Iris's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 05 Apr 2025 13:18:18 -0700 60 Iris's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Rabbits, Crabs, Etc.: Stories by Japanese Women]]> 599411 Fuji / Sono Ayako --
A bond for two lifetimes-gleani / Enchi Fumiko --
A mother's love / Okamoto Kanoko --
Crabs / Kono Taeko --
Happiness / Uno Chiyo]]>
160 Phyllis Birnbaum 0824808177 Iris 0 currently-reading 3.93 1982 Rabbits, Crabs, Etc.: Stories by Japanese Women
author: Phyllis Birnbaum
name: Iris
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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Hunchback 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder,Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostitute�). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body andunrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potentialof our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]>
112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 Iris 5 3.57 2023 Hunchback
author: Saou Ichikawa
name: Iris
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 1]]> 36538793
In Taisho-era Japan, Tanjiro Kamado is a kindhearted boy who makes a living selling charcoal. But his peaceful life is shattered when a demon slaughters his entire family. His little sister Nezuko is the only survivor, but she has been transformed into a demon herself! Tanjiro sets out on a dangerous journey to find a way to return his sister to normal and destroy the demon who ruined his life.

Learning to slaydemons won’t be easy, and Tanjiro barely knows where to start. The surprise appearance of another boy named Giyu, who seems to know what’s going on, might provide some answers…but only if Tanjiro can stop Giyu from killing his sister first!]]>
192 Koyoharu Gotouge 1974700526 Iris 5 vol1-23. fantastic! 4.39 2016 Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 1
author: Koyoharu Gotouge
name: Iris
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/23
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:
vol1-23. fantastic!
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<![CDATA[Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk]]> 13621513
“Mothers, father, sons, and read this giant-hearted novel.”—MARIA SEMPLE, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving Day, the Bravos are guests of a Dallas football team, slated to be part of the halftime show.

Among the Bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn. Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and support our troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the team’s owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.

Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.]]>
274 Ben Fountain 0062096826 Iris 4 3.87 2012 Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
author: Ben Fountain
name: Iris
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A Graphic Novel]]> 4133366
Complete with Fitzgerald's original text, dazzling watercolor illustrations, and an afterword describing the story's origins and critical reception, this edition offers a fresh look at a literary masterpiece.]]>
128 F. Scott Fitzgerald 1594742812 Iris 4 3.71 1922 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A Graphic Novel
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Iris
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/13
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:

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The Beggar Student 216778584 For fans of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai’s darkly bewitching novel about the small redemptions of being a pathetic, miserable writer.

A fictional thirty-something writer named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots a figure drowning in a nearby aqueduct.

He doesn’t want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy―a high-school dropout―Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform that very night as the live narrator of a film screening in the boy’s stead�

So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution and glimmerings of truth in intellectual one-upmanship. Replete with settings straight out of the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and echoes of the themes in No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.]]>
74 Osamu Dazai 0811238598 Iris 4
the opening sentence lol

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3.67 1940 The Beggar Student
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Iris
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:
not even the wisest reader knows the anguish of the writer who has sent a truly awful piece of writing to a magazine in order to survive.

the opening sentence lol


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James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]>
303 Percival Everett Iris 5
i hope never again to take a pencil and paper for granted.
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4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Iris
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:
"dull tools are more dangerous than sharp ones."

i hope never again to take a pencil and paper for granted.

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Popular Hits of the Showa Era 18047387 A darkly satirical tale of the generation and gender gaps in Japanese society, Ryu Murakami’s Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a literary karaoke act combining manga and street culture.

It’s a set-up like a video game: two rival gangs fight to death for the control of a Tokyo district. In one gang, six young losers committed only to drinking, voyeurism and karaoke singing, in the other six tough independent older women. From ambush to revenge, both groups are gradually decimated until the ultimate showdown.

In Murakami’s inimitably brutal and brilliant style, Popular Hits dissects the gender and generational conflicts of contemporary society in a hilarious satire.]]>
192 Ryū Murakami 1908968443 Iris 3 3.74 1994 Popular Hits of the Showa Era
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Iris
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/15
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:

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The Box: Uncanny Stories 6376283
"Button, Button," Richard Matheson's chilling tale of greed and temptation, is now the basis of The Box, the new film from the director of Donnie Darko. In addition, this outstanding collection also contains many other unforgettable stories by Matheson, the award-winning author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come.

"The inventive plots and spare but convincing portraits of ordinary men and women caught up in forces beyond their control demonstrate why Stephen King has called Matheson his most significant influence."
--Publishers Weekly]]>
272 Richard Matheson 0765361434 Iris 4 3.40 1970 The Box: Uncanny Stories
author: Richard Matheson
name: Iris
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/23
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:

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Butter 190840472 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]>
448 Asako Yuzuki 0008511691 Iris 5
maybe the value we set for each book peaks at a certain age. i may've rolled my eyes at this a decade ago, but am old enough now to appreciate what the author is exploring here.]]>
3.62 2017 Butter
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Iris
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:
i thiiiink this is actually a really good book, despite its top reviews on goodreads being negative and dismissive. it juggles tough themes- like familial upbringing, individuality, sex, cruelty- at a highly nuanced level. and characters evolve within the timeline of this story, they are self-actualized by the end. those are rare feats.

maybe the value we set for each book peaks at a certain age. i may've rolled my eyes at this a decade ago, but am old enough now to appreciate what the author is exploring here.
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<![CDATA[The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1]]> 44018869 Housework without honor or humanity

He was the fiercest member of the yakuza, a man who left countless underworld legends in his wake. They called him “the Immortal Dragon.� But one day he walked away from it all to walk another path—the path of the househusband! The curtain rises on this cozy yakuza comedy!]]>
160 Kousuke Oono 197470940X Iris 5
01-31-25: vol 1-3
02-01-25: vol 4-5
02-02-25: vol 6-8
02-04-25: vol 9-10
02-05-25: vol 11-13
(next vol release: 03-18-25)
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4.20 2018 The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1
author: Kousuke Oono
name: Iris
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves:
review:
it's snappy! and the art is clean.

01-31-25: vol 1-3
02-01-25: vol 4-5
02-02-25: vol 6-8
02-04-25: vol 9-10
02-05-25: vol 11-13
(next vol release: 03-18-25)

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<![CDATA[All You Need Is Kill (All You Need Is Kill: Official Graphic Novel Adaptation)]]> 18280790 96 Nick Mamatas 142156081X Iris 2 3.04 2004 All You Need Is Kill (All You Need Is Kill: Official Graphic Novel Adaptation)
author: Nick Mamatas
name: Iris
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2014/06/26
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:

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Alien Clay 199851460
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history � yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free . . .]]>
416 Adrian Tchaikovsky 0316578983 Iris 4 4.23 2024 Alien Clay
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Iris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution]]> 36099185 In a sweeping work of reportage set over the course of 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Fountain recounts a surreal year of politics and an exploration of the third American existential crisis

Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a “burning� of the old order as America attempts to remake itself.

Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.

In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation. Beautiful Country Burn Againis a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.]]>
445 Ben Fountain 0062688766 Iris 0 currently-reading 4.18 2018 Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
author: Ben Fountain
name: Iris
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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A Magical Girl Retires 197448796 A millennial turned magical girl must combat climate change and credit card debt in this delightful, witty, and wildly imaginative ode to magical girl manga.

Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge.

But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white—her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone.

But the young woman’s initial excitement turns to frustration when she learns being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it’s portrayed in stories. It isn’t just destiny—it’s work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical, she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card—which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn’t a monster or an intergalactic war. It’s global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too.

Park Seolyeon reimagines classic fantasy tropes in a novel that explores real-world challenges that are both deeply personal and universal: the search for meaning and the desire to do good in a world that feels like it’s ending. A fun, fast-paced, and enchanting narrative that sparkles thanks to award-nominated translator Anton Hur, A Magical Girl Retires reminds us that we are all magical girls—that fighting evil by moonlight and winning love by daylight can be anyone's game.

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur.]]>
160 Park Seolyeon 0063373262 Iris 4
a note from the translator: 5 stars

the most iconic magic girl of all, sailor moon, specifically refers to herself as a champion of justice. the magic that magical girls want is not to grow into giants or concoct powerful fragrances or manipulate time or be clairvoyant--it's the power of justice. magical girls exist bc justice does not.
-anton hur, translator]]>
3.57 2022 A Magical Girl Retires
author: Park Seolyeon
name: Iris
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:
book: 4 stars

a note from the translator: 5 stars

the most iconic magic girl of all, sailor moon, specifically refers to herself as a champion of justice. the magic that magical girls want is not to grow into giants or concoct powerful fragrances or manipulate time or be clairvoyant--it's the power of justice. magical girls exist bc justice does not.
-anton hur, translator
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Kappa 62972501 ܳٲɲ’s magical final work is a short novel with a magic spell all its own—poignant, fantastical, wry, melancholic, and witty


The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age.

ܳٲɲ’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa. He decides to chase it and, like Alice pursuing the White Rabbit, he tumbles down a hole, out of the human world and into the realm of the Kappas. There he is well looked after, in fact almost made a pet as a human, he is a novelty. He makes friends and spends his time learning about their world, exploring the seemingly ridiculous ways of the Kappa, but noting many—not always flattering—parallels to Japanese mores regarding morality, legal justice, economics, and sex. Alas, when the patient eventually returns to the human world, he becomes disgusted by humanity and, like Gulliver missing the Houyhnhnms, he begins to pine for his old friends the Kappas, rather as if he has been forced to take leave of Toad of Toad Hall…]]>
67 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 0811232166 Iris 4 written 1927, the year akutagawa took his own life, at age 35.
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3.72 1927 Kappa
author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
name: Iris
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1927
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
surprisingly, read just like voltaire.
written 1927, the year akutagawa took his own life, at age 35.

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Goodnight Tokyo 207196855
Seen through the eyes of a cast of colourful characters, Goodnight Tokyo takes the reader on an intimate journey around Tokyo after dark, when Tokyo's eccentrics and insomniacs emerge, and a small grain of madness begins to germinate in the city's night air. Confessions of intimacy and loneliness merge with the the funeral of an old telephone, the flea-market in which objects are bartered for that don't actually exist.

Told over a number of nights � and punctuated by Matsui's dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs � Yoshida weaves a web of stories that prove to be intimately cand compellingly connected.]]>
187 Atsuhiro Yoshida 1787705137 Iris 3 3.73 2018 Goodnight Tokyo
author: Atsuhiro Yoshida
name: Iris
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:

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Fifty Sounds 55856548 Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language that draws together a variety of cultural reflections � from conformity and being an outsider, to the gendering of Japanese society, and attitudes towards food and the cult of ‘deliciousness� � alongside probing insights into the transformative powers of language-learning. Candid, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is remarkable work that takes a transparent look at language itself, lifting the lid on the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language.]]> 345 Polly Barton 1913097501 Iris 5
i found myself occasionally red-faced, licked by her white hot sentences, and asking, is it alright for me to partake in someone else's most intimate moments?

i was only seeking some encouragement in language learning, but barton gave me some footing for my own emotional landscape as well.

10 stars]]>
4.17 2021 Fifty Sounds
author: Polly Barton
name: Iris
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
beautiful memoir collecting the most poignant interactions barton had with ppl in JP.

i found myself occasionally red-faced, licked by her white hot sentences, and asking, is it alright for me to partake in someone else's most intimate moments?

i was only seeking some encouragement in language learning, but barton gave me some footing for my own emotional landscape as well.

10 stars
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<![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 Iris 4 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Iris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/01
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

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Dragon Palace 123236963 Included in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023

From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty—in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don’t apply.

Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.]]>
160 Hiromi Kawakami 1737625350 Iris 2 white-flag 12-17/23-24: 2 stars, 100%
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3.27 2023 Dragon Palace
author: Hiromi Kawakami
name: Iris
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: white-flag
review:
08-15-24: 1 star, 30% / 2 short stories
12-17/23-24: 2 stars, 100%

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<![CDATA[Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life]]> 30211990 What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?

Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living.

Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Soren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together.

Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live?]]>
224 Yiyun Li 0399589090 Iris 4 3.72 2017 Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
author: Yiyun Li
name: Iris
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Japanese Haiku (Japanese Haiku Series I)]]> 17242027
Haiku icon Basho is represented amply here, as are imagery-virtuoso Buson and wry, warm, painfully human Issa. The verses of Shiki, Joso, Kyorai, Kikaku, Chora, Gyodai, Kakei, Izen, and others also appear, all illuminated by lovely woodblock prints. Ranging from exquisite (In the sea surf edge/Mingling with the bright small shells�/Bush-clover petals –Basho) to bittersweet (Dead my fine hopes/And dry my dreaming, but still�/Iris, blue each spring –Shushiki) to silly (Dim the grey cow comes/Mooing, mooing, and mooing/Out of the morning mist –Issa), this collection will stir your senses and your heart.]]>
68 Matsuo Bashō Iris 3 3.75 1955 Japanese Haiku (Japanese Haiku Series I)
author: Matsuo Bashō
name: Iris
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1955
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

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Into the Uncut Grass 123133352
“But sooner or later your mother will find us,� Walter said, looking back at the house. “She always does.�

The boy’s eyes lit up again. He had an idea.

“Then this time we need to go where we’ve never gone before,� he said. “Into the uncut grass!�

In the tradition of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse comes a gorgeously illustrated fable about a young child’s journey into the world beyond the shadow of home, a magical landscape where he discovers the secrets of sharing, connection, and finding peace with the people we love. Infused with the author’s signature wit and imagination, in collaboration with visionary artist Sabina Hahn, it’s a tale for readers of all ages—to be read aloud or read alone.]]>
128 Trevor Noah 059372996X Iris 4 4.02 2024 Into the Uncut Grass
author: Trevor Noah
name: Iris
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki]]> 49228706
PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you?

ME: I don't know, I'm � what's the word � depressed? Do I have to go into detail?

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her - what to call it? - depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends, performing the calmness her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?

Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a twelve-week period, and expanding on each session with her own reflective micro-essays, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions, and harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness. It will appeal to anyone who has ever felt alone or unjustified in their everyday despair.


—ĔĔĔĔ�


Aku: Bagaimana caranya agar bisa mengubah pikiran bahwa saya ini standar dan biasa saja?

Psikiater: Memangnya hal itu merupakan masalah yang harus diperbaiki?

Aku: Iya, karena saya ingin mencintai diri saya sendiri.

-----

I Want To Die But I Want To Eat Tteokpokki adalah esai yang berisi tentang pertanyaan, penilaian, saran, nasihat, dan evaluasi diri yang bertujuan agar pembaca bisa menerima dan mencintai dirinya.

Buku self improvement ini mendapatkan sambutan baik karena pembaca meraskan hal yang sama dengan kisah Baek Se Hee sehingga buku ini mendapatkan predikat bestseller di Korea Selatan.]]>
232 Baek Se-hee 6237351035 Iris 2 white-flag 45% 3.26 2018 I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki
author: Baek Se-hee
name: Iris
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: white-flag
review:
45%
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Black Jack, Vol. 1 2479215 288 Osamu Tezuka 193428727X Iris 5
12-18-13: fini vol 1
12-20-13: fini vol 5
12-21-13: fini vol 6 + 7
12-23-13: fini vol 3
12-24-13: fini vol 4 + 8
12-25-13: fini vol 9
12-27-13: fini vol 10
12-31-13: fini vol 2
01-01-14: fini vol 11
01-03-14: fini vol 12
01-04-14: fini vol 13
01-09-14: fini vol 14
01-11-14: fini vol 15 + 16
01-12-14: fini vol 17]]>
4.01 1974 Black Jack, Vol. 1
author: Osamu Tezuka
name: Iris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2013/01/12
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
17 books of mini-stories based around a mysterious, unlicensed doctor (read: limitless storytelling). it's like doctor who in smaller story-bites! cleverly explores ethics & psychology. so good, i would consider investing in these books (17 x $13).

12-18-13: fini vol 1
12-20-13: fini vol 5
12-21-13: fini vol 6 + 7
12-23-13: fini vol 3
12-24-13: fini vol 4 + 8
12-25-13: fini vol 9
12-27-13: fini vol 10
12-31-13: fini vol 2
01-01-14: fini vol 11
01-03-14: fini vol 12
01-04-14: fini vol 13
01-09-14: fini vol 14
01-11-14: fini vol 15 + 16
01-12-14: fini vol 17
]]>
Your Utopia 173403968 By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. These stories are suffused with Chung's inimitable wry humour and surprisingly tender moments, too � often between unexpected subjects.

In ‘The Center for Immortality Research�, a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she witnessed during the event, under the noses of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. But she can’t be fired � no one can. In ‘One More Kiss, Dear�, a tender, one-sided love blooms in the AI-elevator of an apartment complex; as in, the elevator develops a profound affection for one of the residents. In ‘Seeds�, we see the final frontier of capitalism’s destruction of the planet and the GMO companies who rule the agricultural industry in this bleak future, but nature has ways of creeping back to life.

If you haven’t yet experienced the fruits of this singular imagination, Your Utopia is waiting.]]>
256 Bora Chung 1643756214 Iris 3 3.64 2021 Your Utopia
author: Bora Chung
name: Iris
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
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Cursed Bunny 56648660 Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.]]>
251 Bora Chung 1916277187 Iris 5 3.77 2017 Cursed Bunny
author: Bora Chung
name: Iris
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
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Of Ants and Dinosaurs 75700063
On an otherwise ordinary day in the late Cretaveous, the seeds of Earth's first and greatest civilization were sown in the grisly aftermath of a Tyrannosaurus' lunch.

From humble tooth-picking origins, ants and dinosaurs � two species so unalike and yet so complementary � forged an alliance that culminated in an antimatter-powered Age of Wonder.

But such magnificent industry came at a price � a price paid first by Earth's biosphere, and then by all those dependent on it. And yet the dinosaurs refused to heed all warning of impending ecological collapse, leaving the ants facing a single destroy their allies... or perish alongside them?

'Made my brain itch with its creativity and klaxon alarm... Deceptively simple and brilliantly clever, I simply adored it' LoveReading
'Liu's sense of fun is contagious' Locus]]>
180 Cixin Liu 1789546095 Iris 2 white-flag 4.03 2003 Of Ants and Dinosaurs
author: Cixin Liu
name: Iris
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: white-flag
review:
25% in, i realized this is a fable about china vs western culture.
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<![CDATA[Before We Forget Kindness (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #5)]]> 200998630 Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests:

- The father who could not allow his daughter to get married
- A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one
- A boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents
- A wife holding a child with no name . . .

They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. Another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in Before We Forget Kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.]]>
224 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1035046245 Iris 3 3.93 2023 Before We Forget Kindness (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #5)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Iris
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
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review:

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<![CDATA[Before We Say Goodbye (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #4)]]> 66269953 The fourth novel in the internationally bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, following a new group of customers in a magical time-traveling Tokyo café.

The regulars at Café Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with the whimsical ability it grants them to take a trip into the past—as well as the strict rules involved, including that each traveler must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to get cold. In Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s previous novels, patrons have been reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family and visited loved ones. Now readers will once again be introduced to a new set of visitors.

The Husband with Something Important Left to Say

The Woman Who Couldn’t Bid Her Dog Farewell

The Woman Who Couldn’t Answer a Proposal

The Daughter Who Drove Her Father Away


In Last Chance to Say Goodbye, which is translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot and features signature heartwarming characters and wistful storytelling, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: What would you change if you could travel back in time?]]>
173 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 0369747305 Iris 4 3.94 2021 Before We Say Goodbye (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #4)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Iris
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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the 2nd story is a fave, about apollo the golden retriever
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The Magus 162853 The Magus is a feast for the mind and the senses.]]> 672 John Fowles Iris 2 3.95 1965 The Magus
author: John Fowles
name: Iris
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1965
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
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<![CDATA[Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times: Selected Haiku of Basho]]> 16071739
Basho, the famously bohemian traveler through seventeenth-century Japan, is a poet attuned to the natural world as well as humble human doings; "Piles of quilts/ snow on distant mountains/ I watch both," he writes. His work captures both the profound loneliness of one observing mind and the broad-ranging joy he finds in our connections to the larger community. David Young, acclaimed translator and Knopf poet, writes in his introduction to this selection, "This poet's consciousness affiliates itself with crickets, islands, monkeys, snowfalls, moonscapes, flowers, trees, and ceremonies...Waking and sleeping, alone and in company, he moves through the world, delighting in its details." Young's translations are bright, alert, musically perfect, and rich in tenderness toward their maker.]]>
106 Matsuo Bashō 0307962008 Iris 5 doesn't leave u enlightened
--good to kno that
-ōձ>
4.25 1694 Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times: Selected Haiku of Basho
author: Matsuo Bashō
name: Iris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1694
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:
lightning
doesn't leave u enlightened
--good to kno that

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The Employees 61340209 The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.

Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.]]>
144 Olga Ravn 0811234827 Iris 5 3.74 2018 The Employees
author: Olga Ravn
name: Iris
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
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review:

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<![CDATA[The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]>
518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Iris 4 4.15 2014 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Iris
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
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<![CDATA[Haiku (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)]]> 211546
This anthology brings together hundreds of haiku by the Japanese masters–Basho, Issa, Buson, Shiki–with superb examples from nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. The pioneering translator R. H. Blyth believed that the spirit of haiku is present in all great poetry; inspired by him, the editor of this volume has included lines from such poets as Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Thoreau, and Hopkins, presented here in haiku form. Following them are haiku and haiku-influenced poems of the twentieth century–from Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro� to William Carlos Williams’s “Prelude to Winter,� and from the irreverence of Jack Kerouac to the lyricism of Langston Hughes. The result is a collection as compact, dynamic, and scintillating as the form itself.]]>
256 Peter Washington 1400041287 Iris 4 3.93 2003 Haiku (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)
author: Peter Washington
name: Iris
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

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Mina's Matchbox 202102049 From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, here is a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of the second world war, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.]]>
288 Yōko Ogawa 0593316088 Iris 5 3.75 2006 Mina's Matchbox
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Iris
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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<![CDATA[The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist & the Psychic Thief (The Curious Affair Of, #1)]]> 34661662
To solve some mysteries, one must embrace the impossible.

Has there ever been a more unlikely pair of consulting detectives than Jesperson and Lane? They certainly make a striking Mr. Jasper Jesperson, with his shock of red hair and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of all subjects—save common sense—and Miss Lane, whose logical mind is matched only by her fascination with psychic phenomena.

Their talents are rare . . . as are their customers. So when Jesperson and Lane are hired to track the nocturnal wanderings of a sleepwalking London business owner, they’re simply happy to be working again. The case begins as a window into the séances and other supernatural parlor games that are so popular these days, and takes a sinister turn as the intrepid investigators pull back the curtain on the cutthroat rivalries underpinning polite society.

But after several mediums go missing, it’s clear that Jesperson and Lane are in over their heads. For they’ve uncovered a presence beyond their understanding—an evil force that won’t hesitate to kill in order to achieve its nefarious ends.

Praise for Lisa Tuttle

“A stylish, distinctive storyteller.”—The Washington Post Book World

“This John W. Campbell Award–winning author remains one of fantasy’s best.”—Publishers Weekly]]>
303 Lisa Tuttle 0399182195 Iris 3 white-flag 65% 3.81 2016 The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist & the Psychic Thief (The Curious Affair Of, #1)
author: Lisa Tuttle
name: Iris
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: white-flag
review:
65%
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Girlhood 53138199 A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society.

In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.

When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others� expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.

Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.

Written with Febos� characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.]]>
320 Melissa Febos 1635572525 Iris 0 currently-reading 4.23 2021 Girlhood
author: Melissa Febos
name: Iris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[Before Shadowgate (Worlds of Power)]]> 860529 119 F.X. Nine 0590443135 Iris 4 ]]> 3.50 1991 Before Shadowgate (Worlds of Power)
author: F.X. Nine
name: Iris
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
pure nostalgia, back to my elementary days. thanks nick d., i'll always remember u for the game guidebook assist!

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Small Gods (Discworld, #13) 567657 Librarian's Note: For alternate cover edition of same ISBN published later, click here.

Internationally acclaimed author Terry Pratchett takes the name of religion humorously in vain in this classic tale of gods, miracles, and monsters. A simple lad who can neither read nor write, Brutha is content growing melons for the Temple monks. But his lot changes when a tortoise appears in his garden. To Brutha's dismay, he discovers that he's become his god's Chosen One--a difficult position that requires spreading goodness and stopping holy wars.

Of course no good deed goes unpunished, and soon some rather inquisitive folk are taking an unhealthy interest in Brutha. They don't see a need for peace, love, and tolerance. They liked the old days just fine. And Brutha, too, yearns for the simple life he once led--a desire that leads him to wonder just why his god didn't choose someone else.]]>
357 Terry Pratchett 0061092177 Iris 5 4.24 1992 Small Gods (Discworld, #13)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Iris
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show]]> 176443358
Tommy Tomlinson was watching a dog show on television a few years ago when he had a sudden Are those dogs happy? How about pet dogs—are they happy, too? Those questions sparked a quest to venture inside the dog-show world, in search of a deeper understanding of the bond between dogs and humans that has endured for thousands of years. Dogland shares his surprising, entertaining, and unforgettable adventures.

Tomlinson spends three years on the road and goes behind the scenes at dozens of dog shows across the country, where he is licked, sniffed, or rubbed up against by dogs of nearly every size, shape, and breed. Like a real-life version of Best in Show , Dogland follows one champion show dog—a Samoyed named Striker—and his devoted entourage of breeders, handlers, and owners as he competes in the Westminster Dog Show, the oldest and most famous dog show in America. Tomlinson brings the dog-show circuit to life as he witnesses teams scrambling from town to town in search of championship points and colorful ribbons. Along the way, he also speaks to scientists who have discovered new insights into how dogs and people formed their bond—and how that bond has changed over the centuries.

Engaging, charming, and informative, Dogland is an irresistibly appealing read for pop culture followers and animal lovers alike.]]>
256 Tommy Tomlinson 1982149329 Iris 5
a huge perk in being a writer/artist is that u can bottle up your love for your loved ones, through your craft, for others to experience.]]>
4.08 2024 Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show
author: Tommy Tomlinson
name: Iris
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:
5 stars for fred, tommy's dog.

a huge perk in being a writer/artist is that u can bottle up your love for your loved ones, through your craft, for others to experience.
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<![CDATA[Six Memos for the Next Millennium]]> 9812 128 Italo Calvino 0099730510 Iris 3 4.25 1988 Six Memos for the Next Millennium
author: Italo Calvino
name: Iris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves:
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Light in August 52841137
In a loose, unstructured modernist narrative style that draws from Christian allegory and oral storytelling, Faulkner explores themes of race, sex, class and religion in the American South. By focusing on characters that are misfits, outcasts, or are otherwise marginalized in their community, he portrays the clash of alienated individuals against a Puritanical, prejudiced rural society. Early reception of the novel was mixed, with some reviewers critical of Faulkner's style and subject matter. However, over time, the novel has come to be considered one of the most important literary works by Faulkner and one of the best English-language novels of the 20th century.]]>
169 William Faulkner 1925788164 Iris 3 4.03 1932 Light in August
author: William Faulkner
name: Iris
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1932
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/08/26
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<![CDATA[I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream]]> 20813135 Ich denke, also bin ich109 Jahre nach dem Ende des Dritten Weltkriegs leben nur noch fünf Menschen. Sie hausen in unterirdischen Stollen, immer am Rande des Verhungerns, und werden jede Minute ihres Lebens von einem Supercomputer gefoltert, der ein Bewusstsein erlangt hat � und mit ihm unendlichen Hass auf seine Erbauer. Es gibt nur einen einzigen Ausweg für die gequälten Menschen � doch welcher von ihnen wird stark genug sein, ihn zu wählen? Die Kurzgeschichte „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� erscheint als exklusives E-Book Only bei Heyne und ist zusammen mit weiteren Stories von Harlan Ellison auch in dem Sammelband „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� enthalten. Sie umfasst ca. 22 Buchseiten.]]> 20 Harlan Ellison Iris 3 3.72 1967 I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
author: Harlan Ellison
name: Iris
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2018/08/16
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[A Christmas Carol: And Other Christmas Books (Vintage Classics)]]> 12048538
In this edition, everyone’s favorite misanthrope appears in company with four more Dickens stories� The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life , and The Haunted Man —that further develop the Christmas spirit Dickens did so much to invent.]]>
416 Charles Dickens 0307947211 Iris 3 3 stars for xmas carol. 4.07 1848 A Christmas Carol: And Other Christmas Books (Vintage Classics)
author: Charles Dickens
name: Iris
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1848
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
3 stars for xmas carol.
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<![CDATA[The Book of Sorrows (Chauntecleer the Rooster, #2)]]> 383618 339 Walter Wangerin Jr. 031021081X Iris 5 4.13 The Book of Sorrows (Chauntecleer the Rooster, #2)
author: Walter Wangerin Jr.
name: Iris
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/04
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
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consequences, when the battle of good vs evil is curtains for the real act, vainglory.
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<![CDATA[Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things]]> 35086053 Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright, Jr., is the patriarch of one of America’s great musical families. He is the former husband of Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright. With a career spanning more than four decades, Wainwright has established himself as one of the most enduring singer-songwriters who emerged from the late 1960s. Not only does he perform regularly across America and in Europe, but he is a sought-after actor, having appeared in many movies and TV series.

There is probably no singer-songwriter who has so blatantly inserted himself into his songs. The songs can be laugh-out-loud funny, but they also can cut to the bone. In this memoir, Wainwright details the family history his lyrics have referenced and the fractured relationships among the alcoholism, the infidelities, the competitiveness—as well as the closeness, the successes, and the joy. Wainwright reflects on the experiences that have influenced his work, including boarding school, the music business, swimming, macrobiotics, sex, incarceration, and something he calls Sir Walter Raleigh Syndrome.

Wainwright writes poignantly about being a son—a status that dominates many of his songs—but also about being a parent, a brother, and a grandfather. His lyrics are featured throughout the book, amplifying his prose and showing the connections between the songs and real life. Wainwright also includes selections from his father’s brilliant Life magazine columns—and, in so doing, reestablishes his father as a major essayist of his era. A funny and insightful meditation on family, inspiration, and art, Liner Notes will thrill fans, readers, and anyone who appreciates the intersection of music and life.]]>
318 Loudon Wainwright III 0698413083 Iris 3 3.76 Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things
author: Loudon Wainwright III
name: Iris
average rating: 3.76
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
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Treasure Island 1277619 320 Robert Louis Stevenson 0679418008 Iris 3 3.95 1882 Treasure Island
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Iris
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1882
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:
this edition illustrated by the great mervyn peake
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MICROMEGAS 674762 Book by Voltaire 100 Voltaire 0946626553 Iris 3 3.89 1752 MICROMEGAS
author: Voltaire
name: Iris
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1752
rating: 3
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The Ice Dragon 34896 Adara could not remember the first time she had seen the ice dragon. It seemed that it had always been in her life, glimpsed from afar as she played in the frigid snow long after the other children had fled the cold. In her fourth year she touched it, and in her fifth year she rode upon its broad, chilled back for the first time. Then, in her seventh year, on a calm summer day, fiery dragons from the North swooped down upon the peaceful farm that was Adara's home. And only a winter child--and the ice dragon who loved her--could save her world from utter destruction.
The Ice Dragon marks the highly anticipated children's book debut of George R.R. Martin, the award-winning author of the New York Times best-selling series A Song of Ice and Fire and is set in the same world. Illustrated with lush, exquisitely detailed pencil drawings by acclaimed artist Yvonne Gilbert, The Ice Dragon is an unforgettable tale of courage, love, and sacrifice by one of the most honored fantasists of all time.]]>
112 George R.R. Martin 0765316315 Iris 4 3.76 1980 The Ice Dragon
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Iris
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/04
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War and Peace 290979
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men. As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy vividly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.

Pevear and Volokhonsky have brought us this classic novel in a translation remarkable for its fidelity to Tolstoy’s style and cadence and for its energetic, accessible prose. With stunning grace and precision, this new version of War and Peace is set to become the definitive English edition.]]>
1296 Leo Tolstoy 0307266931 Iris 5 4.32 1869 War and Peace
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Iris
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1869
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/03
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Middlemarch 18049972 Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition -- ISBN 10: 0553211803

"A book one can read, and reread, with no fear of exhausting its riches." -Margaret Drabble

Few novelists have ever attempted so broad a canvas as George Eliot in her masterpiece, Middlemarch. Portraying every level of social life in a provincial Midlands town called Middlemarch, she interweaves several intensely dramatic stories of love and death, betrayal and reconciliation, into one of the finest pictures of nineteenth-centruy England ever created. its acute psychological penetration makes it also an exceptionally modern work, particularly in the romantic idealism of Dorothea Brooke, who often resembles George Eliot herself, and in the disastrous marriage and thwarted career of the young reformist doctor, Lydgate. Virginia Woolfe called it "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"--and it is truly great literature that ranks among the best novels in the world.]]>
613 George Eliot Iris 5 4.77 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Iris
average rating: 4.77
book published: 1872
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/19
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Eleven 4438385 176 Patricia Highsmith 0140034714 Iris 4 ]]> 3.86 1970 Eleven
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Iris
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/07
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not 1, but 2 stories about snails!

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<![CDATA[Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid]]> 24113 777 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465026567 Iris 3 white-flag 4.29 1979 Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Iris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2024/05/06
shelves: white-flag
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Ghostly Stories 45735189 48 Celia Fremlin 0571356842 Iris 3 3.67 Ghostly Stories
author: Celia Fremlin
name: Iris
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/03
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Come Rain or Come Shine 41713587
When Ray turns up to visit his old university friends Charlie and Emily, he's given a special task: to be so much his useless self that he makes Charlie look good by comparison.

But Ray has his own buried feelings to contend with. Decades earlier, he and Emily would listen to jazz when they were alone, and now, as Sarah Vaughan sings through the speakers, he struggles to control everything the sound brings with it.

In Kazuo Ishiguro's hands, a snapshot of domestic realism becomes a miniature masterpiece of memory and forgetting.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]>
76 Kazuo Ishiguro 0571351743 Iris 4 3.64 2019 Come Rain or Come Shine
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Iris
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/05/02
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<![CDATA[Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder]]> 199344846
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.]]>
209 Salman Rushdie 0593730240 Iris 4 tho occasionally, there is revisionism of his past personal self into better light
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4.00 2024 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Iris
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
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moments of great insight
tho occasionally, there is revisionism of his past personal self into better light

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Life with Picasso 41646828 Françoise Gilot's candid memoir remains the most revealing portrait of Picasso written, and gives fascinating insight into the intense and creative life shared by two modern artists.

Françoise Gilot was in her early twenties when, in 1943, she met the sixty-one-year-old Pablo Picasso. Brought up in upper-middle-class comfort and educated at Cambridge and the Sorbonne in the hopes that she would go into the law, the young woman defied her family’s wishes—and her father’s wrath—and set out to become an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of ten years, during which Gilot bore two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso's muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become.
Life with Picasso, is an indispensable record of his thinking about art, as well as an often very funny account of his relationships with other artists and with dealers and hangers-on. It is also about Francoise Gilot. This is a brilliant self-portrait of a young woman of enormous talent and exacting intelligence figuring out who she wants to be.]]>
344 Françoise Gilot 168137319X Iris 4 4.20 1964 Life with Picasso
author: Françoise Gilot
name: Iris
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/21
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A Woman in the Polar Night 52664449
At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies� But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic’s harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life.

This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society’s expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime.]]>
224 Christiane Ritter 1782275649 Iris 4 4.34 1938 A Woman in the Polar Night
author: Christiane Ritter
name: Iris
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/20
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<![CDATA[Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed]]> 44645030 Have compassion, have compassion, have compassion. I repeat my mantra, then refocus on John � and just then, something occurs to me: what John has been talking about sounds eerily familiar.

As a therapist, Lori knows a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss, and how change and loss travel together. She knows how affirming it feels to blame the outside world for her frustrations, to deny ownership of whatever role she might have in the existential play called My Incredibly Important Life. When a devastating event takes place in Lori’s life, she realises that, before being able to help her patients, she must first learn how to help herself.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is the story of an incredible relationship � between Lori, a therapist at a critical life juncture, and her own therapist, Wendell, a veteran therapist with an unconventional style. Through their sessions, Wendell teaches Lori how to become a better person and a better therapist, as she goes about the business of helping her own patients � the couple who are struggling after having a baby, the narcissist TV producer, the older woman who feels she has nothing to live for, the self-destructive alcoholic young woman, the terminally ill 35-year-old newlywed.

Taking place over one year, beginning with the devastating event that lands her in Wendell’s office, this is a rare and candid insight into a profession conventionally bound with rules and secrecy, told with charm and compassion, vulnerability and humour.

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415 Lori Gottlieb 1925548813 Iris 5 4.43 2019 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
author: Lori Gottlieb
name: Iris
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/17
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The Changeling 38472648
An epic novel for our anxiety-ridden times, The Changeling is a tale of parenthood, love - in its most raw and brutal form - and ultimately, humanity.]]>
508 Victor LaValle Iris 1 ugh no yet i read it all 3.88 2017 The Changeling
author: Victor LaValle
name: Iris
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
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ugh no yet i read it all
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<![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

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

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]>
152 Becky Chambers Iris 4 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Iris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/31
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<![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

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

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]>
151 Becky Chambers Iris 5 ]]> 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Iris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/29
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10stars, or, a Great Bear and 3.

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<![CDATA[Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird]]> 62919399 A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,� a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,� and in “Candy Pink,� a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.]]>
154 Agustina Bazterrica 1668012669 Iris 3 3.11 2020 Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Iris
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/28
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Excellent Women 178565 Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,� the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 014310487X Iris 5 3.92 1952 Excellent Women
author: Barbara Pym
name: Iris
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
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The City & the City 4703581
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]>
312 China Miéville 0345497511 Iris 3 white-flag 42%<br /> 3.90 2009 The City & the City
author: China Miéville
name: Iris
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves: white-flag
review:
42%

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<![CDATA[The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time, #4)]]> 8153991
The seals of Shayol Ghul are weak now, and the Dark One reaches out. The Shadow is rising to cover humankind.

In Tar Valon, Min sees portents of hideous doom. Will the White Tower itself be broken?

In the Two Rivers, the Whitecloaks ride in pursuit of a man with golden eyes, and in pursuit of the Dragon Reborn.

In Cantorin, among the Sea Folk, High Lady Suroth plans the return of the Seanchan armies to the mainland.

In the Stone of Tear, the Lord Dragon considers his next move. It will be something no one expects, not the Black Ajah, not Tairen nobles, not Aes Sedai, not Egwene or Elayne or Nynaeve.

Against the Shadow rising stands the Dragon Reborn...]]>
1051 Robert Jordan Iris 4 4.35 1992 The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time, #4)
author: Robert Jordan
name: Iris
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/19
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<![CDATA[The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America]]> 40415813 The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. I’m 6-foot-1, or 73 inches tall. My waist is 60 inches around. I’m nearly a sphere.

Those are the numbers. This is how it feels�

So begins The Elephant in the Room, Tommy Tomlinson’s remarkably intimate and insightful memoir of his life as a fat man. When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous�460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.

In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay’s Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin�. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,� and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take—big and small—to lose weight by the end.

Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is a powerful memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. It is also a literary triumph that will stay with readers long after the last page.]]>
256 Tommy Tomlinson 1501111612 Iris 5 4.11 2019 The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America
author: Tommy Tomlinson
name: Iris
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/22
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<![CDATA[The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)]]> 13513484
In The Dragon Reborn , the third novel in Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time®, Rand al’Thor undertakes a journey to prove himself worthy of being the Champion of Light.

Winter has stopped the war―almost―yet men are dying, calling out for the Dragon. But where is he?

Rand al’Thor has been proclaimed the Dragon Reborn. Traveling to the great fortress known as the Stone of Tear, he plans to find the sword Callandor, which can only be wielded by the Champion of Light, and discover if he truly is destined to battle The Dark One. Following Rand, Moiraine and their friends battle Darkhounds on the hunt, hoping they reach the Heart of the Stone in time for the next great test awaiting the Dragon Reborn.

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The last six books in series were all instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, and The Eye of the World was named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.

The Wheel of Time®
New The Novel
#1 The Eye of the World
#2 The Great Hunt
#3 The Dragon Reborn
#4 The Shadow Rising
#5 The Fires of Heaven
#6 Lord of Chaos
#7 A Crown of Swords
#8 The Path of Daggers
#9 Winter's Heart
#10 Crossroads of Twilight
#11 Knife of Dreams

By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
#12 The Gathering Storm
#13 Towers of Midnight
#14 A Memory of Light

By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson
The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons
The Wheel of Time Companion

By Robert Jordan and Amy Romanczuk
Patterns of the Coloring Art Based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time]]>
624 Robert Jordan 0765334356 Iris 4 4.27 1991 The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)
author: Robert Jordan
name: Iris
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/20
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North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]>
372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Iris 4 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Iris
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
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<![CDATA[Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life]]> 125063314
The world’s greatest bodybuilder. The world’s highest-paid movie star. The leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this did not happen by accident.

Arnold’s stratospheric success happened as part of a process. As the result of clear vision, big thinking, hard work, direct communication, resilient problem-solving, open-minded curiosity, and a commitment to giving back. All of it guided by the one lesson Arnold’s father hammered into him above be useful. As Arnold conquered every realm he entered, he kept his father’s adage close to his heart.

Written with his uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice, Be Useful takes readers on an inspirational tour through Arnold’s tool kit for a meaningful life. He shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike—some of them famous; some told here for the first time ever.

Too many of us struggle to disconnect from our self-pity and connect to our purpose. At an early age, Arnold forged the mental tools to build the ladder out of the poverty and narrow-mindedness of his rural Austrian hometown, tools he used to add rung after rung from there. Now he shares that wisdom with all of us. As he puts it, no one is going to come rescue you—you only have yourself. The good news, it turns out, is that you are all you need.]]>
288 Arnold Schwarzenegger 0593655958 Iris 4 4.09 2023 Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
author: Arnold Schwarzenegger
name: Iris
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/01/28
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<![CDATA[The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading]]> 200390587 Garner gathers a literary chorus to capture the joys of reading and eating in this comic, personal classic. Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book you’re holding is a product of these combined gluttonies.Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family (“Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box�), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.]]> 248 Dwight Garner Iris 5 4.33 2023 The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
author: Dwight Garner
name: Iris
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
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<![CDATA[What You Are Looking for is in the Library]]> 123191812 For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a charming, internationally bestselling Japanese novel about how the perfect book recommendation can change a readers� life.

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose.

In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?]]>
223 Michiko Aoyama Iris 5 4.23 2020 What You Are Looking for is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Iris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/09
date added: 2024/01/09
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<![CDATA[Touring The Land of the Dead: Two Novellas]]> 54884155 A story from one of Japan's rising literary stars about memory, loss, and love, Touring the Land of the Dead is a mesmerizing combination of two tales, both told with stylistic inventiveness and breathtaking sensitivity.

Taichi was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her part-time wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family's fortune dried up years during her childhood, she, her brother, and her mother lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother's refusal to accept their new station in life.

One day, Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel that Natsuko's grandfather had taken her mother to when she was little. She decides to take her damaged husband to the spa, despite the cost, but their time there triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family and a reconciliation with her husband.

Modeled on Junichiro Tanizaki's classic story, The Makioka Sisters, Ninety-Nine Kisses is the second story in this book and it portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighborhood of contemporary Tokyo.]]>
119 Maki Kashimada 1609456521 Iris 4 3.11 2012 Touring The Land of the Dead: Two Novellas
author: Maki Kashimada
name: Iris
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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Between Two Fires 53177097
And Lucifer said: “Let us rise against Him now in all our numbers, and pull the walls of heaven down…�

The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict.

Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission: to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.]]>
438 Christopher Buehlman Iris 2 4.43 2012 Between Two Fires
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Iris
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:
dug the first half immensely. monsters were great. but the second half was... between... two turds.
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The Dinner 20510036 "A European Gone Girl." --The Wall Street Journal

An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives -- all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse -- the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.
Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
306 Herman Koch Iris 3 white-flag 30% 3.36 2009 The Dinner
author: Herman Koch
name: Iris
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/18
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves: white-flag
review:
30%
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<![CDATA[Before Your Memory Fades (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #3)]]> 60224365 The latest novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, following four new customers in a little Tokyo café where customers can travel back in time.

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

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Cafecomes another story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Café Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer. Among some familiar faces from Kawaguchi's previous novels, readers will also be introduced to a daughter, a comedian, a sister, and a lover, each with something they wish they had said differently.

With his signature heartwarming characters and immersive storytelling, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?]]>
220 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 0369722698 Iris 3 3.90 2018 Before Your Memory Fades (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #3)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Iris
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/17
date added: 2023/12/17
shelves:
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Inherit the Stars 1406627 216 James P. Hogan 0345301072 Iris 4 3.98 1977 Inherit the Stars
author: James P. Hogan
name: Iris
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/16
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters]]> 1463380 177 Annie Dillard 0060910720 Iris 5 3.77 1982 Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
author: Annie Dillard
name: Iris
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Journey to the Centre of the Earth]]> 2129286 Classic 338 Jules Verne 0141321040 Iris 3 3.64 1864 Journey to the Centre of the Earth
author: Jules Verne
name: Iris
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1864
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves:
review:

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FACES: Profiles of Dogs 52250939 80 Vita Sackville-West 1911547461 Iris 1 3.67 1962 FACES: Profiles of Dogs
author: Vita Sackville-West
name: Iris
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1962
rating: 1
read at: 2023/11/28
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves:
review:
aw man, looked like a charming book, 0% charm. written in 1961.
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I Who Have Never Known Men 45359486 Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE]]> 198 Jacqueline Harpman Iris 3 4.17 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Iris
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
shelves:
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Oliver Twist 14800190 The Penguin English Library Edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

'A parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none'

Dark, mysterious and mordantly funny, Oliver Twist features some of the most memorably drawn villains in all of fiction - the treacherous gangmaster Fagin, the menacing thug Bill Sikes, the Artful Dodger and their den of thieves in the grimy London backstreets. Dicken's novel is both an angry indictment of poverty, and an adventure filled with an air of threat and pervasive evil.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.]]>
531 Charles Dickens 0141198885 Iris 3 3.67 1838 Oliver Twist
author: Charles Dickens
name: Iris
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1838
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/19
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<![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 56118 142 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0451527097 Iris 5 3.88 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Iris
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/10
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work]]> 9484114 Our most commonly held formula for success is broken.

Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.

In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.

Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:


•The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.
•The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.
•Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network


A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
272 Shawn Achor 0307591565 Iris 3 white-flag ]]> 4.11 2010 The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
author: Shawn Achor
name: Iris
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/09
date added: 2023/11/09
shelves: white-flag
review:
made it 35%, book never gives a solid definition for happiness. keeping it vague allows for more general audience participation.

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The Night Circus 10339954
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

(c) 2011 Random House Audio]]>
14 Erin Morgenstern 0307938905 Iris 1 ]]> 3.84 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Iris
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at: 2018/05/03
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves:
review:
story is 2 stars, but audiobook is docked 1 for pops throughout -- poorly engineered.

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This Perfect Day 139390
The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp that has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as human beings, but will remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce. Even the basic facts of nature are subject to UniComp's will - men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night.

"The Family" was everywhere. For centuries, mankind longed for a world without suffering or war. The Family made that dream come true. They have triumphed. Programmed, every need satisfied, they knew nothing of struggle or pain. They had mastered... perfected Earth.

But for one man, perfection was not enough. For Chip, it was a nightmare. The Family was a suffocating force of evil. His dream was to escape... and destroy!]]>
368 Ira Levin 0553290029 Iris 3 ]]> 4.00 1970 This Perfect Day
author: Ira Levin
name: Iris
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/29
date added: 2023/10/29
shelves:
review:
good exploration of concepts, but devoid of emotional connection. my brain-movie saw grey the whole read through.

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Stories of the Sahara 49367397
'An enduring cultural icon. Every story conveys Sanmao's infectious capacity for wonder' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

'Stories of the Sahara has endured for generations of young Taiwanese and Chinese women . . . Sanmao's prose, which oscillates between memoir and fiction, has a laconic elegance that echoes the Beat poets' New York Times

'A remarkable and brave book. Sanmao was a freewheeling feminist who broke all the rules and did so with a gleeful, mischievous style . . . Sanmao deserves all the praise, even if it has been a long time coming' David Eimer, South China Morning Post

When I first arrived in the desert, I desperately wanted to be the first female explorer to cross the Sahara. The thought of it used to keep me up all night.

Sanmao: author, adventurer, pioneer. Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.

Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.

At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. With an introduction by Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti, this is an essential collection from one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures.]]>
308 Sanmao Iris 5 4.31 1976 Stories of the Sahara
author: Sanmao
name: Iris
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/19
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves:
review:
10stars. will read again. kudos to mike fu for the lovely english translation.
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Starter Villain 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]>
264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Iris 4 4.09 2023 Starter Villain
author: John Scalzi
name: Iris
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/10/12
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Of Dogs and Walls 36436102 53 Yūko Tsushima 0241339782 Iris 5 3.66 2018 Of Dogs and Walls
author: Yūko Tsushima
name: Iris
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/01
shelves:
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The Last Lecture 40611510
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.]]>
217 Randy Pausch Iris 5 4.30 2008 The Last Lecture
author: Randy Pausch
name: Iris
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/29
date added: 2023/09/29
shelves:
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The Little House 22375599 The Little House is set in the early years of the Showa era (1926-89), when Japan’s situation is becoming increasingly tense but has not yet fully immersed in a wartime footing. On the outskirts of Tokyo, near a station on a private train line, stands a modest European style house with a red, triangular shaped roof. There a woman named Taki has worked as a maidservant in the house and lived with its owners, the Hirai family. Now, near the end of her life, Taki is writing down in a notebook her nostalgic memories of the time spent living in the house. Her journal captures the refined middle-class life of the time from her gentle perspective. At the end of the novel, however, a startling final chapter is added. The chapter brings to light, after Taki’s death, a fact not described in her notebook. This suddenly transforms the world that had been viewed through the lens of a nostalgic memoir, so that a dramatic, flesh-and-blood story takes shape. Nakajima manages to combine skillful dialogue with a dazzling ending. The result is a polished, masterful work fully deserving of the Naoki Prize.]]> 268 Kyōko Nakajima 1850773165 Iris 5 4.07 2010 The Little House
author: Kyōko Nakajima
name: Iris
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/27
date added: 2023/09/27
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<![CDATA[Thunderbolt Fantasy Omnibus II (Vol. 3-4)]]> 63337698 378 Gen Urobuchi 1685793363 Iris 5
ps- these 2 volumes cover s01.
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4.12 Thunderbolt Fantasy Omnibus II (Vol. 3-4)
author: Gen Urobuchi
name: Iris
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/21
date added: 2023/09/21
shelves:
review:
u guys. story by gen urobuchi. taiwanese glove puppetry by PILI. go watch the series on kissanime. truly a mind-blowing experience. let me kno when u do!

ps- these 2 volumes cover s01.

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<![CDATA[Thunderbolt Fantasy Omnibus I (Vol. 1-2)]]> 60201860 Don’t miss this official manga adaptation for the international wuxia television phenomenon–a co-production between an award-winning Japanese writer and the foremost practitioners of Taiwanese Glove puppetry (pò-tē-hì)!

In an ancient kingdom, a vicious warlord is on the hunt for a magic sword. Dan Fei has spent her whole life guarding the coveted Sword of Divine Retribution–legends say its power is great enough to smite demons and shake the heavens. The master of the evil Xuan Gui Zong sect will stop at nothing to possess it, and dispatches his warriors to steal the holy blade. Fleeing their pursuit, Dan Fei must rely on the unexpected help of two unusual strangers who are powerful swordsmen themselves.

Like a thunderbolt from the blue sky, a thrilling wuxia fantasy saga begins!]]>
386 Gen Urobuchi 1685793355 Iris 5 4.08 Thunderbolt Fantasy Omnibus I (Vol. 1-2)
author: Gen Urobuchi
name: Iris
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/20
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves:
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Ceremony 8133871 The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit

More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power. The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition contains a new preface by the author and an introduction by Larry McMurtry.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
265 Leslie Marmon Silko 1440621829 Iris 5 ]]> 3.96 1977 Ceremony
author: Leslie Marmon Silko
name: Iris
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/17
date added: 2023/09/17
shelves:
review:
as with all things masterful, requires repeated visits.

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<![CDATA[The Artist's Journey: On Making Art & Being an Artist]]> 55681406
The Artist’s Journey takes you into this world with an emotional honesty that few books offer. At once practical and spiritual, it is a rare exploration of the inner landscape of the artistic experience and an essential guidebook to the artist's journey, for creative artists in all fields, whether young or old, accomplished or just beginning.]]>
272 Kent Nerburn 1838851488 Iris 5 4.05 The Artist's Journey: On Making Art & Being an Artist
author: Kent Nerburn
name: Iris
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/14
date added: 2023/09/14
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way]]> 18814253 No other English translation of this greatest of the Chinese classics can match Ursula Le Guin's striking new version. Le Guin, best known for thought-provoking science fiction novels that have helped to transform the genre, has studied the Tao Te Ching for more than forty years. She has consulted the literal translations and worked with Chinese scholars to develop a version that lets the ancient text speak in a fresh way to modern people, while remaining faithful to the poetic beauty of the work. Avoiding scholarly interpretations and esoteric Taoist insights, she has revealed the Tao Te Ching's immediate relevance and power, its depth and refreshing humor, in a way that shows better than ever before why it has been so much loved for more than 2,500 years. Included are Le Guin's own personal commentary and notes on the text. This new version is sure to be welcomed by the many readers of the Tao Te Ching as well as those coming to the text for the first time.

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162 Lao Tzu Iris 4 ]]> 4.37 -350 Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
author: Lao Tzu
name: Iris
average rating: 4.37
book published: -350
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/14
date added: 2023/09/14
shelves:
review:
in this translation, 'tao' is defined as 'the way'... i found it very ungraspable, despite seeing it every few lines. i do not know which alternatives would be better, but maybe an explanation of translated key words in the introduction/preface would help some clueless readers (me).

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<![CDATA[House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories]]> 34626038 In the tales in this collection, Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata probes the interplay of erotic fantasy and reality in the minds of three lonely men. In "House of the Sleeping Beauties," an old man pays to sleep with--but not touch--beautiful, sedated young girls; in "One Arm," a young woman gifts a man her right arm for the night; and in "Of Birds and Beasts," a middle-aged man's memories of an affair with a dancer mingle with glimpses of his abnormal attachment to his pets. Piercing examinations of sexuality and human psychology--and works of remarkable subtlety and beauty--the stories in House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, translated by Edward Seidensticker, showcase one of the twentieth century's great writers--in any language--at his very best.]]> 151 Yasunari Kawabata 0525434135 Iris 3 white-flag 75% 3.44 1961 House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Iris
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/10
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: white-flag
review:
75%
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<![CDATA[Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016]]> 29363335 "Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom � poets, visionaries � realists of a larger reality. . . ."

Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our fore- most public literary intellectuals. Words Are My Matter is essential reading. It is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of con- temporary fiction � and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in.

"We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.� *

Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments. She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children’s books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award. This year her publications include three survey collections: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas; The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories; and The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs (Library of America).

* From “Freedom� A speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.]]>
316 Ursula K. Le Guin 1618731343 Iris 5 white-flag 4.01 2016 Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Iris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2023/09/07
shelves: white-flag
review:
63%, stopped before collection of her book reviews.
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<![CDATA[Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration]]> 18077903 “What does it mean to manage well?�
From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust� sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.� For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.

As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:

� Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.
� If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead.
� It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.
� The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.
� A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.
� Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.]]>
368 Ed Catmull 0812993012 Iris 4 4.19 2014 Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
author: Ed Catmull
name: Iris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/05
date added: 2023/09/05
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review:

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