Michelle's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 18:51:50 -0700 60 Michelle's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life]]> 38502471
I'd Rather Be Reading is the perfect literary companion for everyone who feels that way. In this collection of charming and relatable reflections on the reading life, beloved blogger and author Anne Bogel leads readers to remember the book that first hooked them, the place where they first fell in love with reading, and all of the moments afterward that helped make them the reader they are today. Known as a reading tastemaker through her popular podcast What Should I Read Next?, Bogel invites book lovers into a community of like-minded people to discover new ways to approach literature, learn fascinating new things about books and publishing, and reflect on the role reading plays in their lives.

The perfect gift for the bibliophile in everyone's life, I'd Rather Be Reading will command an honored place on the overstuffed bookshelves of any book lover.]]> 156 Anne Bogel 0801072921 Michelle 0 to-read 4.02 2018 I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life
author: Anne Bogel
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sweet Bean Paste 33376821
Until, that is, Tokue comes into his life. An elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past, she makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. The unlikeliest of friendships blossoms, but it will take all of their resolve � and plenty of pancakes � to protect themselves when Tokue's dark secret comes to light.]]> 216 Durian Sukegawa 1786071959 Michelle 0 to-read 4.07 2013 Sweet Bean Paste
author: Durian Sukegawa
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions]]> 33608721 Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction of the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants with the reality of racism and fear both here and back home."]]> 128 Valeria Luiselli 1566894956 Michelle 0 to-read 4.42 2016 Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
author: Valeria Luiselli
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kāwai For Such A Time As This 61991706
Tracing the author’s own ancestral line, Kāwai: For Such a Time as This reveals a picture of an indigenous Aotearoa in the mid-18th century, through to the first encounters between Māori and Europeans. It describes a culture that is highly sophisticated with an immense knowledge of science, medicine and religion; proud tribes who live harmoniously within the natural world; a highly capable and adaptable people to whom family and legacy are paramount. However, it is also a culture illuminated by a brutal undercurrent of inter-generational vengeance, witchcraft and cannibalism.

Kāwai: For Such a Time as This is the remarkable first novel by respected historian Dr. Monty Soutar, ONZM (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) in a series that reveals the role of colonisation in shaping Aotearoa New Zealand, balanced with an honest appraisal of the country in pre-colonial times.]]> 371 Monty Soutar 1776890302 Michelle 0 4.13 Kāwai For Such A Time As This
author: Monty Soutar
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: currently-reading, aotearoa-new-zealand, audiobooks, poc-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart]]> 42584180 Summer Rayne Oakes, an urban houseplant expert and environmental scientist, is the icon of wellness-minded millennials who want to bring nature indoors, according to a New York Times profile. Summer has managed to grow 1,000 houseplants in her Brooklyn apartment (and they're thriving!) Her secret? She approaches her relationships with plants as intentionally as if they were people.

Everyone deserves to feel the inner peace that comes from taking care of greenery. Beyond the obvious benefits--beauty and cleaner air--there's a strong psychological benefit to nurturing plants as a path to mindfulness. They can reduce our stress level, lower our blood pressure, and improve our overall outlook. And they offer a rare opportunity to find joy by caring for another living being.

When Summer Rayne Oakes moved to Brooklyn from the Pennsylvania countryside, she knew that bringing nature indoors was her only chance to stay sane. She found them by the side of the road, in long-forgotten window boxes, at farmers' markets, and in local garden shops. She found ways to shelve, hang, tuck, anchor, secure, and suspend them. She even installed a 150-foot expandable hose that connects to pipes under her kitchen sink, so she only has to spend about a half-hour a day tending to her plants--an activity that she describes as a "moving meditation."

This is Summer's guidebook for cultivating an entirely new relationship with your plant children. Inside, you'll learn to:

- Pause for the flowers and greenery all around you, even the ones sprouting bravely between cracked pavement
- Trust that your apartment jungle offers you far more than pretty d�cor
- See the world from a plant's perspective, trading modern consumerism for sustainability
- Serve your chlorophyllic friends by learning to identify the right species for your home and to recreate their natural habitat (Bonus: your indoor garden won't die!)

When we become plant parents, we also become better caretakers of ourselves, the people around us, and our planet. So, let's step inside the world of plants and discover how we can begin cultivating our own personal green space--in our homes, in our minds, and in our hearts.]]> 183 Summer Rayne Oakes 0525540288 Michelle 4
I’m not sure what it’s like in the physical text version, but in the audiobook I found the random additions of blurbs from other people’s experiences with plants to make the text feel quite disjointed and it took away from what was otherwise a wonderful read!]]> 3.51 How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart
author: Summer Rayne Oakes
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: audiobooks, non-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors, favourites
review:
Perfect for a biophile like me. I love the idea that re-examining and exploring our understanding of plants can influence how we treat other people and create communities, how we engage in self-care and connect with the world at large, how we approach economics and political issues, and how we understand different world views, cultures and languages.

I’m not sure what it’s like in the physical text version, but in the audiobook I found the random additions of blurbs from other people’s experiences with plants to make the text feel quite disjointed and it took away from what was otherwise a wonderful read!
]]> <![CDATA[The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child's Education]]> 42078805
Inspired by the spirit of Henry David Thoreau—”All good things are wild and free”—mother of five Ainsley Arment founded Wild + Free. This growing online community of mothers and families want their children to receive a quality education at home by challenging their intellectual abilities and nurturing their sense of curiosity, joy and awe—the essence of a positive childhood. The homeschool approach of past generations is gone—including the stigma of socially awkward kids, conservative clothes, and a classroom setting replicated in the home. The Wild + Free movement is focused on a love of nature, reading great books, pursuing interests and hobbies, making the entire world a classroom, and prolonging the wonder of childhood, an appealing philosophy that is unpacked in the pages of this book The Call of the Wild and Free offers advice, information, and positive encouragement for parents considering homeschooling, those currently in the trenches looking for inspiration, as well as parents, educators, and caregivers who want supplementary resources to enhance their kids� traditional educations.]]> 336 Ainsley Arment 006291653X Michelle 3 4.31 2019 The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child's Education
author: Ainsley Arment
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: audiobooks, teacher-pd, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands]]> 59069071 Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.]]> 430 Kate Beaton 1770462899 Michelle 4 4.41 2022 Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
author: Kate Beaton
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: graphic-novels, women-or-nonbinary-authors, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Greatest Love Story Ever Told]]> 38919266 At last, the full story behind Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman's epic romance, including stories, portraits, and the occasional puzzle, all telling the smoldering tale that has fascinated Hollywood for over a decade.

The year: 2000. The setting: Los Angeles. A gorgeous virtuoso of an actress had agreed to star in a random play, and a basement-dwelling scenic carpenter had said he would assay a supporting role in the selfsame pageant. At the first rehearsal, she surveyed her fellow cast members, as one does, determining if any of the men might qualify to provide her with a satisfying fling. Her gaze fell upon the carpenter, and like a bolt of lightning, the thought struck her: No dice. Moving on.

Yet, unbeknownst to our protagonists, Cupid had merely set down his bow and picked up a rocket launcher. Then fired a love rocket (not a euphemism). The players were Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, and the resulting romance, once it ignited, was . . . epic. Beyond epic. It resulted in a coupling that has endured to this day; a sizzling, perpetual tryst that has captivated the world with its kindness, athleticism, astonishingly low-brow humor, and true (fire emoji) passion.

How did they do it? They came from completely different families, endured a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits.

Eighteen years later, they're still very much in love, and have finally decided to reveal the philosophical mountains they have conquered, the lessons they've learned, and the myriad jigsaw puzzles they've completed, in a book. Featuring anecdotes, hijinks, interviews, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery, this is not only the intoxicating book that Mullally's and Offerman's fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.]]> 269 Megan Mullally 1101986670 Michelle 3 audiobooks, memoir, romance 3.65 2018 The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
author: Megan Mullally
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: audiobooks, memoir, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell]]> 35995489
Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.

Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design—especially not the tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he’d always known. Running from the pain, eyes closed, served little purpose. Now, as he looks back on his life, Sam embarks on a journey that will take him halfway around the world. This time, his eyes are wide open—bringing into clear view what changed him, defined him, and made him so afraid, until he can finally see what truly matters.]]> 448 Robert Dugoni 1503949001 Michelle 0 to-read 4.37 2018 The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Unlikely Animals 58502645 A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake.

It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.

Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she's lost her way. A med school dropout, she's come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire to care for her father, dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.

Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad's illness, her mom's judgement, and her younger brother's recent stint in rehab, but she's unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma's dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn't really trying to be a hero—but somehow she and her father set in motion just the kind of miracle the town needs.

Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.]]> 348 Annie Hartnett 0593160223 Michelle 0 to-read 4.05 2022 Unlikely Animals
author: Annie Hartnett
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Blue Hour 207252770
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .

A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.]]> 320 Paula Hawkins 0063396521 Michelle 4 3.26 2024 The Blue Hour
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: audiobooks, contemporary, mystery-thriller, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 400 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Michelle 0 to-read 4.33 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Saltblood 199689207
Mary's dual existence will take her to a grand house where she'll serve a French mistress; to the navy where she'll learn who to trust, and how to navigate by the stars; to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, following her one true friend; and finding love among the bloodshed and mud. But none of this will stop her yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman. She will become a pirate.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history's most remarkable figures.]]> 368 Francesca de Tores 1526661330 Michelle 5 4.00 2024 Saltblood
author: Francesca de Tores
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:
Stunning, I didn’t want it to end.
]]> How to Love the Empty Air 36515260 How to Love the Empty Air explores what happens when the impossible becomes real―for better and for worse. Aptowicz’s journey to find happiness and home in her ever-shifting world sees her struggling in cities throughout America. When her luck changes―in love and in life―she can’t help but “tell the sun / tell the fields / tell the huge Texas sky�. / tell myself again and again until I believe it.� However, the upward trajectory of this new life is rocked by the sudden death of the poet’s mother. In the year that follows, Aptowicz battles the silencing power of grief with intimate poems burnished by loss and a hard-won humor, capturing the dance that all newly grieving must do between everyday living and the desire “to elope with this grief, / who is not your enemy, / this grief who maybe now is your best friend. / This grief, who is your husband, / the thing you curl into every night, / falling asleep in its arms…� As in her award-winning The Year of No Mistakes, Aptowicz counts her losses and her blessings, knowing how despite it all, life “ripples boundless, like electricity, like joy / like... laughter, irresistible and bright, / an impossible thing to contain.”]]> 100 Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz 1938912802 Michelle 0 to-read 4.31 2018 How to Love the Empty Air
author: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1)]]> 40605488 A powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire.

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.

When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.

A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.]]> 320 Attica Locke Michelle 0 to-read 3.84 2017 Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1)
author: Attica Locke
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom]]> 4959061
Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. this book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn—revealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.

In this breakthrough book, Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a set of nine principles that are easy to understand and have clear applications for the classroom. Some of examples of his surprising findings are:

“Learning styles� don't exist The processes by which different children think and learn are more similar than different.

Intelligence is malleable Intelligence contributes to school performance and children do differ, but intelligence can be increased through sustained hard work.

You cannot develop “thinking skills� in the absence of facts We encourage students to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.

Why Don't Students Like School is a basic primer for every teacher who wants to know how their brains and their students� brains work and how that knowledge can help them hone their teaching skills.]]> 180 Daniel T. Willingham 0470279303 Michelle 4 4.02 2009 Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom
author: Daniel T. Willingham
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: audiobooks, teacher-pd, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cult Trip: Inside the world of Coercion and Control]]> 61728756
At a new age festival in Byron Bay, journalist Anke Richter is finding her spiritual awakening when she meets a woman - a survivor of the Auckland cult Centrepoint - who will change the course of her life and career. Over the next ten years, Anke pursues a labyrinthine investigation into how and why cults attract, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people, asking what the line is between tribe and cult, participant and perpetrator, seduction and sexual abuse. From the emotional and criminal carnage of Auckland's Centrepoint to an anti-cult conference in Manchester, the infamous Osho's ashram in India, the tantric Agama Yoga school in remote Thailand, and culminating in a visit to Gloriavale on the West Coast of the South Island, Anke uncovers a disturbing pattern of violence and suffering.

Cult Trip is a powerful exploration of what really goes on inside the groups we call cults, and how to reckon with their aftermath.]]> 352 Anke Richter 1775492346 Michelle 4 3.87 2022 Cult Trip: Inside the world of Coercion and Control
author: Anke Richter
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobooks, non-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Better Than the Movies (Better Than the Movies, #1)]]> 55710822 In this rom-com about rom-coms, in the spirit of Kasie West and Jenn Bennett, a hopeless romantic teen attempts to secure a happily-ever-after moment with her forever crush, but finds herself reluctantly drawn to the boy next door.

Perpetual daydreamer Liz Buxbaum gave her heart to Michael a long time ago. But her cool, aloof forever crush never really saw her before he moved away. Now that he’s back in town, Liz will do whatever it takes to get on his radar - and maybe snag him as a prom date - even befriend Wes Bennet.

The annoyingly attractive next-door neighbor might seem like a prime candidate for romantic-comedy fantasies, but Wes has only been a pain in Liz’s butt since they were kids. Pranks involving frogs and decapitated lawn gnomes do not a potential boyfriend make. Yet, somehow, Wes and Michael are hitting it off, which means Wes is Liz’s in.

But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz noticed by Michael so she can have her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love - and rethink her own ideas of what happily ever after should look like.]]> 356 Lynn Painter 1534467629 Michelle 0 didnt-finish 4.28 2021 Better Than the Movies (Better Than the Movies, #1)
author: Lynn Painter
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: didnt-finish
review:

]]> Hula 61896677 Set in Hilo, Hawai'i, a sweeping saga of tradition, culture, family, history, and connection that unfolds through the lives of three generations of women--a brilliant blend of There, There and Sharks in the Time of Saviors that is a tale of mothers and daughters, dance and destiny, told in part in the collective voice of a community fighting for its survival

"There's no running away on an island. Soon enough, you end up where you started."

Hi'i is the youngest of the legendary Naupaka dynasty, only daughter of Laka, once the pride of Hilo; granddaughter of Hulali, Hula matriarch on the Big Island. But the Naupka legacy is in jeopardy, buckling under the weight of loaded silences and unexplained absences, most notably the sudden disappearance of Laka when Hi'i was a child. Hi'i dreams of healing the rifts within her family by becoming the next Miss Aloha Hula--and prove herself worthy of carrying on the family dynasty. She demonstrates her devotion to her culture through hula--the beating heart of her people expressed through the movement of her hips and feet.

Yet she has always felt separate from her community, and the harder she tries to prove she belongs--dancing in the halau until her bones ache--the wider the distance seems to grow. Soon, fault lines begin to form, and secrets threaten to erupt. Everyone wants to know, Hi'i most of all: what really happened when her mother disappeared, and why haven't she and her grandmother spoken since? When a devastating revelation involving Hi'i surfaces, the entire community is faced with a momentous decision that will affect everyone--and determine the course of Hi'i's future.

Part incantation, part rallying cry, Hula is a love letter to a stolen paradise and its people. Told in part by the tribal We, it connects Hawaii's tortured history to its fractured present through the story of the Naupaka family. The evolution of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement is reflected in the journeys of these defiant women and their community, in whose struggle we sense the long-term repercussions of blood quantum laws and colonization, the relationship between tribe and belonging, and the universal question: what makes a family?]]> 400 Jasmin Iolani Hakes 0063276984 Michelle 4 3.94 2023 Hula
author: Jasmin Iolani Hakes
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, indigenous-knowledge, poc-authors, politics, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories]]> 2282 162 Truman Capote 067960085X Michelle 0 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> A Language of Limbs 217595379
Over the following three decades, two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of ways.

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak. An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.

'Poetic, fresh and mesmerising . . . I am desperate for more stories like this' Jessie Stephens


Praise for A Language of Limbs

'A life-affirming, deeply felt novel of the decisions we make and the lives that unspool from them. To read A Language of Limbs is to be reminded of the power of queer joy and community. I loved it.' Hannah Kent

'Poetic, fresh and mesmerising, Hardcastle's work is like nothing I have ever read. A Language of Limbs is full of feeling; a love story about the family we make ourselves. Upon finishing this book I was overwhelmed by a sense of, more. I am desperate for more stories like this.' Jessie Stephens

'Dylin Hardcastle's novel carried me away like a tidal current. Expansive across time, yet intimate in its focus, A Language of Limbs is that rare book that's equally poetic and propulsive - with twin protagonists who are impossible to shake. Nothing short of an instant queer classic.' Benjamin Law

'I loved it' Hannah Kent

'An instant queer classic' Benjamin Law


Dylin Hardcastle is an author, artist and screenwriter. They are the author of three critically acclaimed books. Their first adult novel, Below Deck, was published in ten territories. Dylin is the co-creator, co-writer and co-director of the TV show Cloudy River. In 2018, they were a Provost's Scholar and a research assistant in World Literature at the University of Oxford. Dylin is currently completing their PhD in Creative Writing. Dylin has travelled to Antarctica, South America and Europe for artist residencies, and has exhibited their paintings widely across Australia and the UK. A Language of Limbs has been optioned and is in development with Curio (Sony Pictures).]]> 304 Dylin Hardcastle 1761269879 Michelle 5 4.20 2024 A Language of Limbs
author: Dylin Hardcastle
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: audiobooks, lgbtq-plus-authors, historical-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)]]> 25526296 Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.]]> 176 Seanan McGuire 0765385503 Michelle 0 to-read 3.81 2016 Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Year of Ravens: A Novel of Boudica's Rebellion]]> 199534431 560 Kate Quinn 0063310600 Michelle 3 4.18 2015 A Year of Ravens: A Novel of Boudica's Rebellion
author: Kate Quinn
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors, anthologies
review:

]]> The Bad Guys: Episode 1 25448261 159 Aaron Blabey 1760150428 Michelle 4 childrens, graphic-novels 4.17 2015 The Bad Guys: Episode 1
author: Aaron Blabey
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: childrens, graphic-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century]]> 51456746
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.]]> 309 Alice Wong 1984899422 Michelle 4 4.46 2020 Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
author: Alice Wong
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: audiobooks, disability, women-or-nonbinary-authors, poc-authors, lgbtq-plus-authors, essays, anthologies
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching]]> 26067736 Banish math anxiety and give students of all ages a clear roadmap to success. Mathematical Mindsets provides practical strategies and activities to help teachers and parents show all children, even those who are convinced that they are bad at math, that they can enjoy and succeed in math. Jo Boaler--Stanford researcher, professor of math education, and expert on math learning--has studied why students don't like math and often fail in math classes. She's followed thousands of students through middle and high schools to study how they learn and to find the most effective ways to unleash the math potential in all students.

There is a clear gap between what research has shown to work in teaching math and what happens in schools and at home. This book bridges that gap by turning research findings into practical activities and advice. Boaler translates Carol Dweck's concept of 'mindset' into math teaching and parenting strategies, showing how students can go from self-doubt to strong self-confidence, which is so important to math learning. Boaler reveals the steps that must be taken by schools and parents to improve math education for all. Mathematical Mindsets:


Explains how the brain processes mathematics learning
Reveals how to turn mistakes and struggles into valuable learning experiences
Provides examples of rich mathematical activities to replace rote learning
Explains ways to give students a positive math mindset
Gives examples of how assessment and grading policies need to change to support real understanding
Scores of students hate and fear math, so they end up leaving school without an understanding of basic mathematical concepts. Their evasion and departure hinders math-related pathways and STEM career opportunities. Research has shown very clear methods to change this phenomena, but the information has been confined to research journals--until now. Mathematical Mindsets provides a proven, practical roadmap to mathematics success for any student at any age.]]> 292 Jo Boaler 0470894520 Michelle 4 4.44 2015 Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching
author: Jo Boaler
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: audiobooks, teacher-pd, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dare to Care: Ecofeminism as a source of inspiration]]> 75505076 "Can care offer us a fresh start based on interconnectedness, and generosity? How can care, as an emancipatory principle, underpin politics and the economy?"]]> 107 Dirk Holemans 9464445262 Michelle 0 to-read 3.68 2021 Dare to Care: Ecofeminism as a source of inspiration
author: Dirk Holemans
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Frankie 210085071
Always just on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie is never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage. But the outsider holds certain advantages, sees things others don't, can influence without drawing attention. And when the map has been lost, it's anyone's guess where you may end up, or the accidental choices you find you have made. Frankie discovers that life is not always the one we hope for, or the one others expect of us.

Travelling from post-war Ireland to the dazzling art scene of 1960s New York by way of London, Frankie is an immersive, decade-sweeping novel about love, bravery and what it means to live a significant life.]]> 291 Graham Norton Michelle 0 to-read 4.31 2024 Frankie
author: Graham Norton
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cat Who Caught a Killer (Conrad the Cat Detective #1)]]> 61171523
Neither has Lulu Lewis when he walks into her life one summer’s day. Mourning the recent death of her husband, the former police detective had expected a gentle retirement, quietly enjoying life on her new canal boat, The Lark, and visiting her mother-in-law Emily in a nearby care home.

But when Emily dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances, Lulu senses foul play and resolves to find out what really happened. And a remarkable cat named Conrad will be with her every step of the way . . .]]> 318 L.T. Shearer 1529098025 Michelle 1 3.32 2022 The Cat Who Caught a Killer (Conrad the Cat Detective #1)
author: L.T. Shearer
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: audiobooks, cozy-mystery, mystery-thriller
review:
Terrible writing and highly problematic, overtly expressed politics
]]> <![CDATA[Keeper of the Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #1)]]> 12842828
Everything changes the day she meets Fitz, a mysterious boy who appears out of nowhere and also reads minds. She discovers there’s a place she does belong, and that staying with her family will place her in grave danger. In the blink of an eye, Sophie is forced to leave behind everything and start a new life in a place that is vastly different from anything she has ever known.

Sophie has new rules to learn and new skills to master, and not everyone is thrilled that she has come “home.�
There are secrets buried deep in Sophie’s memory—secrets about who she really is and why she was hidden among humans—that other people desperately want. Would even kill for.

In this page-turning debut, Shannon Messenger creates a riveting story where one girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world, before the wrong person finds the answer first.]]> 496 Shannon Messenger 1442445939 Michelle 1 4.39 2012 Keeper of the Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #1)
author: Shannon Messenger
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: audiobooks, fantasy, women-or-nonbinary-authors, childrens
review:

]]> Amazing Grace Adams 143372703 Bernadette, Eleanor Oliphant, Rosie, Ove . . . meet Amazing Grace Adams,the funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink—who finally pushes back.

Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled—the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she’s really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.

Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she’ll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.]]> 272 Fran Littlewood 1250334152 Michelle 2 3.24 2023 Amazing Grace Adams
author: Fran Littlewood
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: audiobooks, contemporary, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> Poor People With Money 61990415
Her Avondale flat has no furniture, her father’s dead, her catatonic mother’s in an expensive nursing home and her kickboxing gym is going to Thailand.
Monday's shitty bartending job pays fifty cents over minimum wage, and she desperately needs another way to generate income.
Dealing drugs off the dark web with her flatmate JJ looks like it's working � until it really doesn’t, and the pair have to flee Tamaki Makaurau to escape the gangsters, the vampires and the ghosts of Monday’s past.

This is a pacy, heart-twisting, punch-in-the-guts, darkly comic novel that captures life on the poverty line in Aotearoa now.

From the award-winning poet and playwright Dominic Hoey, author of Iceland, I Thought We’d Be Famous, and the 2021 SST Short Story Award winner, 1986.]]> 0 Dominic Hoey 0143779877 Michelle 0 to-read 4.03 2022 Poor People With Money
author: Dominic Hoey
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Water Outlaws 61884755 Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.]]> 496 S.L. Huang 1250180422 Michelle 0 to-read 3.75 2023 The Water Outlaws
author: S.L. Huang
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2) 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Michelle 2 4.33 2023 Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/30
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: audiobooks, fantasy, romance, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Michelle 4 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/02
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: audiobooks, women-or-nonbinary-authors, romance
review:

]]> Bird Child and Other Stories 202941527
The titular story ‘Bird Child� plunges you deep into Te Kore, an ancient time before time. In another, the formidable goddess Mahuika, Keeper of Fire, becomes a doting mother and friend. Later, Grace’s own childhood vividly shapes the world of the young character Mereana; and a widower’s hilariously human struggle to parent his seven daughters is told with trademark wit and crackling dialogue.

Moving artfully across decades, landscapes, time and space, with tenderness and charm, Bird Child and Other Stories shows an author as adept and stimulating as ever.

"Grace's stories make a shining and enduring place formed of the brilliant weave of Māori oral storytelling.� - Joy Harjo

Fly Bird, fly Child, in every direction.
Know what there is to know of everything terrestrial,
Of all that has been laid out by Tāne-nui-a-Rangi.
Fly high. Fly high.
Know all that is celestial.
Attain the uncountable stars.]]> 272 Patricia Grace 1776953797 Michelle 0 to-read 4.10 Bird Child and Other Stories
author: Patricia Grace
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth)]]> 213111930
There’s a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us . . . It’s love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things.

What happens when the Zusak family opens their home to three big, wild, street-hardened dogs—Reuben, more wolf than hound; Archer, blond, beautiful, destructive; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm?

The answer can only be chaos: There are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property damages, injuries, hospital visits, wellness checks, pure comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that must be read to be believed.

There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love—and the joy and recognition of family.

Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth) is a tender, motley, and exquisitely written memoir about the human need for both connection and disorder, a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty—but also the visceral truth of the natural world—straight to our doors and into our lives and change us forever.]]> 240 Markus Zusak 0063426072 Michelle 0 to-read 4.02 2024 Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth)
author: Markus Zusak
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Spinning Silver 36896898 Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into a glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.]]> 465 Naomi Novik Michelle 0 to-read 4.20 2018 Spinning Silver
author: Naomi Novik
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii]]> 78296948 From six bestselling authors, including New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn, comes a vividly imagined anthology of stories following the lives of those in ancient Pompeii on the fateful day Mount Vesuvius erupts.

Pompeii was a lively resort flourishing in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius at the height of the Roman Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in an explosion of flame and ash, the entire town would be destroyed. Some of its citizens died in the chaos, some escaped the mountain’s wrath . . . and these are their stories:

A boy loses his innocence in Pompeii’s flourishing streets.

An heiress dreads her wedding day, not knowing it will be swallowed by fire.

An ex-legionary stakes his entire future on a gladiator bout destined never to be finished.

A crippled senator welcomes death, until a tomboy on horseback comes to his rescue.

A young mother faces an impossible choice for her unborn child as the ash falls.

A priestess and a prostitute seek redemption and resurrection as the town is buried.

Six authors bring to life overlapping stories of patricians and slaves, warriors and politicians, villains and heroes who cross each other’s paths during Pompeii’s fiery end. But who will escape, and who will be buried for eternity


]]> 352 Kate Quinn 0063310562 Michelle 0 to-read 4.04 2014 A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii
author: Kate Quinn
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Whispering 60024192 The whispering wild will take your child if you dare to look away ...

The stunning Aussie crime debut from the winner of the 2021 Banjo Prize for Fiction.


Callum Haffenden swore he'd never return to Granite Creek. But, thirty years after a life-shattering accident, he's thrust back into the clutches of Far North Queensland and a local legend he worked hard to forget.

When a man goes missing in the rainforest, the past begins to resurface, breathing new life into memories of previous tragedies - two girls lost, seventeen years apart. In a town where it's easiest to turn a blind eye, the guilt runs deep and everyone in Granite Creek has something to hide.

In his search for answers, Callum fights to keep his feet firmly on the trail as he battles the deafening call of the rainforest burrowing into his ears. After all, everyone knows that the worst things in the rainforest are those unseen.

'The Whispering has everything we've come to expect from Australian rural noir in the way of climate and landscape, characters, hidden truths, and unpredictable plotting. Lando has cleverly woven an intricate and multi-layered story into a gripping mystery told with skill - and a good dose of obligatory treachery! I devoured it.' Lyn Yeowart, author of The Silent Listener

'Small town secrets and decades-old animosities weave together in this atmospheric, eerie mystery set in the dense tropical north, where everyone has something to hide and the dank wet rainforest can lure away the unwary. A dark, absorbing, tangled mystery that had me second-guessing right to the end.' Dinuka McKenzie, author of The Torrent]]> 368 Veronica Lando 1460762150 Michelle 0 to-read 3.69 2022 The Whispering
author: Veronica Lando
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Michelle 3 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: audiobooks, japanese-literature, poc-authors, contemporary
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center]]> 127305688
In The Other Significant Others, NPR's Rhaina Cohen invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner. Their riveting stories unsettle widespread assumptions about relationships, including the idea that sex is a defining feature of partnership and that people who raise kids together should be in a romantic relationship. Platonic partners from different walks of life—spanning age and religion, gender and sexuality and more—reveal the freedom and challenges of embracing a relationship model that society doesn't recognize. And they show that orienting your world around friends isn't just the stuff of daydreams and episodes of The Golden Girls, but possible in real life.

Based on years of original reporting and drawing on striking social science research, Cohen argues that we make romantic relationships more fragile by expecting too much of them, while we undermine friendships by expecting too little of them. She traces how, throughout history, our society hasn’t always fixated on marriage as the greatest source of meaning, or even love. At a time when many Americans are spending large stretches of their lives single, widowed or divorced, or feeling the effects of the "loneliness epidemic," Cohen makes the case that one model of a flourishing adulthood—lifelong romantic partnership—isn't enough. A rousing and incisive book, The Other Significant Others challenges us to ask what we want from our relationships—not just what we’re supposed to want—and transforms how we define a fulfilling life.]]> 320 Rhaina Cohen 1250280915 Michelle 4 3.92 2024 The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center
author: Rhaina Cohen
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: audiobooks, personal-development, relationships, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood]]> 62217096 A radical new examination of the transition into motherhood and how it affects the mind, brain and body

During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis. Other than during adolescence, there is no other time in a human's life with such dramatic change, yet science, medicine, and philosophy have neglected this life-altering transition. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo.

In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. Drawing on new research across various fields—neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology—Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain, and body are far more profound, wild, and enduring than we have been led to believe. She reveals the dangerous consequences of our neglect of the maternal experience, and interrogates the patriarchal and capitalist systems that have created the untenable situation mothers face today.

Here is an urgent examination of the modern institution of motherhood that seeks to unshackle all parents from oppressive social norms. As it deepens our understanding of matrescence, it raises vital questions about motherhood and femininity; interdependence and individual identity; and our relationships with each other and the world.]]> 310 Lucy Jones 0241513480 Michelle 0 to-read 4.46 2023 Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood
author: Lucy Jones
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Foster 61022861 Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household--where everything is so well tended to--and this summer must soon come to an end.

A story of astonishing emotional depth now expanded and newly revised in a standalone edition, Foster showcases Claire Keegan's great talent and cements her reputation as one of our most important and prodigious storytellers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 080216014X Michelle 0 to-read 4.38 2010 Foster
author: Claire Keegan
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nature Seed: How to Raise Adventurous and Nurturing Kids]]> 56646774
'A valuable practical guide to helping children form a kinship with nature' Independent

Many of us want to spend more time outside with our kids - but what do we do when we're there, and why is a connection to nature so important and wonderful anyway?

The Nature Seed is a practical and philosophical guide for anyone with children in their lives. Full of the wonders of sharing the natural world with young minds, it's a manual for finding awe in the cracks of the pavement and magic on a stroll around the block.

Whether on an urban walk or in an inner-city park, out in the woods or by the sea, Lucy weaves together stories of how a connection to nature helps children thrive, and Ken draws on his time working with kids outdoors to give you creative, easy and free child-led activities to deepen that connection, from wild art to simple fires, potions, foraging and make-believe.

Wherever you live, The Nature Seed offers a radical vision of a new kinship with nature, one that will help all of us expand, nurture and deepen our wild life.]]> 240 Lucy Jones 178816797X Michelle 0 to-read 4.15 The Nature Seed: How to Raise Adventurous and Nurturing Kids
author: Lucy Jones
name: Michelle
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]]> Babylonia 200468411 From the author of the bestselling Clytemnestra comes another intoxicating excursion into ancient history, as Casati reimagines the rise to power of the Assyrian empire's only female ruler, Semiramis.

When kings fall, queens rise.

Nothing about Semiramis's upbringing could have foretold her legacy or the power she would come to wield. A female ruler, once an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire - certainly no one in Ancient Assyria would bend to her command willingly. Semiramis was a woman who knew if she wanted power, she would have to claim it.

There are whispers of her fame in Mesopotamian myth- Semiramis was a queen, an ambitious warrior, a commander whose reputation reaches the majestic proportions of Alexander the Great. Historical record, on the other hand, falls eerily quiet.

In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her. The world Casati expertly builds is rich with dazzling detail and will transport her readers to the heat of the Assyrian Empire and a world long gone.]]> 400 Costanza Casati 0241609631 Michelle 0 to-read 4.26 2024 Babylonia
author: Costanza Casati
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.26
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]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume Seven (Lore Olympus, #7)]]> 204640573
An ingenious take on the Greek Pantheon, Lore Olympus is a modern update on the story of Hades and Persephone. Follow the propulsive love story of two Greek gods, told with lavish artwork and contemporary sensibilities.

This full-color edition of Smythe’s original Eisner Award-winning webcomic Lore Olympus features exclusive behind-the-scenes content and brings Greek mythology into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 153-179 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus.]]> 416 Rachel Smythe 0593871960 Michelle 5 4.46 2024 Lore Olympus: Volume Seven (Lore Olympus, #7)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: fantasy, graphic-novels, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl with the Louding Voice]]> 50214741 All you have are your words.

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education.

As the only daughter of a broke father, she is a valuable commodity. Removed from school and sold as a third wife to an old man, Adunni's life amounts to this: four goats, two bags of rice, some chickens and a new TV. When unspeakable tragedy swiftly strikes in her new home, she is secretly sold as a domestic servant to a household in the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where no one will talk about the strange disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. No one but Adunni...

As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless servant, fourteen-year-old Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing. But Adunni won't be silenced. She is determined to find her voice - in a whisper, in song, in broken English - until she can speak for herself, for the girls like Rebecca who came before, and for all the girls who will follow.

]]> 371 Abi Daré 1524746029 Michelle 0 to-read 4.40 2020 The Girl with the Louding Voice
author: Abi Daré
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
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]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume Six (Lore Olympus, #6)]]> 195888453
“We have to make an example of her.�

Chaos reigns in Olympus as Zeus publicly declares Persephone a traitor and issues a warrant for her arrest. But Hades defies his brother’s decree, sheltering Persephone in the Underworld—and as the pair spend more time together, they are able to speak openly about their pasts. The goddess of spring admits the truth behind the bloody secret that led to Zeus’s ire, and the king of the Underworld shares the trauma he suffered at the hands of his power-hungry father, Kronos.

But as Hades and Persephone’s relationship grows stronger, others begin to fall apart. The bond between Hades and Zeus is stretched to its limit, threatening to fracture the peace between their realms. Persephone and Artemis’s friendship hangs by a thread as the goddess of the hunt slowly uncovers the vile truth about her twin, Apollo. A line is being drawn in the heavens, putting everyone’s loyalties into question as all the gods are forced to choose sides.

And as the cracks in the foundation of the pantheon spread, something darker and more earth-shattering might soon be released. . . .

This edition of Smythe’s original Eisner Award–winning webcomic Lore Olympus features exclusive behind-the-scenes content and brings the Greek pantheon into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 127�152 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus .]]> 432 Rachel Smythe 059359908X Michelle 4 4.49 2024 Lore Olympus: Volume Six (Lore Olympus, #6)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: fantasy, graphic-novels, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> Is a River Alive? 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler� (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 Michelle 0 to-read 4.29 2025 Is a River Alive?
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.29
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]]> Memorial Days 212806569 A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey topeace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of�Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz � just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy � collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied waysthose ofother cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between soulsthat exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.]]> 224 Geraldine Brooks 059365398X Michelle 0 to-read 4.35 2025 Memorial Days
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name: Michelle
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]]> <![CDATA[Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People]]> 199534697 A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?� In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.

Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.� The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.

Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.]]> 256 Imani Perry 0062977393 Michelle 0 to-read 4.34 2025 Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
author: Imani Perry
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.34
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]]> The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Michelle 0 to-read 3.67 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.67
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]]> Hammajang Luck 213847219 HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person - costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.

And it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station - of home - to spend the best part of a decade alone.

But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting - and she has an offer.

One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do - trust Angel again - which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

Ocean's 8 meets Blade Runner in this trail-blazing debut science fiction novel and swashbuckling love letter to Hawai'i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build a better one - unmissable for fans of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.]]> 368 Makana Yamamoto 0063430827 Michelle 0 to-read 3.63 2024 Hammajang Luck
author: Makana Yamamoto
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.63
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Michelle 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.28
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]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Michelle 0 to-read 3.70 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.70
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]]> Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Michelle 0 to-read 3.80 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.80
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]]> The Original Daughter 217245582 In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.

In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.]]> 368 Jemimah Wei 0385551010 Michelle 0 to-read 4.15 2025 The Original Daughter
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
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]]> The Bright Years 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Michelle 0 to-read 4.49 2025 The Bright Years
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.49
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Michelle 0 to-read 4.30 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.30
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]]> Homeseeking 211025407 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593712993.

An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen Michelle 0 to-read 4.25 2025 Homeseeking
author: Karissa Chen
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir]]> 214175247 An unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary life—one forged through a poverty-stricken childhood in “slummy, one-horse towns�; obsessive desire; bursts of comedy; and indispensable friendships, reflecting on the way art, music, and a deep connection to nature helped her on a singular journeyto become a beloved, Grammy-nominated artist.

Neko Case has long been revered as one of music’s most influential artists, whose authenticity, lyrical storytelling, and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians, and lifelong fans.InThe Harder I Fight, the More I Love You,Casebrings her trademarkcandor andprecisionto a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisiblegirl “raised by two dogs and a space heater� in rural Washington state toher improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent. In luminous, sharp-edged prose, Caseshows readers what it’s like to be left alone for hours and hours as a child, to take refuge in the woods around her home, and to channel themonotony and loneliness and joy that comes from music, camaraderie, and shared experience into art.

The Harder I Fight, the More I Love Youis a rebellious meditation on identity and corruption, and a manifesto on how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face.


ձ> 288 Neko Case 1538710501 Michelle 0 to-read 4.09 2025 The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
author: Neko Case
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.09
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]]> The Emperor of Gladness 219848315 Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing � formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness � are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]> 416 Ocean Vuong 059383187X Michelle 0 to-read 4.35 2025 The Emperor of Gladness
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.35
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]]> Good Dirt 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Michelle 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Good Dirt
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.06
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]]> <![CDATA[Black Star (Door of No Return Book 2)]]> 219584891 The riveting second book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Door of No Return trilogy

Twelve-year old Charley is set on becoming the first female pitcher to play professional baseball, even if that’s a lofty dream for a Black girl in the American South in the 1920s. Even so, her grandfather Kofi’s thrilling stories about courageous ancestors and epic journeys make it impossible not to dream big. She knows he has so much more to tell, but according to her parents, she isn’t old enough to know about certain things, like what happened to Booker Preston that one night in Great Bridge, and why she can never play on the brand-new baseball field on the other side of town.

When Charley challenges a neighbourhood bully to a game at the church picnic, she knows she can win, even with her ragtag team. Then a dispute on the field leads to Charley making a fateful decision, one that will bring consequences she never could have imagined.

In this thrilling second book of the Door of No Return trilogy, set during the turbulent segregation era, Kwame Alexander weaves a spellbinding story of struggle, determination and the unflappable faith of an American family.]]> 385 Kwame Alexander 1839135689 Michelle 5 4.43 2024 Black Star (Door of No Return Book 2)
author: Kwame Alexander
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, poc-authors, poetry, childrens
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Door of No Return (The Door of No Return, #1)]]> 60021207 New York Times Bestseller!

From theNewbery Medaland Coretta Scott King Awardwinning author Kwame Alexander, comes the first book in a searing, breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the epic odyssey of an African family.

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night. His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know." “Like what?" Kofi asks. “The beasts,� his brother answers.

One fateful night, the unthinkable happens, and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, andaway from everything he loves.

Thisspellbindingnovel by the author of The Crossover and Booked will take you on anunforgettableadventure that will open your eyes and break your heart.

The Door of No Return is an excellent choice for independent reading, sharing in the classroom, homeschooling, and book groups.]]> 432 Kwame Alexander 0316441864 Michelle 4 4.29 2022 The Door of No Return (The Door of No Return, #1)
author: Kwame Alexander
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, poc-authors, poetry, young-adult, childrens
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i]]> 406174 From a Native Daughter, a provocative, well-reasoned attack against the rampant abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination, has generated heated debates in Hawai'i and throughout the world. This 1999 revised work includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.]]> 272 Haunani-Kay Trask 0824820592 Michelle 0 to-read 4.48 1999 From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i
author: Haunani-Kay Trask
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Michelle 0 to-read 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lore Olympus: Volume Five (Lore Olympus, #5)]]> 75607709 Scandalous gossip, wild parties, and forbidden love--the Greek tale of Hades and Persephone gets a romantic modern update in the gorgeously illustrated, Eisner Award-winning Lore Olympus, including behind-the-scenes content!

An ingenious take on the Greek Pantheon, Lore Olympus is a modern update on the story of Hades and Persephone. Follow the propulsive love story of two Greek gods, told with lavish artwork and contemporary sensibilities.

This full-color edition of Smythe's original Eisner Award-winning webcomic Lore Olympus features exclusive behind-the-scenes content and brings Greek mythology into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.

This volume collects episodes 103-126 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus.]]> 400 Rachel Smythe 0593599063 Michelle 3 4.46 2023 Lore Olympus: Volume Five (Lore Olympus, #5)
author: Rachel Smythe
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: fantasy, graphic-novels, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> The Life of Dai 203055162

'Part memoir and part masterclass in finding hope and joy in the face of unthinkable challenges. This isn't a book about cancer, it's a book about living' � Jaquie Brown

Dai Henwood wanted to be a comedian even before he knew what a comedian was. He always knew there was something special in being able to make people laugh.

Over a 25-year career, the much-loved Kiwi entertainer and TV host has won every major comedy award in New Zealand. But in January 2023, Dai shared publicly that three years earlier he had been diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer.

Perhaps the ultimate teacher for what really matters, Dai's incurable cancer has shown him a new way of living that embraces small moments of perfection and cherishes things we often overlook.

As well as showing us how laughter can be a wonderful medicine � and there are many laughs in his book � Dai teaches us that often the gifts we've been searching for are right in front of us, if only we could see them.]]> 299 Dai Henwood 1775492869 Michelle 4 4.41 The Life of Dai
author: Dai Henwood
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: aotearoa-new-zealand, audiobooks, memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Maori, Honouring the Treaty]]> 216959097 177 Avril Bell 1776711440 Michelle 0 to-read 4.11 Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Maori, Honouring the Treaty
author: Avril Bell
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bookshop Dogs 199622179
Dogs of all shapes and sizes visit Ruth Shaw's three wee bookshops in Manapōuri in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. Local dogs, holiday house dogs, travelling dogs: many have great stories, be they funny, sad, strange, bemusing, quirky or sweet.

Woven throughout are tales of the very special Hunza, the dog who worked with troubled teens alongside Ruth when she was a youth worker.

This is a window into the wonderful world of Ruth and her generous love of people, books and dogs. It's a must-read for dog fans, book fans and anyone who loved her first book, The Bookseller at the End of the World.]]> 272 Ruth Shaw 1991006268 Michelle 4 4.05 Bookshop Dogs
author: Ruth Shaw
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: aotearoa-new-zealand, audiobooks, memoir, non-fiction, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> Buried Deep and Other Stories 203956677 A thrilling collection of thirteen short stories that span the worlds of the New York Times bestselling author of the Scholomance Trilogy, including a sneak peek at the land where her next novel will be set.

From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the gothic, magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy to the fairy tale worlds of Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories.

In Buried Deep, we move from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the Black Death, and into the modern era. We meet Mark Antony, Sherlock Holmes, and Elizabeth Bennet, in ways we have never seen them before. We visit exotic fantasy cities and alien civilizations among the stars.

Though the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: the act of finding and seizing one’s destiny, and the lengths one will go to achieve that—be it turning pirate, captaining a fighting dragon, or shifting from marriage to seek your destiny with a sword.

And in the two tales original to this collection, we first reenter the remade Scholomance in the wake of El’s revolution and see what life is like for the new crop of students. Then, we get a glimpse at the world of Novik’s upcoming series, a deserted land, populated only by silent and enigmatic architectural behemoths whose secrets are yet to be unlocked.]]> 430 Naomi Novik 0593600355 Michelle 4 3.99 2024 Buried Deep and Other Stories
author: Naomi Novik
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: audiobooks, fantasy, short-stories, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> Leave the Girls Behind 203789724 The acclaimed author of the “tour de force� (The New York Times Book Review) Before You Knew My Name returns with a fresh suspense novel about a woman haunted by a serial killer and the ghosts he left behind.

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.

Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women—one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.

From an author who “pushes the boundaries of crime fiction in all the right ways� (Alex Finlay, author of The Night Shift), Leave the Girls Behind is another spine-chilling thriller that will linger long after you finish the last page.]]> 352 Jacqueline Bublitz 0751581712 Michelle 3 3.24 2024 Leave the Girls Behind
author: Jacqueline Bublitz
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: audiobooks, mystery-thriller, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom]]> 40642377 Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.

Drawing on her life's work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.

To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom--not merely reform--teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.]]> 200 Bettina L. Love 0807069159 Michelle 5 4.53 2019 We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
author: Bettina L. Love
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/08
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: audiobooks, poc-authors, teacher-pd, women-or-nonbinary-authors, anti-racism, lgbtq-plus-authors, to-re-read
review:
A hard and sobering read, but definitely an important one, especially for all educators.
]]> <![CDATA[Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life]]> 15843125
In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know, but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

To foster children who will thrive in today’s constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development. Drawing on evidence from anthropology, psychology, and history, Gray demonstrates that free play is the primary means by which children learn to control their lives, solve problems, get along with peers, and become emotionally resilient. This capacity to learn through play evolved long ago, in hunter-gatherer bands where children acquired the skills of the culture through their own initiatives. And these instincts still operate remarkably well today, as studies at alternative, democratically administered schools show. When children are in charge of their own education, they learn better—and at lower cost than the traditional model of coercive schooling.

A brave, counterintuitive proposal for freeing our children from the shackles of the curiosity-killing institution we call school, Free to Learn suggests that it’s time to stop asking what’s wrong with our children, and start asking what’s wrong with the system. It shows how we can act—both as parents and as members of society—to improve children’s lives and promote their happiness and learning.]]> 288 Peter O. Gray 0465025994 Michelle 5 4.24 2013 Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
author: Peter O. Gray
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/26
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: audiobooks, teacher-pd, to-re-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder]]> 10381725 For many of us, thinking about the future conjures up images of Cormac McCarthy's The Road: a post-apocalyptic dystopia stripped of nature. Richard Louv, author of the landmark bestseller Last Child in the Woods, urges us to change our vision of the future, suggesting that if we reconceive environmentalism and sustainability, they will evolve into a larger movement that will touch every part of society.

This New Nature Movement taps into the restorative powers of the natural world to boost mental acuity and creativity; promote health and wellness; build smarter and more sustainable businesses, communities, and economies; and ultimately strengthen human bonds. Supported by groundbreaking research, anecdotal evidence, and compelling personal stories, Louv offers renewed optimism while challenging us to rethink the way we live.

]]> 320 Richard Louv 1565125819 Michelle 4 3.85 The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder
author: Richard Louv
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: audiobooks, nature, non-fiction, personal-development, teacher-pd, to-re-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids]]> 6129974
Based on Payne’s twenty year’s experience successfully counseling busy families, Simplicity Parenting teaches parents how to worry and hover less–and how to enjoy more. For those who want to slow their children’s lives down but don’t know where to start, Payne offers both inspiration and a blueprint for change.

� Streamline your home environment. The average child has more than 150 toys. Here are tips for reducing the amount of toys, books, and clutter–as well as the lights, sounds, and general sensory overload that crowd the space young imaginations need in order to grow.

� Establish rhythms and rituals. Predictability (routines) and transparency (knowing the day’s plan) are soothing pressure valves for children. Here are ways to ease daily tensions, create battle-free mealtimes and bedtimes, and tell if your child is overwhelmed.

� Schedule a break in the schedule. Too many activities may limit children’s ability to motivate and direct themselves. Learn how to establish intervals of calm in your child’s daily torrent of constant doing–and familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of organized sports and other “enrichment� activities.

� Scale back on media and parental involvement. Back out of hyperparenting by managing your children’s “screen time� to limit the endless and sometimes scary deluge of information and stimulation.

Parental hovering is really about anxiety; by doing less and trusting more, parents can create a sanctuary that nurtures children’s identity, well-being, and resiliency as they grow–slowly–into themselves. A manifesto for protecting the grace of childhood, Simplicity Parenting is an eloquent guide to bringing new rhythms to bear on the lifelong art of parenting.]]> 256 Kim John Payne 0345507975 Michelle 0 to-read 4.21 2009 Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids
author: Kim John Payne
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Until the Streetlights Come On: How a Return to Play Brightens Our Present and Prepares Kids for an Uncertain Future]]> 135969871
A homeschooling mother of five and founder of the global 1000 Hours Outside movement, Ginny Yurich explains how we got to this point--and how to get back to a healthier, more engaging relationship with the world outside. With a mom's heart and an educator's eye, Ginny shows you

· the importance of unstructured play for children
· what boredom actually contributes to our brains
· the value of sunlight and social play
· the role of play in lifelong learning
· how to make time outside more attractive to your child than screentime
· and much more

If you want your kids to grow up curious, resilient, and with a sense of adventure and community, it's essential to make outside play a priority. This book shows you why and how.]]> 224 Ginny Yurich 1540903400 Michelle 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Until the Streetlights Come On: How a Return to Play Brightens Our Present and Prepares Kids for an Uncertain Future
author: Ginny Yurich
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![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 Michelle 3 3.70 2013 The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: audiobooks, cozy-mystery, mystery-thriller, poc-authors, japanese-literature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We'll Prescribe You a Cat (We'll Prescribe You a Cat, #1)]]> 209891170 A cat a day keeps the doctor away�.

Discover this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats in the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation.

Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can be found only by people who are struggling in their lives and who genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take� their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, and occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout these pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a hardened handbag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha learns to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients grapple with their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.]]> 297 Syou Ishida 0593818741 Michelle 5 Whimsical and heart-warming 3.79 2023 We'll Prescribe You a Cat (We'll Prescribe You a Cat, #1)
author: Syou Ishida
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: audiobooks, contemporary, magical-realism, poc-authors, japanese-literature
review:
Whimsical and heart-warming
]]> Birthday Girl 40554247 She waited on tables as usual that day, her twentieth birthday. She always worked Fridays, but if things had gone according to plan on that particular Friday, she would have had the night off.

One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress’s uneventful twentieth birthday takes a strange and fateful turn when she’s asked to deliver dinner to the restaurant’s reclusive owner.

Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami’s 70th birthday.]]> 48 Haruki Murakami 1787301257 Michelle 3 3.62 2002 Birthday Girl
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2019/12/30
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: short-stories, poc-authors, japanese-literature
review:

]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Michelle 2 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/02/11
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: audiobooks, poc-authors, science-fiction, japanese-literature
review:

]]> Made for Love 32600556 307 Alissa Nutting 0062280554 Michelle 0 to-read 3.48 2017 Made for Love
author: Alissa Nutting
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Pruning Principle: Mastering the Art of Strategic Subtraction Within Education]]> 220203294 The Pruning Principle offers a groundbreaking approach to educational leadership, drawing inspiration from horticulture to address the chronic issues of overwork and inefficiency in schools. The authors, Dr Simon Breakspear and Michael Rosenbrock, propose a radical shift from the culture of "doing more" to one of strategic subtraction, arguing that by carefully pruning away non-essential tasks and initiatives, schools can achieve better outcomes with less strain on resources and staff.

This practical guide provides a comprehensive framework for implementing The Pruning Principle in educational settings. It outlines the causes of current challenges, introduces the concept and mechanics of pruning, and offers detailed, actionable steps for creating sustainable work rhythms and decision-making processes. With its focus on achievable improvement and educator wellbeing, this book promises to be an invaluable resource for school leaders seeking to cultivate more-effective and balanced educational environments.]]> Dr Simon Breakspear 1923215418 Michelle 0 to-read 3.40 The Pruning Principle: Mastering the Art of Strategic Subtraction Within Education
author: Dr Simon Breakspear
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The House of the Witch 211203330 Now: When Adrianna arrives at the small, run-down cottage, near the sea in rural Norfolk, she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Here she can forget her life in the city, and the problems she’s left behind there, at least for a while.

But � like Adrianna herself � the cottage holds secrets. And when Adrianna finds a mysterious bundle of notes hidden under a floorboard, she can’t shake the idea that they’ve been waiting for her. Especially when � in the rambling, overgrown garden � she then finds a strangely-carved stone, drawing her into a centuries-old mystery�

1646: Between her work as the village midwife and the medicines she sells from her cottage, Ursula has no need for a man. But this ideal leaves her unprotected in a world where just one accusation of witchcraft can mean certain death. So when she catches the eye of a powerful new local doctor, she must use every part of her cunning, or risk becoming his prisoner�

Can the two women � their paths bound by place and history � each find the keys to their own destiny?]]> 330 Clare Marchant 1836030401 Michelle 2 4.25 The House of the Witch
author: Clare Marchant
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, mystery-thriller, women-or-nonbinary-authors
review:

]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Michelle 0 to-read 3.82 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Shred Sisters 208107364 A wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight, but when her stunning confidence morphs into something erratic and unpredictable, she becomes a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Put simply, she has no brakes.

Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, survives Ollie’s bullying and outcast status throughout her school years. She dreams of winning a Nobel Prize and unlocking the mysteries of the mind. Amy believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. Except none of that can explain what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the bipolar disorder that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed world.

As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. For all that upends and unsettles these sisters, an inextricable bond always draws them back.

Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it’s what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you or hurt you more than a sister.]]> 272 Betsy Lerner 080216370X Michelle 0 to-read 3.77 Shred Sisters
author: Betsy Lerner
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
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]]> The Stardust Grail 195791479 Save one world. Doom her own.

From the acclaimed author of The Deep Sky comes a thrilling anti-colonial space heist to save an alien civilization.

Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.

Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.

Maya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.

--

Content warnings are available at the author's website (see author bio).]]> 312 Yume Kitasei 1250875374 Michelle 0 to-read 3.64 2024 The Stardust Grail
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name: Michelle
average rating: 3.64
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]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Michelle 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
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average rating: 4.11
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]]> <![CDATA[Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently]]> 23699151 Change the way you think about gender and feminism forever.

With all the revolutionary zeal, laugh-out-loud humour and intelligence of Laura Bates, Caitlin Moran and Bell Hooks, Emer O'Toole explores what it really means to 'act like a girl'.

Being a woman is, largely, about performance - how we dress and modify our bodies, what we say, the roles we play, and how we conform to expectations. Gender stereotypes are still deeply embedded in our society, but Emer O'Toole is on a mission to re-write the old script and bend the rules of gender - and she shows how and why we should all be joining in.

With game-changing ideas and laugh-out-loud humour, this book will open your mind and revolutionise the way that you think about gender.]]> 277 Emer O'Toole Michelle 0 to-read 4.21 2015 Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
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]]> The Lottery 6219656
“The Lottery� stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery� has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
]]> 30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Michelle 0 to-read 4.08 1948 The Lottery
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average rating: 4.08
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]]> Strange Sally Diamond 62322008
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .]]> 384 Liz Nugent 1844885968 Michelle 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Strange Sally Diamond
author: Liz Nugent
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
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]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Michelle 0 to-read 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
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]]> <![CDATA[Nine Girls: A brand new mystery for 9-12 year olds]]> 193555106 They dug a hole right there on our farm on the bank of the Mangawara and they put the box filled with gold inside it and covered it with dirt. And to keep the gold safe until they could return one of them placed a tapu on it. A tapu so that anyone who tried to touch the gold before they could come back for it would die.

Titch is determined to find the gold hidden somewhere on her family's farm. It might be tapu but that won't put her off.

Her dad has gone bankrupt, and she has had to leave her home in the city and move back with her family to smalltown Ngaruawahia, start a new school and find new friends. Could the hidden gold be the way to fix her family's money problems?

Titch, her cousins and new friend Tania set out to find the gold. But an unexpected encounter with a creature from the nearby river sees Titch learn about her own Maori heritage and the dangers of messing with tapu.

A fascinating insight into Maori legend and culture, Nine Girls is a page-turning adventure that shows what it's like to feel like an outsider in our own world.]]> 284 Stacy Gregg 0241685257 Michelle 0 to-read 4.40 Nine Girls: A brand new mystery for 9-12 year olds
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.40
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]]> The Seven Year Slip 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston Michelle 0 to-read 4.18 2023 The Seven Year Slip
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name: Michelle
average rating: 4.18
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]]> 17 Years Later 149116142 Is the truth sometimes best left buried?

A crime masterpiece by bestselling author J. P. Pomare

The violent slaughter of the wealthy Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation of New Zealand and scarred the small idyllic rural town of Cambridge forever.

All of the evidence pointed to their young live-in chef, Bill Ruatara, who was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. The brutal crime is now infamous, and Bill a figure of contempt who deserves to rot in jail for life.

Seventeen years later, prison psychologist TK Phillips is fighting for an appeal. He is convinced Bill did not receive a fair trial. When celebrity true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott takes a sudden interest, it's not long before she uncovers new evidence that could set fire to the prosecution's case.

As TK and Sloane dig deeper into the past, they become tangled in a complex web of danger and deceit. With Bill's innocence far from assured and their own lives at stake, will they risk everything to unearth the truth, or leave it buried for good?]]> 404 J.P. Pomare 0733649653 Michelle 0 to-read 4.33 2024 17 Years Later
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]]> There Are Rivers in the Sky 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Michelle 0 to-read 4.39 2024 There Are Rivers in the Sky
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average rating: 4.39
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]]> Jonathan Livingstone Seagull 833594 Jonathan Livingston Seagull 96 Richard Bach 0246138149 Michelle 0 to-read 3.88 1970 Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
author: Richard Bach
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1970
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]]> <![CDATA[Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)]]> 23437156 Alternate cover of ISBN 9781627792127

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone...

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.]]> 480 Leigh Bardugo 1627792120 Michelle 0 to-read 4.47 2015 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
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]]>