The Virgin Suicides 10956 250 Jeffrey Eugenides 0747560595 Yi 0 to-read 3.81 1993 The Virgin Suicides
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Yi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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Zombie 11785 181 Joyce Carol Oates 0452275008 Yi 0 to-read 3.35 1995 Zombie
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Yi
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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High-Rise 12331767 208 J.G. Ballard 0871404028 Yi 0 to-read 3.61 1975 High-Rise
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Yi
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics]]> 19488308
Starting with the celebrated TV fight between Ken Russell and Alexander Walker (the former hit the latter with a rolled up copy of his Evening Standard review!) and ending with his own admission to Steven Spielberg of a major error of judgement, Mark Kermode takes us on a journey across the modern cinematic landscape. We are all critics now and, as the professional role diminishes, the democratic opportunities of the internet have created a new monster. Relying on speed of response, rather than considered reaction, these new critics have stolen the thunder of their paid up counterparts. But there is a dark side, the shocking deceptions hidden behind the facade of our digital world's new and supposedly democratic alternative, "the honest, unmediated audience response". Mark questions the future of any and all genuinely impartial criticism when reviews are systemically corrupted by bribery, vote-rigging, cyber-stalking, and sock-puppetry. And he asks that crucial question, what kind of films would we have if we listened to what the audience thinks it wants?

Like its predecessor, The Good, The Bad & The Multiplex, Hatchet Job blends historical analysis with trenchant opinion, bitter personal prejudices, autobiographical diversions and anecdotes, and laugh-out-loud cynical humour. It's the perfect book for anyone who's ever expressed an opinion about a movie.]]>
320 Mark Kermode 1743513240 Yi 0 to-read 3.45 2013 Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics
author: Mark Kermode
name: Yi
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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No Longer Human 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]>
176 Osamu Dazai Yi 0 to-read 3.99 1948 No Longer Human
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Yi
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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Horns 6587879
At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.

But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .]]>
370 Joe Hill 0061147958 Yi 0 to-read 3.94 2009 Horns
author: Joe Hill
name: Yi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1]]> 11904233 The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1.

The universe is not made of atoms; it's made of tiny stories.

To create The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, known within the hitRECord community as RegularJOE—directed thousands of collaborators to tell tiny stories through words and art. With the help of the entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt culled, edited and curated over 8,500 contributions into this finely tuned collection of original art from 67 contributors. Reminiscent of the 6-Word Memoir series, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 brings together art and voices from around the world to unite and tell stories that defy size.]]>
87 Joseph Gordon-Levitt 0062121669 Yi 0 to-read 4.09 2011 The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1
author: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
name: Yi
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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<![CDATA[The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 2]]> 13623923 The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Looper, 500 Days of Summer) made a big splash with The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories—so now he's back with volume 2! One of the most ingenious and successful projects to come out of Gordon-Levitt's online creative coalition hitRECord—an international collaboration of artists and writers—The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 2 offers more quirky, delightfully small, ingeniously illustrated haiku-like tales, proving once more that the universe isn't made of atoms; it's made of tiny stories. The best things do come in small packages.]]> 127 Joseph Gordon-Levitt 0062121634 Yi 0 to-read 4.18 2012 The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 2
author: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
name: Yi
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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Almost Transparent Blue 14287 Almost Transparent Blue is a brutal tale of lost youth in a Japanese port town close to an American military base. Murakami's image-intensive narrative paints a portrait of a group of friends locked in a destructive cycle of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

The novel is all but plotless, but the raw and often violent prose takes us on a rollercoaster ride through reality and hallucination, highs and lows, in which the characters and their experiences come vividly to life. Trapped in passivity, they gain neither passion nor pleasure from their adventures.
Yet out of the alienation, boredom and underlying rage and grief emerges a strangely quiet and almost equally shocking beauty.

Ryu Murakami's first novel, Almost Transparent Blue won the coveted Akutagawa Literary Prize in 1976 and became an instant bestseller. Representing a sharp and conscious turning away from the introspective trend of postwar Japanese literature, it polarized critics and public alike and soon attracted international attention as an alternative view of modern Japan.]]>
126 Ryū Murakami 4770029047 Yi 0 to-read 3.36 1976 Almost Transparent Blue
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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After the Quake 11299 147 Haruki Murakami Yi 0 3.81 2000 After the Quake
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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Dance Dance Dance 17800 Alternate cover edition here.

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.]]>
393 Haruki Murakami 0099448769 Yi 0 4.06 1988 Dance Dance Dance
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #1)]]> 8686068
When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime...]]>
298 Keigo Higashino 0312375069 Yi 0 4.16 2005 The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #1)
author: Keigo Higashino
name: Yi
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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In the Miso Soup 17810
From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psycho-thriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this shocking, hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo’s sex industry.]]>
217 Ryū Murakami 014303569X Yi 0 3.62 1997 In the Miso Soup
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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In 17186273
Tamaki is determined to find out who R really was. A writer herself, she is working on a book about R and begins to uncover clues about the real story behind the novel, and the great tragedy of the novelist's life. While she throws herself into her research she's aware that her own imperfect relationships are also up for scrutiny. Her ex-lover, Seiji, is gravely ill in hospital and her reminiscences about their long affair strike echoes with the subject of her work.

In this compelling and moving novel, prize-winning author, Natsuo Kirino explores the themes of love and death, and the significance of fiction.]]>
384 Natsuo Kirino 1846554241 Yi 0 to-read 3.32 2009 In
author: Natsuo Kirino
name: Yi
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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Real World 2119409 Out and Grotesque.

In a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and endless “cram school” sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges. There’s Toshi, the dependable one; Terauchi, the great student; Yuzan, the sad one, grieving over the death of her mother—and trying to hide her sexual orientation from her friends; and Kirarin, the sweet one, whose late nights and reckless behavior remain a secret from those around her. When Toshi’s next-door neighbor is found brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son, a high school boy they nickname Worm. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers—dangers they never could have even imagined—that rises from within them as well as from the world around them.

Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.]]>
208 Natsuo Kirino 0307267571 Yi 0 3.42 2003 Real World
author: Natsuo Kirino
name: Yi
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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On Being Blue 156185 91 William H. Gass 0879232374 Yi 0 to-read 3.90 1975 On Being Blue
author: William H. Gass
name: Yi
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films]]> 15766600 360 Kier-la Janisse Yi 0 to-read 4.47 2012 House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films
author: Kier-la Janisse
name: Yi
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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<![CDATA[South of the Border, West of the Sun]]> 17799 Alternate cover edition here.

Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]>
190 Haruki Murakami 0099448572 Yi 0 3.89 1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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<![CDATA[A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)]]> 11298 353 Haruki Murakami 037571894X Yi 0 3.96 1982 A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
shelves:
review:

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After Dark 17803 In After Dark—a gripping novel of late night encounters—Murakami’s trademark humor and psychological insight are distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.

Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.]]>
191 Haruki Murakami 0307265838 Yi 0 3.75 2004 After Dark
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]>
296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Yi 0 4.01 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
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Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Yi 0 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yi
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/07/07
shelves:
review:

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