en-US Fri, 07 Feb 2025 22:30:12 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 78808 400 Susan Bordo 0520240545 Lauryl 5 4.11 1993
author: Susan Bordo
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 32418 564 Thomas Harris Lauryl 1 fiction, mystery-crime, pulp 3.82 1999
author: Thomas Harris
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1999
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: fiction, mystery-crime, pulp
review:

]]> 228296
Suppose that only after you became pregnant did you begin to suspect the building harbored a diabolically evil group of devil worshippers who had mastered the arts of black magic and witchcraft.

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

Well, that's what happened to Rosemary... Or did it...?]]> 308 Ira Levin 0451194004 Lauryl 3 fiction, horror 4.04 1967
author: Ira Levin
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: fiction, horror
review:

]]> 18405 1037 Margaret Mitchell 0446365386 Lauryl 2 4.30 1936
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1936
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: fiction, disappointing, u-s-history
review:

]]> 54935 The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny.

She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story.

By turns funny and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the remarkable territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. She’s Not There is a portrait of a loving marriage—the love of James for his wife, Grace, and, against all odds, the enduring love of Grace for the woman who becomes her "sister," Jenny.

To this extraordinary true story, Boylan brings the humorous, fresh voice that won her accolades as one of the best comic novelists of her generation. With her distinctive and winning perspective, She’s Not There explores the dramatic outward changes and unexpected results of life as a woman: Jenny fights the urge to eat salad, while James consumed plates of ribs; gone is the stability of "one damn mood, all the damn time."

While Boylan’s own secret was unusual, to say the least, she captures the universal sense of feeling uncomfortable, out of sorts with the world, and misunderstood by her peers. Jenny is supported on her journey by her best friend, novelist Richard Russo, who goes from begging his friend to "Be a man" (in every sense of the word) to accepting her as an attractive, buoyant woman. "The most unexpected thing," Russo writes in his Afterword to the book, "is in how Jenny’s story we recognize our shared humanity."

As James evolves into Jennifer in scenes that are by turns tender, startling, and witty, a marvelously human perspective emerges on issues of love, sex, and the fascinating relationship between our physical and our intuitive selves. Through the clear eyes of a truly remarkable woman, She’s Not There provides a new window on the often confounding process of accepting ourselves.]]> 320 Jennifer Finney Boylan 0767914295 Lauryl 3 gender-studies, memoir
Jennifer Finney Boylan is a fine writer, and I thought the book was fascinating, although I agree with some of the other critiques here that she is not particularly politicized. Also, she leaves out some nuts-and-bolts things that those of us who are not transgender might like to know about. How does changing gender play into her sexuality? There seem to be moments in the book where she suggests that her new, female self is attracted to men, but her male self was not. Am I reading this part right? Is that something that happens a lot for trans people? I would have appreciated a frank discussion of her personal take on transgender and attraction.

Also, though I'm happy for Jennifer and her self-actualization, there is a huge cloud of sadness that hangs over the story. I felt terrible for her wife, who bore the brunt of the emotional trauma of the gender change. I cannot help but put myself in her shoes. Of course, Jennifer gives lip service to this sadness, but she's clearly too thrilled with her transition to really empathize fully. She attests that she's still the same person she always was, but to her wife, who was never privy to Jennifer's lifelong desire to be a woman, she obviously is not, and never will be again. I'm not blaming Jennifer for this entirely, but it's worth acknowledging, and would have made for a better, truer, more complex story.]]> 3.93 2003
author: Jennifer Finney Boylan
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: gender-studies, memoir
review:
I'm always interested in reading books that call into question the dominant binary gender paradigm and the idea that gender is a fixed quantity. And at the time I read this, I didn't know any transgender people at all, and I was (and still am) understandably curious about their experience of gender, the world, and their place in it. I feel that, especially in this polarized era of American politics and so-called "family values" voters ("A-hem", she scoffs.) people who take the very bold leap of actually endeavoring to change their given gender are a certain kind of heroic.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is a fine writer, and I thought the book was fascinating, although I agree with some of the other critiques here that she is not particularly politicized. Also, she leaves out some nuts-and-bolts things that those of us who are not transgender might like to know about. How does changing gender play into her sexuality? There seem to be moments in the book where she suggests that her new, female self is attracted to men, but her male self was not. Am I reading this part right? Is that something that happens a lot for trans people? I would have appreciated a frank discussion of her personal take on transgender and attraction.

Also, though I'm happy for Jennifer and her self-actualization, there is a huge cloud of sadness that hangs over the story. I felt terrible for her wife, who bore the brunt of the emotional trauma of the gender change. I cannot help but put myself in her shoes. Of course, Jennifer gives lip service to this sadness, but she's clearly too thrilled with her transition to really empathize fully. She attests that she's still the same person she always was, but to her wife, who was never privy to Jennifer's lifelong desire to be a woman, she obviously is not, and never will be again. I'm not blaming Jennifer for this entirely, but it's worth acknowledging, and would have made for a better, truer, more complex story.
]]> 40483 The Story of O relates the progressive willful debasement of a young and beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who wants nothing more than to be a slave to her lover, René. The test is severe—sexual in method, psychological in substance�� The artistic interest here has precisely to do with the use not only of erotic materials but also erotic methods, the deliberate stimulation of the reader as a part of and means to a total, authentic literary experience.

—Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times]]> 199 Pauline Réage 0345301110 Lauryl 3 sex-sexuality, fiction 3.37 1954
author: Pauline Réage
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1954
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: sex-sexuality, fiction
review:

]]> 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Lauryl 4 fiction, horror
It’s a sharp and funky amuse-bouche of a book, like popping an entire uni nigiri into your mouth, or swallowing an oyster so fresh that it’s still quivering.

Winifred Notty, the new governess of Ensor House, introduces herself to us like David Copperfield but with a sort of fourth-wall-breaking homicidal glee. Well, not exactly glee, but a matter-of-fact coldness. She has, she tells us, no ability to feel fear, and she thinks perhaps this sets her apart from other people, that it makes her monstrous.

The denizens of Ensor House, seen through the eyes of Winifred, are as harshly funny as old fashioned newspaper caricatures, with silly names like Miss Manners, Mrs. Fancey, Mr. Fishal, Mrs. Pounds. Winifred, herself, is funny. She’s clever. She’s terrifying. And she’s right that all of these people are really the worst, which complicates our task as witnesses to her thoughts and her history, which increasingly reveal themselves as unhinged and murderous. Despite its funniness, the book maintains a steadily growing sense of unease as it careens towards inevitable violence.

It would be wrong to say that I *like* Winifred. But I certainly don’t like her any less than the rich assholes she’s surrounded by, doomed by fate and social caste to a life of subservience in a mansion that is full of creepers, bullies, and fools. Winifred’s bloodlust may be impossible to understand, but her frustration with the limited life imposed upon her by sex and station are very easy to understand. Her sense of betrayal is palpable.


The obvious comparison for Victorian Psycho is to Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, a book that I mostly abhorred even while I thought it was a clever satire. I wrote a ŷ������ review of it like 15 years ago or something and I dared to say that I hated reading it, and it’s funny to me because I still get weekly responses from Men Of The Internet that are mad that I wasn’t utterly charmed by their favorite little rapefest.

To be clear, I was a lot younger when I read that book and I don’t think I would have written the same review today. But I still never want to read it again, and I still think that, similar to Fight Club, most of the men who LoOooOoVeD it likely *utterly* missed the point and secretly think Patrick Bateman is a Real Cool Guy with his blood spattered rain slicker and his eggshell business cards, just like they find Tyler Durden aspirational, as they listen to Joe Rogan and shovel protein powder down their gullets.

Victorian Psycho is a perfect, sly literary antidote to American Psycho. A cup of tea laced with arsenic, reframing the Patrick Batemans of patriarchy into the commonplace cartoon chauvinists that they are, and driving fireplace pokers through their runty hearts.


]]> 3.63 2025
author: Virginia Feito
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: fiction, horror
review:
Victorian Psycho is a fast, wickedly funny, ugly satire of manners, class consciousness, bourgeois boorishness and misogyny. This book’s range of influences is satisfyingly broad. While reading it, I thought of Dickens, Austen, Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O�� Connor, Patrick Suskind and Emerald Fennell.

It’s a sharp and funky amuse-bouche of a book, like popping an entire uni nigiri into your mouth, or swallowing an oyster so fresh that it’s still quivering.

Winifred Notty, the new governess of Ensor House, introduces herself to us like David Copperfield but with a sort of fourth-wall-breaking homicidal glee. Well, not exactly glee, but a matter-of-fact coldness. She has, she tells us, no ability to feel fear, and she thinks perhaps this sets her apart from other people, that it makes her monstrous.

The denizens of Ensor House, seen through the eyes of Winifred, are as harshly funny as old fashioned newspaper caricatures, with silly names like Miss Manners, Mrs. Fancey, Mr. Fishal, Mrs. Pounds. Winifred, herself, is funny. She’s clever. She’s terrifying. And she’s right that all of these people are really the worst, which complicates our task as witnesses to her thoughts and her history, which increasingly reveal themselves as unhinged and murderous. Despite its funniness, the book maintains a steadily growing sense of unease as it careens towards inevitable violence.

It would be wrong to say that I *like* Winifred. But I certainly don’t like her any less than the rich assholes she’s surrounded by, doomed by fate and social caste to a life of subservience in a mansion that is full of creepers, bullies, and fools. Winifred’s bloodlust may be impossible to understand, but her frustration with the limited life imposed upon her by sex and station are very easy to understand. Her sense of betrayal is palpable.


The obvious comparison for Victorian Psycho is to Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, a book that I mostly abhorred even while I thought it was a clever satire. I wrote a ŷ������ review of it like 15 years ago or something and I dared to say that I hated reading it, and it’s funny to me because I still get weekly responses from Men Of The Internet that are mad that I wasn’t utterly charmed by their favorite little rapefest.

To be clear, I was a lot younger when I read that book and I don’t think I would have written the same review today. But I still never want to read it again, and I still think that, similar to Fight Club, most of the men who LoOooOoVeD it likely *utterly* missed the point and secretly think Patrick Bateman is a Real Cool Guy with his blood spattered rain slicker and his eggshell business cards, just like they find Tyler Durden aspirational, as they listen to Joe Rogan and shovel protein powder down their gullets.

Victorian Psycho is a perfect, sly literary antidote to American Psycho. A cup of tea laced with arsenic, reframing the Patrick Batemans of patriarchy into the commonplace cartoon chauvinists that they are, and driving fireplace pokers through their runty hearts.



]]> 55298324 Who is Mrs. March?

A twenty-first-century Highsmith, Virginia Feito conjures the unforgettable Mrs. March, an Upper East Side housewife whose life is shattered by her husband’s latest novel.

In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March’s latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that his protagonist is based on Mrs. March herself: “But . . . ―isn't she . . .�� Mrs. March leaned in and in almost a whisper said, ‘a whore?�� Clutching her ostrich-leather pocketbook, she flees, that one casual remark destroying her belief that she knew everything about her husband―as well as herself. Suddenly, Mrs. March is hurled into a harrowing journey that builds to near psychosis, one that begins merely within the pages of a book but may uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of her past.]]> 304 Virginia Feito 1631498614 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.23 2021
author: Virginia Feito
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 183199 Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.]]> 488 Oakley Hall 1590171616 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.29 1958
author: Oakley Hall
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book��

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master�� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.02 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6294 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.]]> 329 Diana Wynne Jones 006441034X Lauryl 5 fantasy, young-adult 4.30 1986
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: fantasy, young-adult
review:

]]> 60784409 A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family.

"Mom seems off."

Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.

She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.

But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.

To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.]]> 247 T. Kingfisher 1250829798 Lauryl 3 fiction, horror 3.65 2023
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: fiction, horror
review:

]]> 60018639
Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home in Russia--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is an immersive modern fantasy saga by a bold new talent.]]> 448 GennaRose Nethercott 059346883X Lauryl 0 to-read 3.92 2022
author: GennaRose Nethercott
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Lauryl 5 4.37 1928
author: A.A. Milne
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: children-s-books, classics, fiction, my-favorite-books
review:

]]> 6707758 Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Dan Savage eviscerates the right-wing conservatives as he commits each of the Seven Deadly Sins himself (or tries to) and finds those everyday Americans who take particular delight in their sinful pursuits.�� Among ��Gamblers reveal secrets behind outrageous fortune.

��"We're swingers!"-you won't believe who's�� doing it.

Texans shoot off some rounds and then listen to Dan fire off on his own about guns, gun�� control, and the Second Amendment.

Combine a unique history of the Seven Deadly Sins, a new interpretation of the biblical stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, and enough Bill Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Dr. Laura, and Bill O'Reilly bashing to more than make up for their incessant carping, and you've got the most provocative book of the fall.]]> 322 Dan Savage 110111813X Lauryl 3 cultural-studies, essays 3.88 2002
author: Dan Savage
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: cultural-studies, essays
review:

]]> 216875430
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.

Bring a flashlight and a book of matches.

Where we’re going, there’s not a speck of light.]]> 372 Laird Barron Lauryl 0 to-read 4.12 2024
author: Laird Barron
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 92250
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.]]> 119 Tony Kushner 1559360615 Lauryl 5 plays, lgbt 4.27 1993
author: Tony Kushner
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: plays, lgbt
review:

]]> 51318896 Perfect for fans of Tasha Alexander and Rhys Bowen, Katharine Schellman's debut novel is sure to delight.

London 1815. Though newly-widowed Lily Adler is returning to a society that frowns on independent women, she is determined to create a meaningful life for herself even without a husband. She's no stranger to the glittering world of London's upper crust. At a ball thrown by her oldest friend, Lady Walter, she expects the scandal, gossip, and secrets. What she doesn't expect is the dead body in Lady Walter's garden.

Lily overheard the man just minutes before he was shot: young, desperate, and attempting blackmail. But she's willing to leave the matter to the local constables--until Lord Walter bribes the investigating magistrate to drop the case. Stunned and confused, Lily realizes she's the only one with the key to catching the killer.

Aided by a roguish navy captain and a mysterious heiress from the West Indies, Lily sets out to discover whether her friend's husband is mixed up in blackmail and murder. The unlikely team tries to conceal their investigation behind the whirl of London's social season, but the dead man knew secrets about people with power. Secrets that they would kill to keep hidden. Now, Lily will have to uncover the truth, before she becomes the murderer's next target.]]> 336 Katharine Schellman 1643853562 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.71 2020
author: Katharine Schellman
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 Lauryl 4 fiction, horror 3.65 2023
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves: fiction, horror
review:

]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

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

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Lauryl 0 food, memoir 4.17 2000
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: food, memoir
review:

]]> 181037580 Set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the shadowy aftermath of the Salem witch trials, this vivid literary debut is inspired by the captivating true story of real-life pirate Samuel Bellamy, combining high seas adventure, star-crossed longing, surprisingly timely questions about social justice and freedom, and the emotionally satisfying tale of one strong-willed young woman determined to choose her own path.

1715, Eastham, Massachusetts: As the daughter of a wealthy family, Maria Brown has a secure future mapped out for her, yet it is not the future she wants. Young, headstrong, and restless, Maria has no desire to marry the aging, mean-spirited John Hallett, regardless of his fortune and her parents�� wishes. As for what Maria does want—only one person has ever even asked her that question.

Samuel Bellamy, an orphaned sailor searching for work, meets Maria by chance, enthralling her with talk of far-flung places and blasphemous ideals. But neither is free from the social order into which they were born. When Sam is banished from Maria’s parents�� home after asking for her hand, he vows to return a wealthy man, and Maria promises to keep the faith until then.

Sam is drawn into piracy and discovers a brotherhood more equal and fulfilling than any on land, despite its dangers. Beguiled by the chance to both fight for justice and make a fortune to bring home to Maria, Sam is torn between duty to his crew and his desire to return. Separated by more than just the ocean, time slips by as Sam and Maria cling to their love for each other. Maria is determined to stay strong in her conviction in Sam, but as rumors swirl and her position in Eastham turns perilous, Maria is forced into an impossible decision.

Now, on a journey no less treacherous and eventful than Sam’s, Maria draws on every shred of her courage and resilience not merely to survive, but to honor her own yearning for freedom . . .]]> 368 Rachel Rueckert 1496747534 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.76 2024
author: Rachel Rueckert
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61294937 Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.]]> 483 Shannon Chakraborty Lauryl 0 to-read 4.25 2023
author: Shannon Chakraborty
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199222361 The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.

The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.

The man who played “The Thin Kid�� is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.

But at what cost?

Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film�� that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.]]> 287 Paul Tremblay Lauryl 0 to-read 3.39 2024
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200488134
On a small island in a remote corner of northwest Scotland lies Maundrell castle, owned by its wealthy namesake family for centuries—until now. Edwina Nunn is shocked to learn a relative she never heard of has bequeathed the castle and its land to her. What awaits Edie and her teenage daughter, Neve, is even more startling, for the castle is home to a multitude of ghosts.

Yet there’s a strange beauty in the austere architecture and the eerie, bloody waters of Loch na Scáthanna, the Lake of Shadows. Beguiled by a frightened ghost who gazes longingly out of the castle’s windows, Edie and Neve are drawn to the legends shrouding the island and the mystery of the Maundrell Red—a priceless diamond that disappeared decades before.

Is the gem really cursed, and the cause of the family tragedies that have all occurred on Samhain—Scottish Halloween? As Samhain approaches once more, Edie and Neve race to peel back the dark secrets entwining the living and the dead—a twisted story of bitter cruelty and hidden love—or they will become another Maundrell tragedy trapped in the lonely hours . . .]]> 336 Shannon Morgan 1496743903 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.66 2024
author: Shannon Morgan
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127306440
Retired soldier Alex Easton returns in a horrifying new adventure.

After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.

In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home. . . or in their dreams.]]> 151 T. Kingfisher 1250830850 Lauryl 4 fiction, horror 3.78 2024
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves: fiction, horror
review:

]]> 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 Lauryl 4 fiction 3.92 1992
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 78292292 ��
“Jessica Elefante practices what she preaches by rising above complaints to confront modern, twisted problems right in the face.”—Jaron Lanier, bestselling author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

We live in a world that is under the influence.��

Our lives are being choreographed by forces that want something from us. Everything from ingrained family values to mind-altering algorithms create our foundations, warp how we see the world, manipulate our decisions, and dictate our beliefs. Yet rarely do we question these everyday influences of our modern times even as we go further down the path of unwell, unhappy, and unhinged .��

A high-spirited exploration through the troublesome influences of our world, Raising Hell, Living Well , Jessica Elefante’s eye-opening debut, follows one bullshit artist’s journey, from small-time salesperson to award-winning corporate strategist to founder of the digital wellbeing movement Folk Rebellion, in coming to terms with how she was wielding influence—and the forces she was under herself.����

With whip-smart writing and wry humor, Elefante’s collection of essays is a head-trip through her misadventures. From explaining productivity as a symptom of the influence of capitalism to how the wellness industry makes us feel more unwell or our unquestioning participation in oversharing, optimization, and instant gratification, she invites us to reexamine our world, our pasts, and ourselves through the lens of influence. Now a reformed brand strategist, Elefante lays bare her own culpability, sharing what she learned—and what she got wrong. She offers a new take on intentional living and provides a simple practice to deconstruct how the powers-that-be are attempting to modify our behaviors. Before you know it, you’ll be questioning everything from how you take your coffee to how our social institutions are structured. And you’ll learn how to live free from the influences around us—including Elefante herself.��

The much-needed subversive voice to demystify these times, Elefante will make you angry, make you laugh, and make you think about how you’re really living. Unpretentious, sharply observed, and devil-hearted, Raising Hell, Living Well holds out a hand to help you climb out from under the influence.]]> 384 Jessica Elefante 0593500563 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.08
author: Jessica Elefante
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.08
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41961994 In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories.

Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing—a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.

But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell ... and Earth.]]> 384 A.J. Hackwith 1984806386 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.78 2019
author: A.J. Hackwith
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60531406 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?]]> 443 Brandon Sanderson Lauryl 0 to-read 4.35 2023
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51933429
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 330 Lucy Foley Lauryl 4 fiction, mystery-crime 3.64 2020
author: Lucy Foley
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: fiction, mystery-crime
review:

]]> 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

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.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Lauryl 0 to-read 3.48 1928
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61387386 In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she's always longed to become: mermaid.

Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine--the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.]]> 256 Jade Song 0063257602 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.68 2023
author: Jade Song
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20443278 Live Through This, awoke a feminist consciousness in a generation of young listeners.

Live Through This arrived in 1994, at a tumultuous point in the history of American music. Three years earlier Nirvana's Nevermind had broken open the punk underground, and the first issue of a zine called Riot Grrrl had been published. Hole were of this context and yet outside of it: too famous for the strict punk ethics of riotgrrrl, too explicitly feminist to be the world's biggest rock band.

Live Through This is an album about girlhood and motherhood; desire and disgust; self-destruction and survival. There have been few rock albums before or since so intimately concerned with female experience. It is an album that changed lives �� so why is Courtney Love's achievement as a songwriter and musician still not taken seriously, two decades on?]]> 127 Anwen Crawford 1623563771 Lauryl 5 music-boox, my-favorite-books
I would love to imagine that this well-researched, thoughtful and big-hearted little book about the making of one of the greatest albums of the 20th century would put to rest the misogynist slander that has plagued the legacy of the brilliant but spiky Courtney Love for all these years. But I know that it will not, because nobody that NEEDS to unlearn that particular part of their sexism is actually going to read this.

I’m gonna go look at the reviews of this book and then I’m going to regret it. That’s my plan for the evening.


]]> 4.06 2015
author: Anwen Crawford
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: music-boox, my-favorite-books
review:
This very tiny book means so, so much to me. <3

I would love to imagine that this well-researched, thoughtful and big-hearted little book about the making of one of the greatest albums of the 20th century would put to rest the misogynist slander that has plagued the legacy of the brilliant but spiky Courtney Love for all these years. But I know that it will not, because nobody that NEEDS to unlearn that particular part of their sexism is actually going to read this.

I’m gonna go look at the reviews of this book and then I’m going to regret it. That’s my plan for the evening.



]]> 1201724 Winner of the Stoker Award and named one of the 100 Best Novels of 2006 by Publishers Weekly, Dark Harvest is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror �� and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy…]]> 169 Norman Partridge 076531911X Lauryl 3 fiction, horror
Now is the season, my minions! WE SHALL RANSACK YOUR TARGET DOLLAR SECTIONS AND PILAGE YOUR MICHAEL’S DECOR DEPARTMENTS!! WE WILL BATHE IN APPLE CIDER AND DRAPE OURSELVES IN CLOTHES BLACK AS SACKCLOTH BUT WITH LIKE CUTE LITTLE CAT EARS!! WE WILL OVERRUN YOUR NOVELTY HAYRIDES AND SELFIE AMONGST YOUR FIELDS OF INEDIBLE GOURDS!! WE SHALL GORGE ON YOUR SLASHER FILMS *AND* YOUR “PRACTICAL MAGICS��!
FROM THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER TO THE LAST OF OCTOBER, WE, THE BIG TIDDY GOTH GIRLFRIENDS, ARISE TO RULE THE EARTH!!!*

You cannot stop us.

*Real talk, my tits are actually incredibly modest in scale, but memes.

ANYWAY. I’m in a real MOOD for folk horror this Halloween. How bout you? If so, then Dark Harvest might just hit the spot for you.

For starts, it must be said (in fact it cannot be stressed ENOUGH) that the cover of this book is as enticing a piece of Halloween confectionery as I’ve ever seen. If you love horror fiction, as I do, then there’s pretty much no bad review that could drive you away from this book once you have looked upon it. It’s a PUMPKIN HEADED SCARECROW IN A SPOOKY CORNFIELD AND THERE IS A RICKETY FENCE AND IT’S ALL ORANGE AND GLOWY AND MOODY AF AND I JUST LOVE IT.

The inside of this book could be nothing but lorem ipsum and I’d still buy it just to leave lying around looking cozy and creepy on my autumnal throw blanket.

That said, Dark Harvest is actually full of real words, which is�� pretty good, overall.

I don’t really love the title. It seems a waste to not have called it The October Boy, because that’s a badass name for a book, whereas Dark Harvest is accurate enough but also sort of generically spooky. The phrase “Dark Harvest�� literally never appears in the text, whereas the October Boy is named again and again.

This book is a novella and not really a full novel, which, in some ways is great, because I love a sprightly read, and because I’m not sure that the premise would withstand the level of detail that a full novel would entail. And that’s kind of this thing that makes this book only “pretty good�� to me. The backstory has a lot of implausibility to it. Like�� I found myself reading this and trying to figure out how the town in this story has managed to function just as it has for however many years (we are meant to assume, I think, that it’s quite a lot of years)
IDK, I just have QUESTIONS, you know? Like, HOW. That’s the main question I have.

Not “how does the October Boy magically come to life every year (which would seem to be the Obvious Question, but it’s honestly immaterial), but HOW do the town leaders maintain their power? It seems to me that the whole ritual requires such an insane level of compliance from the townsfolk, and control from the town elders, it just seems deeply unlikely to me that the ritual would have continued without resistance for so many years. And how many years *are*
we talking about here? We are meant to assume that this ritual goes back to some almost ancient past, but we aren’t even given even a little morsel of an Easter egg of a reference to juice our imaginations a little.

I sort of wonder if this story started out as a screenplay because it’s got that feel to it.

Overall: Dark Harvest is a bit quick and dirty, but also incredibly vibey, with a lot of nice set pieces and imagery that puts the smell of fall leaves in my nose. It’s both short enough and moody enough that the lingering questions I have about all the logistics don’t matter a ton to my overall enjoyment of the work. It very much feels like coming home after trick-or-treat as s kid and absolutely housing a bunch of fun sized snickers and hot cocoa with a good mediocre horror movie on tv. And that’s the thing about horror fans in general, I think. We’re a particular type of aesthete. We’re aficionados of camp, in the Sontag sense of it. Horror is camp, and camp, in general, is a wonderful aesthetic to have because camp tells us that a thing doesn’t have to be Good to be good.

Is Dark Harvest the best? No.
Is it fun? Yes.

That’s it. That’s the review.


]]> 3.59 2006
author: Norman Partridge
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/10
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: fiction, horror
review:
When the first chill breeze of Autumn blows. and the leaves turn golden and pumpkin spice scents the very air, when the harvest moon rises over the lonely Midwestern corn fields like a great orange badonkadonk, it is then that I tear off my summer sun hat and stomp on my heart shaped sunglasses, bearing my candy corn fangs as I howl out the lyrics to Bela Lugosi’s Dead, as I reveal my true form: Basic Halloween Bitch.

Now is the season, my minions! WE SHALL RANSACK YOUR TARGET DOLLAR SECTIONS AND PILAGE YOUR MICHAEL’S DECOR DEPARTMENTS!! WE WILL BATHE IN APPLE CIDER AND DRAPE OURSELVES IN CLOTHES BLACK AS SACKCLOTH BUT WITH LIKE CUTE LITTLE CAT EARS!! WE WILL OVERRUN YOUR NOVELTY HAYRIDES AND SELFIE AMONGST YOUR FIELDS OF INEDIBLE GOURDS!! WE SHALL GORGE ON YOUR SLASHER FILMS *AND* YOUR “PRACTICAL MAGICS��!
FROM THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER TO THE LAST OF OCTOBER, WE, THE BIG TIDDY GOTH GIRLFRIENDS, ARISE TO RULE THE EARTH!!!*

You cannot stop us.

*Real talk, my tits are actually incredibly modest in scale, but memes.

ANYWAY. I’m in a real MOOD for folk horror this Halloween. How bout you? If so, then Dark Harvest might just hit the spot for you.

For starts, it must be said (in fact it cannot be stressed ENOUGH) that the cover of this book is as enticing a piece of Halloween confectionery as I’ve ever seen. If you love horror fiction, as I do, then there’s pretty much no bad review that could drive you away from this book once you have looked upon it. It’s a PUMPKIN HEADED SCARECROW IN A SPOOKY CORNFIELD AND THERE IS A RICKETY FENCE AND IT’S ALL ORANGE AND GLOWY AND MOODY AF AND I JUST LOVE IT.

The inside of this book could be nothing but lorem ipsum and I’d still buy it just to leave lying around looking cozy and creepy on my autumnal throw blanket.

That said, Dark Harvest is actually full of real words, which is�� pretty good, overall.

I don’t really love the title. It seems a waste to not have called it The October Boy, because that’s a badass name for a book, whereas Dark Harvest is accurate enough but also sort of generically spooky. The phrase “Dark Harvest�� literally never appears in the text, whereas the October Boy is named again and again.

This book is a novella and not really a full novel, which, in some ways is great, because I love a sprightly read, and because I’m not sure that the premise would withstand the level of detail that a full novel would entail. And that’s kind of this thing that makes this book only “pretty good�� to me. The backstory has a lot of implausibility to it. Like�� I found myself reading this and trying to figure out how the town in this story has managed to function just as it has for however many years (we are meant to assume, I think, that it’s quite a lot of years)
IDK, I just have QUESTIONS, you know? Like, HOW. That’s the main question I have.

Not “how does the October Boy magically come to life every year (which would seem to be the Obvious Question, but it’s honestly immaterial), but HOW do the town leaders maintain their power? It seems to me that the whole ritual requires such an insane level of compliance from the townsfolk, and control from the town elders, it just seems deeply unlikely to me that the ritual would have continued without resistance for so many years. And how many years *are*
we talking about here? We are meant to assume that this ritual goes back to some almost ancient past, but we aren’t even given even a little morsel of an Easter egg of a reference to juice our imaginations a little.

I sort of wonder if this story started out as a screenplay because it’s got that feel to it.

Overall: Dark Harvest is a bit quick and dirty, but also incredibly vibey, with a lot of nice set pieces and imagery that puts the smell of fall leaves in my nose. It’s both short enough and moody enough that the lingering questions I have about all the logistics don’t matter a ton to my overall enjoyment of the work. It very much feels like coming home after trick-or-treat as s kid and absolutely housing a bunch of fun sized snickers and hot cocoa with a good mediocre horror movie on tv. And that’s the thing about horror fans in general, I think. We’re a particular type of aesthete. We’re aficionados of camp, in the Sontag sense of it. Horror is camp, and camp, in general, is a wonderful aesthetic to have because camp tells us that a thing doesn’t have to be Good to be good.

Is Dark Harvest the best? No.
Is it fun? Yes.

That’s it. That’s the review.



]]> 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 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.25 2021
author: Becky Chambers
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 9791 A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).]]> 397 Bill Bryson 0307279464 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.07 1998
author: Bill Bryson
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63832 Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.
William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."
His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.]]> 428 William Least Heat-Moon Lauryl 0 to-read 4.03 1982
author: William Least Heat-Moon
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5306 A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.]]> 214 John Steinbeck 0142000701 Lauryl 5 4.07 1961
author: John Steinbeck
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/26
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: memoir, my-favorite-books, travel-adventure
review:

]]> 65213543 When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.

In Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel to Legends & Lattes, author Travis Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand books.

Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.

What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.]]> 336 Travis Baldree 1250886104 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.13 2023
author: Travis Baldree
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61242426
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success �� not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Lauryl 5 fantasy, my-favorite-books 4.05 2022
author: Travis Baldree
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: fantasy, my-favorite-books
review:

]]> 29072594 Born to Run

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began.

Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.

He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang��: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run�� reveals more than we previously realized.

Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll.

Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,�� “Badlands,�� “Darkness on the Edge of Town,�� “The River,�� “Born in the U.S.A.,�� “The Rising,�� and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,�� to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.]]> 528 Bruce Springsteen 1501141511 Lauryl 0 currently-reading 4.16 2016
author: Bruce Springsteen
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 691520 384 Jerry Hopkins 0446697338 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.94 1980
author: Jerry Hopkins
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37715859
Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western - she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry's meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris's very soul.

This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It's a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that's darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul...where only a girl with a guitar can save us all.]]> 337 Grady Hendrix Lauryl 5 fiction, horror
Otherwise, 10/10, no notes. Almost Famous meets Satanic Panic. Another banger by my best horror guy, Grady Hendrix. This one is in my top 3 Hendrices, but I have yet to read How To Sell A Haunted House because I am cheap and I’m waiting to buy it in paperback.

]]> 3.70 2018
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: fiction, horror
review:
Literally the only thing I didn’t love about this book is the main character’s disdain for pop music, because I have a *thing* about that.

Otherwise, 10/10, no notes. Almost Famous meets Satanic Panic. Another banger by my best horror guy, Grady Hendrix. This one is in my top 3 Hendrices, but I have yet to read How To Sell A Haunted House because I am cheap and I’m waiting to buy it in paperback.


]]> 57926000 A propulsive debut with a wicked sense of humor in which two American ex-pats obsessed with the Amanda Knox trial find themselves at the nexus of murder and celebrity in glittering late-aughts Berlin.

Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in the bohemian capital of Europe--Berlin. Zoe, rudderless, relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star. On Craigslist, Hailey unknowingly stumbles on an apartment sublet posted by a well-known thriller writer. Feeling as though they've won the lottery, the women move into the high-ceilinged pre-war flat. Soon they realize that their landlady, Beatrice, who is supposed to be on a residency in Vienna, is watching them--and her next book appears to be based on their lives. Taking stock of their mundane routines--Law and Order binges and nightly nachos--Hailey insists they become people worthy of a novel. As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living, and how will it end?

Other People's Clothes is brilliant on the sometimes dangerous intensity of female friendships, on millennial life in the city, on the lengths people will go to in order to eradicate emotional pain.]]> 320 Calla Henkel 0385547358 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.69 2022
author: Calla Henkel
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58975864 From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

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

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

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 159 T. Kingfisher Lauryl 4 horror
If you’ve read Mexican Gothic, the vibes here will be mighty familiar. I would almost say TOO familiar, but I loved Mexican Gothic so much that I really don’t care and I think that WMTD takes the fungal motif in a different enough direction that it doesn’t bother me. Mushrooms are really having a cultural moment right now, aren’t they? Both in horror and in fashion. Millennials can’t get enough of ‘em! It’s like we all imprinted super hard on a 70’s kitchen and now we’re just forever opening the avocado colored fridges inside our heads to grab the Pepsi of nostalgia.

ANYHOO.

The most fresh twist that Kingfisher has to add is the backstory of our hero, a non-binary soldier from the fictional land of Gallacia, where people’s pronouns aren’t based on gender so much as on their roles in society, and they drink a disgusting regional liqueur�� which I think is a delightfully realistic touch because I don’t know a single country that doesn’t have its own disgusting regional liqueur that almost invariably is based on anise.

I’m very much looking forward to book two and learning more about Alex Easton and ka adventures. ]]> 4.00 2022
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/11
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: horror
review:
A delightful, quick little gothic horror based on The Fall of the House of Usher by Poe. Ever since I read The Haunting of Hill House, I have found myself occasionally needing to scratch that particular itch over and over again, the way one does after any really good story gets its grubby meathooks into ya. If you like a nice haunted house story, this one goes down very easily and you can finish it in a day if you’re in the mood.

If you’ve read Mexican Gothic, the vibes here will be mighty familiar. I would almost say TOO familiar, but I loved Mexican Gothic so much that I really don’t care and I think that WMTD takes the fungal motif in a different enough direction that it doesn’t bother me. Mushrooms are really having a cultural moment right now, aren’t they? Both in horror and in fashion. Millennials can’t get enough of ‘em! It’s like we all imprinted super hard on a 70’s kitchen and now we’re just forever opening the avocado colored fridges inside our heads to grab the Pepsi of nostalgia.

ANYHOO.

The most fresh twist that Kingfisher has to add is the backstory of our hero, a non-binary soldier from the fictional land of Gallacia, where people’s pronouns aren’t based on gender so much as on their roles in society, and they drink a disgusting regional liqueur�� which I think is a delightfully realistic touch because I don’t know a single country that doesn’t have its own disgusting regional liqueur that almost invariably is based on anise.

I’m very much looking forward to book two and learning more about Alex Easton and ka adventures.
]]> 62296528
For Harry, this is that story at last.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.

At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.

Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . .

For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.]]> 410 Prince Harry 0593593804 Lauryl 3 celebrity-biographies, memoir 3.78 2023
author: Prince Harry
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: celebrity-biographies, memoir
review:

]]> 50039 320 Pamela Des Barres 1556525893 Lauryl 3 3.71 1987
author: Pamela Des Barres
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: celebrity-biographies, memoir, music-boox
review:

]]> 51116307
Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, is plagued by a mysterious illness that eats away at the memories of those affected by it. El and Octavia are two best friends who find themselves the newest victims of this disease after waking up in a movie theater with no memory of the past few hours.

As El and Vee dive deeper into the mystery behind their lost memories, they realize the stories of their town hold more dark truth than they could've imagined. It's up to El and Vee to keep their town from falling apart...to keep the world safe from Shudder-to-Think's monsters.

Collects issues # 1-6.]]> 168 Carmen Maria Machado 1779504527 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.96 2020
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33375622 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

The husband stitch --
Inventory --
Mothers --
Especially heinous --
Real women have bodies --
Eight bites --
The resident --
Difficult at parties]]> 248 Carmen Maria Machado 155597788X Lauryl 0 to-read 3.85 2017
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43317482 251 Carmen Maria Machado 1644450038 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.41 2019
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60057155
For most, the Saturnalia carnival marks a brief winter reprieve for the beleaguered people of the historic city, which is being eroded by extreme weather, a collapsing economy, and feverish summers—whose disease carrying mosquitos are perhaps the only thing one can count on. Like Thanksgiving or Halloween, Saturnalia has become a purely American holiday despite its pagan roots; and nearly everyone, rich or poor, forgets their troubles for a moment.

For Nina, Saturnalia is simply a cruel reminder of the night that changed everything for her. But when she gets a chance call from Max, one of the Saturn Club’s best-connected members and her last remaining friend, the favor he asks will plunge her back into the Club’s wild solstice masquerade, on a mysterious errand she cannot say no to.

Tonight, Nina will put on a dress of blackest black, and attend the biggest party of the year. Before it’s over, she will discover secret societies battling for power in an increasingly precarious world and become custodian of a horrifying secret—and the target of a mysterious hunter. As Nina runs across an alternate Philadelphia balanced on a knife’s edge between celebration and catastrophe, through parades, worship houses, museums, hidden mansions, and the place she once called home, she’s forced to confront her past in order to take charge of her own—and perhaps everyone’s—future.]]> 256 Stephanie Feldman 1951213645 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.45 2022
author: Stephanie Feldman
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29633758 Body Horror, Anne Elizabeth Moore explores the global toll of capitalism on women with thorough research, surprising humor, and ease—especially when examining her own experiences with disease and health care—to create a portrait of contemporary American culture that is gory and fascinating.

Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable and Cambodian Grrrl, co-editor and publisher of the now-defunct Punk Planet, a founding editor of Best American Comics, a Fulbright scholar, former UN Press Fellow, and USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow.]]> 229 Anne Elizabeth Moore 1940430887 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.60 2017
author: Anne Elizabeth Moore
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60536421 An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained.

After a recent string of disappearances in a small Connecticut town, a grieving widower with a grim secret is drawn into a dangerous ritual of dark magic by a powerful and mysterious older gentleman named Heart Crowley. Meanwhile, a member of local law enforcement tasked with uncovering the culprit responsible for the bizarre disappearances soon begins to learn of a current of unbridled hatred simmering beneath the guise of the town’s idyllic community—a hatred that will eventually burst and forever change the lives of those who once found peace in the quiet town of Henley’s Edge.

From the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of the viral sensation, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats is a haunting supernatural thriller from a new and exciting voice in genre fiction.]]> 226 Eric LaRocca 1955904278 Lauryl 0 to-read 2.73 2023
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Lauryl
average rating: 2.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 776500 160 Wayne Koestenbaum 0670030007 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.45 2001
author: Wayne Koestenbaum
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60784784
History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal to submit to the roles imposed upon them.

Ludwig, simultaneously spoiled and punished for his softness and “unmanly�� interests, falls hard for the operas of Richard Wagner and neglects his state duties in the pursuit of art. Sisi, married at the age of sixteen to her beloved Franzl, bristles at the restrictions of her elevated position, the value placed on her beauty, and the simultaneous expectation that she ravage her body again and again in childbirth. Both absurdly vain, both traumatized by the demands of their roles, Sisi and Ludwig struggle against the ideals they are expected to embody, and resist through extravagance, petulance, performance, and frivolity.

A tragicomic tour de force, Empty Theatre immerses readers in Ludwig and Sisi’s rarefied, ridiculous, restrictive world―where the aesthetics of excess belie the isolation of its inhabitants. With wit, pathos, and imagination, Jac Jemc takes us on an unforgettable journey through two extraordinary parallel lives and the complex, tenuous friendship that links them.]]> 464 Jac Jemc 0374277923 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.90 2023
author: Jac Jemc
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58725012 Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery�� and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear.

Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning.

Vera, a young girl when her own mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough—that must surely draw the affliction’s gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear?

Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin’s Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind.]]> 240 Alexis Schaitkin 1250219639 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.82 2022
author: Alexis Schaitkin
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57355365 A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself.

The word “medieval�� conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors.��

The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today.����

The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire�� but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics.����

The Bright Ages is illustrated throughout with high-resolution images.��]]> 307 Matthew Gabriele 0062980890 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.58 2021
author: Matthew Gabriele
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62608040
Not long after Iliana Regan's celebrated debut, Burn the Place, became the first food-related title in four decades to become a National Book Award nominee in 2019, her career as a Michelin star-winning chef took a sharp turn north. Long based in Chicago, she and her new wife, Anna, decided to create a culinary destination, the Milkweed Inn, located in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula, where much of the food served to their guests would be foraged by Regan herself in the surrounding forest and nearby river. Part fresh challenge, part escape, Regan's move to the forest was also a return to her rural roots, in an effort to deepen the intimate connection to nature and the land that she'd long expressed as a chef, but experienced most intensely growing up.

On her family's farm in rural Indiana, Regan was the beloved youngest in a family with three much older sisters. From a very early age, her relationship with her mother and father was shaped by her childhood identification as a boy. Her father treated her like the son he never had, and together they foraged for mushrooms, berries, herbs, and other wild food in the surrounding countryside--especially her grandfather's nearby farm, where they also fished in its pond and young Iliana explored the accumulated family treasures stored in its dusty barn. Her father would share stories of his own grandmother, Busia, who'd helped run a family inn while growing up in eastern Europe, from which she imported her own wild legends of her native forests, before settling in Gary, Indiana, and opening Jennie's Caf , a restaurant that fed generations of local steelworkers. He also shared with Iliana a steady supply of sharp knives and--as she got older--guns.

Iliana's mother had family stories as well--not only of her own years marrying young, raising headstrong girls, and cooking at Jennie's, but also of her father, Wayne, who spent much of his boyhood hunting with the men of his family in the frozen reaches of rural Canada. The stories from this side of Regan's family are darker, riven with alcoholism and domestic strife too often expressed in the harm, physical and otherwise, perpetrated by men--harm men do to women and families, and harm men do to the entire landscapes they occupy.

As Regan explores the ancient landscape of Michigan's boreal forest, her stories of the land, its creatures, and its dazzling profusion of plant and vegetable life are interspersed with her and Anna's efforts to make a home and a business of an inn that's suddenly, as of their first full season there in 2020, empty of guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She discovers where the wild blueberry bushes bear tiny fruit, where to gather wood sorrel, and where and when the land's different mushroom species appear--even as surrounding parcels of land are suddenly and violently decimated by logging crews that obliterate plant life and drive away the area's birds. Along the way she struggles not only with the threat of COVID, but also with her personal and familial legacies of addiction, violence, fear, and obsession--all while she tries to conceive a child that she and her immune-compromised wife hope to raise in their new home.

With Burn the Place, Regan announced herself as a writer whose extravagant, unconventional talents matched her abilities as a lauded chef. In Fieldwork, she digs even deeper to express the meaning and beauty we seek in the landscapes, and stories, that reveal the forces which inform, shape, and nurture our lives.]]> 250 Iliana Regan 1572843187 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.53 2023
author: Iliana Regan
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54492657
A New York Times Notable Book
A�� New York Times Book Review Editors�� Choice
A Boston Globe ��and�� LitHub ��Best Book of the Year

When “The Fourth State of Matter,�� her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa was published in The New Yorker , Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form.
��
Now, with Festival Days, ��Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work. In these nine pieces, she captures both the small, luminous moments of daily existence and those instants when life and death hang in the balance, ranging from the death of a beloved dog to a relentlessly readable account of a New York artist trapped inside a burning building, as well as two triumphant, celebrated pieces of short fiction.
��
Here is an unforgettable collection destined to be embraced and debated by readers and writers, teachers and students. Anchored by the title piece––a searing journey through India that brings into focus questions of mortality and love�� Festival Days presents Beard at the height of her powers, using her flawless prose to reveal all that is tender and timeless beneath the way we live now.]]> 272 Jo Ann Beard 0316497231 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.99 2021
author: Jo Ann Beard
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 791345
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.

They never returned.

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.]]> 189 Joan Lindsay 0099750619 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.65 1967
author: Joan Lindsay
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15808307 Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director Guillermo del Toro
��
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro’s favorites, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ray Russell’s short story “Sardonicus,�� considered by Stephen King to be “perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,�� to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. Featuring original cover art by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, these stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.


The Haunting of Hill House

The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre. First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's��The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting;' Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.]]> 235 Shirley Jackson 0143122355 Lauryl 5 3.84 1959
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: fiction, horror, my-favorite-books
review:

]]> 49041 There is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9780316160193 here.

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I FELT LIKE I WAS TRAPPED IN ONE OF THOSE TERRIFYING NIGHTMARES, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough.... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

FOR BELLA SWAN THERE IS ONE THING more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning....

LEGIONS OF READERS ENTRANCED BY THE New York Times bestseller Twilight are hungry for the continuing story of star-crossed lovers Bell and Edward. In New Moon, Stephanie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural spin. passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality.]]> 563 Stephenie Meyer 0316160199 Lauryl 3 fiction, horror, pulp
When I read the first book, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also read the "sneak preview" chapter at the end and was so put off by Bella's whining about being OLD! (Eighteen! Oh, the horror, the horror! ...Okay, so, in retrospect, eighteen was a horrific age, but certainly not for any of the reasons Bella supposes. Sometimes I meet 18-year-olds, and I think to myself, "Thank God THAT'S over with!") I swore I'd never waste my time on the second one. But then my husband gave me a copy of New Moon that he found at the thrift store. He thought I'd like it, and it was only a dollar, and my husband is compulsive about buying used books.

Sadly, he was right. I flew through it in about 24 hours, and I liked it WAY better than the first book in the series, though the same flaws that mar the first book have only grown more intense in the second.

For starters: Bella is really, really annoying to anyone over the age of 25. She embodies pretty much every self-aggrandizing, self-loathing, melodramatic tic of 18-year-olds everywhere, and reading her is a painful, slightly embarrassing reminder that you, too, may once have been this annoying to grown-ups, while you thought you were being SO sophisticated, didn't you? Aye, aye, aye.

Because of her embarrassing accuracy, though, I'm often willing to overlook Bella's irritating personality. In the first book especially, her relationship with Edward is oddly affecting. Her uncomplicated intensity reminds me of the way I felt at that age, and the non-sex sex scenes are, frankly, really hot.

What's more annoying about Bella is that she's the Jar Jar Binks of the series. She's like a human deus-ex-machina. Every dangerous situation that occurs in New Moon happens because of some stupid decision that Bella makes. I suppose, from Stephenie Meyers' point of view, then, Bella's teenage rashness isn't just a character flaw, it's an important tool by which she can justify the forward motion of the plot. This strikes me as lazy writing, at best.

The saving grace of the second book is that the limpid-eyed, brooding Edward is absent through the bulk of it, leaving Bella to play for chapter after chapter with the much more interesting, warm-blooded werewolves. Jacob, the Quileute werewolf and semi-love interest who begins to slowly replace Edward in Bella's affections is a thousand times more fun than boring old Edward. My favorite part of the book, I'm a bit sheepish to admit, is the long stretch where not much happens, and Bella spends time fixing up motorcycles with Jacob and sitting in the wolf pack's warm kitchen eating muffins. (Maybe this is just a nerdy tic of my own personality...my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings, too, are the parts where everyone gets a brief reprieve from the action to enjoy a hot bath and some mead.)

The other side of my Jacob preference, though, logically comes with the fact that I am reading this as a grown woman, and not as a teenage girl. Edward and Jacob very much represent the supposed dichotomy between the guy who's bad for you who you just can't stay away from and the guy who is perfect for you, but who just doesn't boil your blood the way Bad Boy does. When I was younger, I certainly went for enough dudes who were really, really wrong for me. But I'm older now, and I don't really find tragedy all that sexy anymore. Mostly, it just seems stupid because I know that that kind of thing goes nowhere in the long run.

Also, there's a disturbing difference in equality between Edward and Bella. It's true, Edward appears as if he's a teenaged boy, but really, he's over 100 years old, and there is a definite stand of paternalism that runs through their relationship, as when Bella spends half of the book putting herself in life-threatening situations just so that she can hear the voice of Edward in her head, scolding her for her stupidity. The fact that he's technically a teenager is the only thing that makes this even vaguely okay. Jacob, on the other hand, is a year younger than Bella, and their relationship is one of equals.

It is telling about our own cultural biases that, in the end, she chooses the slightly controlling Edward over the more evenly matched Jacob. Women are supposed to pick the guy who's "above" them somehow, right? It all feeds into an outdated idea of chivalry that we are still somehow taught to adhere to.

And anyway, Jacob is totally hot. (Literally...his blood runs a constant 108 degrees, whereas laying one's head on Edward's chest seems about as comfy as a tombstone draped in a tee-shirt. Not. Sexy.)

Overall, what perhaps bothers me most about the book is that, from a feminist perspective, the entire plot hinges not on Bella's decisions for her life as a person, but on her romantic choices, which dominate every path that she takes for herself. Again, this is partially a function of her age, and easy to forgive when you're reading as an adult. But this book is aimed at teen readers, and the message it sends to young girls in particular is not a very empowering one.]]> 3.61 2006
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2009/12/19
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: fiction, horror, pulp
review:
Is there any guiltier pleasure for a grown ass woman than the Twilight series?

When I read the first book, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also read the "sneak preview" chapter at the end and was so put off by Bella's whining about being OLD! (Eighteen! Oh, the horror, the horror! ...Okay, so, in retrospect, eighteen was a horrific age, but certainly not for any of the reasons Bella supposes. Sometimes I meet 18-year-olds, and I think to myself, "Thank God THAT'S over with!") I swore I'd never waste my time on the second one. But then my husband gave me a copy of New Moon that he found at the thrift store. He thought I'd like it, and it was only a dollar, and my husband is compulsive about buying used books.

Sadly, he was right. I flew through it in about 24 hours, and I liked it WAY better than the first book in the series, though the same flaws that mar the first book have only grown more intense in the second.

For starters: Bella is really, really annoying to anyone over the age of 25. She embodies pretty much every self-aggrandizing, self-loathing, melodramatic tic of 18-year-olds everywhere, and reading her is a painful, slightly embarrassing reminder that you, too, may once have been this annoying to grown-ups, while you thought you were being SO sophisticated, didn't you? Aye, aye, aye.

Because of her embarrassing accuracy, though, I'm often willing to overlook Bella's irritating personality. In the first book especially, her relationship with Edward is oddly affecting. Her uncomplicated intensity reminds me of the way I felt at that age, and the non-sex sex scenes are, frankly, really hot.

What's more annoying about Bella is that she's the Jar Jar Binks of the series. She's like a human deus-ex-machina. Every dangerous situation that occurs in New Moon happens because of some stupid decision that Bella makes. I suppose, from Stephenie Meyers' point of view, then, Bella's teenage rashness isn't just a character flaw, it's an important tool by which she can justify the forward motion of the plot. This strikes me as lazy writing, at best.

The saving grace of the second book is that the limpid-eyed, brooding Edward is absent through the bulk of it, leaving Bella to play for chapter after chapter with the much more interesting, warm-blooded werewolves. Jacob, the Quileute werewolf and semi-love interest who begins to slowly replace Edward in Bella's affections is a thousand times more fun than boring old Edward. My favorite part of the book, I'm a bit sheepish to admit, is the long stretch where not much happens, and Bella spends time fixing up motorcycles with Jacob and sitting in the wolf pack's warm kitchen eating muffins. (Maybe this is just a nerdy tic of my own personality...my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings, too, are the parts where everyone gets a brief reprieve from the action to enjoy a hot bath and some mead.)

The other side of my Jacob preference, though, logically comes with the fact that I am reading this as a grown woman, and not as a teenage girl. Edward and Jacob very much represent the supposed dichotomy between the guy who's bad for you who you just can't stay away from and the guy who is perfect for you, but who just doesn't boil your blood the way Bad Boy does. When I was younger, I certainly went for enough dudes who were really, really wrong for me. But I'm older now, and I don't really find tragedy all that sexy anymore. Mostly, it just seems stupid because I know that that kind of thing goes nowhere in the long run.

Also, there's a disturbing difference in equality between Edward and Bella. It's true, Edward appears as if he's a teenaged boy, but really, he's over 100 years old, and there is a definite stand of paternalism that runs through their relationship, as when Bella spends half of the book putting herself in life-threatening situations just so that she can hear the voice of Edward in her head, scolding her for her stupidity. The fact that he's technically a teenager is the only thing that makes this even vaguely okay. Jacob, on the other hand, is a year younger than Bella, and their relationship is one of equals.

It is telling about our own cultural biases that, in the end, she chooses the slightly controlling Edward over the more evenly matched Jacob. Women are supposed to pick the guy who's "above" them somehow, right? It all feeds into an outdated idea of chivalry that we are still somehow taught to adhere to.

And anyway, Jacob is totally hot. (Literally...his blood runs a constant 108 degrees, whereas laying one's head on Edward's chest seems about as comfy as a tombstone draped in a tee-shirt. Not. Sexy.)

Overall, what perhaps bothers me most about the book is that, from a feminist perspective, the entire plot hinges not on Bella's decisions for her life as a person, but on her romantic choices, which dominate every path that she takes for herself. Again, this is partially a function of her age, and easy to forgive when you're reading as an adult. But this book is aimed at teen readers, and the message it sends to young girls in particular is not a very empowering one.
]]> 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Lauryl 5 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: fiction, speculative-fiction, my-favorite-books
review:

]]> 436806
Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album.

Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended.]]> 103 Georges Bataille 0872862097 Lauryl 1 fiction, books-i-hated
The problem with "pornography" as literature or art, or even as comedy, is that any criticism one raises to it will be seen by its advocates as prudery, whether that is the case or not.

Therein lies the major problem with Story of the Eye. I could assure you that I am actually a pretty wanton lass and a great consumer of porn, but it won't matter to people who dug this book. If I didn't dig it (which I didn't), I must be either:
a) a fussy, sexless, humorless cold fish
or
b) too literal-minded and therefore unable to grasp Bataille's deeper philosophical meaning

Hey, if Story of the Eye turns you on, then you do your thing. Let your getting-freaky flag fly.

As for me, I was not titillated or shocked by it so much as bored and annoyed, and (even as a self-avowed submissive) I've just never found novelistic depictions of violence all that sexy. SOTE was like the literary equivalent of internet trolls who post ridiculous comments using every homophobic, sexist, racist slur they can think of and then, when you object,they accuse you of not being able to take a joke. (Oh, really? I hadn't realized that just using the n-word made a person's post super-hilarious. Where have I been?)

Maybe when it was written, the "shock and awe" technique of philoso-literary bludgeonery was still exciting and new, and saying naughty things just to say naughty things still held some freshness as an idea. But in our wonderful postmodern age, if I want to experience something "offensive", I can just turn on Drawn Together or WonderShowzen and let the Hitler jokes come whizzing into my mental space. Awesome! How transgressive of me!

The problem with reading SOTE as a novel, besides Bataille's seemingly great love of poo-poo and pee-pee (ha, ha, ha! I say naughty!) is that Bataille is not a novelist. He is a philosopher writing a novel. Compare this for a moment with Nabokov's Lolita, one of the other most famous "pornographic" novels of our time. Nabokov is not a philosopher, but his novel makes us sweat and break because it forces us into the mindset of his pedophiliac protagonist, makes us feel his love and longing for the unwilling object of his illicit desire. It's awful and it's beautiful, it's subjective, and it feels, at the end, like something true has been said.

Some people have written in their reviews that SOTE "really isn't about sex" (no sh*t) and have gone on to propose what it IS really about, but I think that the book is a cipher...it means nothing, and is about nothing. It's a collection of words meant to elicit an uncomfortable response without actually defining what it hopes that response will be. It's interesting as a concept, but it makes for a really boring novel.

I've never been a big fan of existentialism anyhow, but this book strikes me as existentialism in the most boring of molds: This happened. Then this other thing happened. Then this other thing happened.

Yawn.]]> 3.71 1928
author: Georges Bataille
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1928
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: fiction, books-i-hated
review:
Angela Carter, in an essay about Story of the Eye, once said that the French seem to delight so much in shocking the English that they barely take time to notice that the English aren't really all that shocked. Being an American, I can't really know how right she was, but I definitely think that, in a few deft strokes, she captured the guiding spirit of this book.

The problem with "pornography" as literature or art, or even as comedy, is that any criticism one raises to it will be seen by its advocates as prudery, whether that is the case or not.

Therein lies the major problem with Story of the Eye. I could assure you that I am actually a pretty wanton lass and a great consumer of porn, but it won't matter to people who dug this book. If I didn't dig it (which I didn't), I must be either:
a) a fussy, sexless, humorless cold fish
or
b) too literal-minded and therefore unable to grasp Bataille's deeper philosophical meaning

Hey, if Story of the Eye turns you on, then you do your thing. Let your getting-freaky flag fly.

As for me, I was not titillated or shocked by it so much as bored and annoyed, and (even as a self-avowed submissive) I've just never found novelistic depictions of violence all that sexy. SOTE was like the literary equivalent of internet trolls who post ridiculous comments using every homophobic, sexist, racist slur they can think of and then, when you object,they accuse you of not being able to take a joke. (Oh, really? I hadn't realized that just using the n-word made a person's post super-hilarious. Where have I been?)

Maybe when it was written, the "shock and awe" technique of philoso-literary bludgeonery was still exciting and new, and saying naughty things just to say naughty things still held some freshness as an idea. But in our wonderful postmodern age, if I want to experience something "offensive", I can just turn on Drawn Together or WonderShowzen and let the Hitler jokes come whizzing into my mental space. Awesome! How transgressive of me!

The problem with reading SOTE as a novel, besides Bataille's seemingly great love of poo-poo and pee-pee (ha, ha, ha! I say naughty!) is that Bataille is not a novelist. He is a philosopher writing a novel. Compare this for a moment with Nabokov's Lolita, one of the other most famous "pornographic" novels of our time. Nabokov is not a philosopher, but his novel makes us sweat and break because it forces us into the mindset of his pedophiliac protagonist, makes us feel his love and longing for the unwilling object of his illicit desire. It's awful and it's beautiful, it's subjective, and it feels, at the end, like something true has been said.

Some people have written in their reviews that SOTE "really isn't about sex" (no sh*t) and have gone on to propose what it IS really about, but I think that the book is a cipher...it means nothing, and is about nothing. It's a collection of words meant to elicit an uncomfortable response without actually defining what it hopes that response will be. It's interesting as a concept, but it makes for a really boring novel.

I've never been a big fan of existentialism anyhow, but this book strikes me as existentialism in the most boring of molds: This happened. Then this other thing happened. Then this other thing happened.

Yawn.
]]> 59366093
Ten years ago, an aimless coat check girl better known today as Merrie Cherry sweet-talked her boss into giving her $100 to host a drag show at a Brooklyn dive bar. Soon, kids like Aja were kicking their way into the scene, sneaking into clubs, pocketing their tips to help mom pay the mortgage, and sharing the stage with electric performers like Thorgy Thor and Sasha Velour. Because suddenly, in the biggest, brightest city in America, drag was offering young, broke, creative queer people a chance at real money—and for thousands or even millions of people to learn their names.

In How You Get Famous , journalist Nicole Pasulka joyfully documents the rebirth of the New York drag scene, following a group of iconoclastic performers with undeniable charisma, talent, and a hell of a lot to prove. The result is a sweeping portrait of the 21st-century search for celebrity and community, as well as a chronicle of all the struggles, fights, and disappointments along the way. A rollicking account of the quest to make a living through an art form on the cusp of becoming a cultural phenomenon, How You Get Famous offers an unmissable romp through the gritty and glamorous world of Brooklyn drag.]]> 336 Nicole Pasulka 1982115793 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.80
author: Nicole Pasulka
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34040 The Unanswered Question. Beautiful, sensuous, and mysterious, she quickly became an essential Balanchine dancer-and the story of her personal life is as dramatic as they story of her rise to fame. Her account of a bizarre childhood, a magnificent if curious dance career, a charged, complicated domestic life with photographer Bert Stern, and a never-ending struggle with emotional, physical, and financial pressures is fascinating-as are her portraits of the other great dance figures who punctuated her life, from Balanchine to Baryshnikov.
]]> 352 Allegra Kent 0312187505 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.02 1997
author: Allegra Kent
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60769830 How Far the Light Reaches is a book that invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.]]> 263 Sabrina Imbler 0316540536 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.10 2022
author: Sabrina Imbler
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54746205
Mexico in the 1970s is a politically fraught land, even for Elvis, a goon with a passion for rock ’n�� roll who knows more about kidney-smashing than intrigue. When Elvis is assigned to find Leonora, he begins a blood-soaked search for the woman—and his soul.

Swirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a simmering historical noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of the missing woman they’re both desperate to find.]]> 289 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593356829 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.49 2021
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51934838 A story about a dangerously curious young undergraduate whose rebelliousness leads her to discover a shocking secret involving an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.

You are in the house and the house is in the woods.
You are in the house and the house is in you . . .

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, pills, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. The school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves and their place within the formidable black iron gates of Catherine.

For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is connected to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.]]> 311 Elisabeth Thomas 0062905651 Lauryl 4 horror
But okay, Catherine House.

A lot of the reviews on ŷ������ seem to be kinda lukewarm, but I’m not exactly sure what any of those readers were expecting. That said, I don’t know why I bother to read most ŷ������ reviews. It’s a little bit uncanny to me how many people are out there just reading books all Willy-nilly while simultaneously being unable to like, write.

Yeah yeah yeah, I’m a snob. Whatever. I’m not a snob about what I read, though, and Catherine House was FUN. A languid, decadent gothic allegory about languid, decadent young fools just discovering the everyday horror and sublimity of being a human. So, like�� you know�� all of us.

A lot of readers didn’t like the protagonist, which I don’t get. I love her. I love her awkwardness and her vulnerability and her tenderness and her sluttiness. I love how she insists frequently that she doesn’t have feelings, while simultaneously falling in love with every single one of her best friends. I love the intimacy of friendships depicted in this book. It felt true to me, the intensity and insularity that only those early teenage friend circles can have.

The twist in this tale is not that twisty and I suspect that will bother a lot of folks. Any decent reader will be blinded by it’s impending appearance from early on in the book. But honestly�� that doesn’t matter. That’s not the POINT. The POINT of this book is to remind you of the desperate, confused and beautiful person you once were, and how scared she was, and that, despite a society that tells us we must do everything we can to suspend that person in amber like a bug, how actually wonderful it is to grow and change and live in the big, messy world.

*side note to add that this book was chockablock with luxurious descriptions of food, which is always going to improve a book’s likability for me, so. ¯\_(��)_/¯]]> 3.10 2020
author: Elisabeth Thomas
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/17
date added: 2023/01/17
shelves: horror
review:
Not exactly YA, but not exactly NOT YA. Not exactly horror, but not exactly NOT horror. I would give this book a 3.8 if I could. It’s too good to be a 3, maybe *slightly* not good enough to be a 4. Thematically, it reminded me a bit of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, but it failed to break my heart in the same way. Which is actually a fine thing, because I don’t need every book I read to fill me with wall-to-wall existential terror, thanks. Sometimes I like to sleep at night without contemplating the absolute trap of human consciousness.

But okay, Catherine House.

A lot of the reviews on ŷ������ seem to be kinda lukewarm, but I’m not exactly sure what any of those readers were expecting. That said, I don’t know why I bother to read most ŷ������ reviews. It’s a little bit uncanny to me how many people are out there just reading books all Willy-nilly while simultaneously being unable to like, write.

Yeah yeah yeah, I’m a snob. Whatever. I’m not a snob about what I read, though, and Catherine House was FUN. A languid, decadent gothic allegory about languid, decadent young fools just discovering the everyday horror and sublimity of being a human. So, like�� you know�� all of us.

A lot of readers didn’t like the protagonist, which I don’t get. I love her. I love her awkwardness and her vulnerability and her tenderness and her sluttiness. I love how she insists frequently that she doesn’t have feelings, while simultaneously falling in love with every single one of her best friends. I love the intimacy of friendships depicted in this book. It felt true to me, the intensity and insularity that only those early teenage friend circles can have.

The twist in this tale is not that twisty and I suspect that will bother a lot of folks. Any decent reader will be blinded by it’s impending appearance from early on in the book. But honestly�� that doesn’t matter. That’s not the POINT. The POINT of this book is to remind you of the desperate, confused and beautiful person you once were, and how scared she was, and that, despite a society that tells us we must do everything we can to suspend that person in amber like a bug, how actually wonderful it is to grow and change and live in the big, messy world.

*side note to add that this book was chockablock with luxurious descriptions of food, which is always going to improve a book’s likability for me, so. ¯\_(��)_/¯
]]> 51601883
In the world of crime, there exists an unusual commonality between those who steal art and those who repeatedly they are almost exclusively male. But, as with all things, there is always an outlier—someone who bucks the trend, defying the reliable profiles and leaving investigators and researchers scratching their heads. In the history of major art heists, that outlier is Rose Dugdale.

Dugdale’s life is singularly notorious. Born into extreme wealth, she abandoned her life as an Oxford-trained PhD and heiress to join the cause of Irish Republicanism. While on the surface she appears to be the British version of Patricia Hearst, she is anything but.

Dugdale ran head-first towards the action, spearheading the first aerial terrorist attack in British history and pulling off the biggest art theft of her time. In 1974, she led a gang into the opulent Russborough House in Ireland and made off with millions in prized paintings, including works by Goya, Gainsborough, and Rubens, as well as Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid by the mysterious master Johannes Vermeer. Dugdale thus became—to this day—the only woman to pull off a major art heist. And as Anthony Amore explores in The Woman Who Stole Vermeer , it’s likely that this was not her only such heist.

The Woman Who Stole Vermeer is Rose Dugdale’s story, from her idyllic upbringing in Devonshire and her presentation to Elizabeth II as a debutante to her university years and her eventual radical lifestyle. Her life of crime and activism is at turns unbelievable and awe-inspiring, and sure to engross readers.]]> 272 Anthony M. Amore 1643135295 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.20 2020
author: Anthony M. Amore
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52668915
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

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

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.]]> 352 Merlin Sheldrake 0525510311 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.34 2020
author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58482245
Considered a golden moment of hope and potential by the left, and a black hour of terrifying power inversions by the right, the Commune occupies a critical position in understanding modern history and politics. A 72-day conflict that ended with the ferocious slaughter of Parisians, the Commune represents for some the final insurgent burst of the French Revolution’s long wake, for others the first “successful�� socialist uprising, and for yet others an archetype for egalitarian socio-economic, feminist, and political change. Militants have referenced and incorporated its ideas into insurrections across the globe, throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, keeping alive the revolution’s now-iconic goals and images. Innumerable scholars in countless languages have examined aspects of the 1871 uprising, taking perspectives ranging from glorifying to damning this world-shaking event.

The Commune stands as a critical and pivotal moment in nineteenth-century history, as the linchpin between revolutionary pasts and futures, and as the crucible allowing glimpses of alternate possibilities. Upending hierarchies of class, religion, and gender, the Commune emerged as a touchstone for the subsequent century-and-a-half of revolutionary and radical social movements.]]> 156 Carolyn J. Eichner 1978827687 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.05
author: Carolyn J. Eichner
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 50496875
Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed�� Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations.]]> 640 Emily M. Danforth 0062942859 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.64 2020
author: Emily M. Danforth
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52487083 GIRL TO CITY follows one young woman's progression from Elton John fan in the Pittsburgh suburbs to Manhattan art student; from punk show habitue to fledgling musician to cult singer-songwriter who caused a sensation with 1996 debut solo album Diary Of A Mod Housewife.

Set in a ramshackle twentieth century New York world of homemade clubs and bands, through love affairs, temp jobs and motherhood, GIRL TO CITY describes the screw-ups and charmed moments it took for a girl in the crowd at CBGB to pick up a guitar and sing her truth on stage, creating an identity as an artist back when female musician role models were still rare. For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.]]> 342 Amy Rigby 0578536161 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.31
author: Amy Rigby
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 89780 320 Laurie Lindeen 0743292324 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.55 2007
author: Laurie Lindeen
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60321053 In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-20th century—featuring a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw��

��Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family’s motto��Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)—is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.]]> 188 Elspeth Barker 1668004615 Lauryl 5 fiction 3.92 1991
author: Elspeth Barker
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/12/28
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> 343 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.]]> 263 Patrick Süskind Lauryl 0 4.05 1985
author: Patrick Süskind
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/09
shelves: currently-reading, books-i-should-probabyly-finish-som, fiction
review:

]]> 159895 Passion Is a Fashion draws on over 70 interviews with the key participants in the story—roadies, producers, friends, and fans—and conversations with the Clash: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon. The first book to give real insight into what went on behind the scenes during the Clash’s ten-year career, it charts the Clash’s picaresque progress through the days of the early punk scene and their groundbreaking Rock Against Racism gigs, to the arduous touring, to their break out in America, and the making of the classic London Calling album, all the way to the band’s eventual dissolution and the sudden, sad death of frontman Joe Strummer. Gritty, compelling, and above all authoritative, Passion Is a Fashion is the biography the Clash has long deserved.]]> 404 Pat Gilbert 030681434X Lauryl 0 to-read 4.10 2004
author: Pat Gilbert
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28789718
St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O’Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street’s apex. This idiosyncratic work of reportage tells the many layered history of the street—from its beginnings as Colonial Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant’s pear orchard to today’s hipster playground—organized around those pivotal moments when critics declared “St. Marks is dead.��

In a narrative enriched by hundreds of interviews and dozens of rare images, St. Marks native Ada Calhoun profiles iconic characters from W. H. Auden to Abbie Hoffman, from Keith Haring to the Beastie Boys, among many others. She argues that St. Marks has variously been an elite address, an immigrants�� haven, a mafia warzone, a hippie paradise, and a backdrop to the film Kids—but it has always been a place that outsiders call home. This idiosyncratic work offers a bold new perspective on gentrification, urban nostalgia, and the evolution of a community.]]> 432 Ada Calhoun 0393353303 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.08 2015
author: Ada Calhoun
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7089570 Author Zoe 'Street' Howe speaks to The Slits themselves, to former manager Don Letts, mentor and PIL guitarist Keith Levene and many other friends and colleagues to discover exactly how The Slits phenomenon came about and to celebrate the legacy of a seminal band long overdue its rightful acclaim.
Too long seen as a note in the margin of the history of rock, The Slits at last get a fair hearing in this revealing biography.]]> 217 Zoë Street Howe 1847727808 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.07 2009
author: Zoë Street Howe
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 19246471
Viv Albertine is one of a handful of original punks who changed music, and the discourse around it, forever. Her memoir tells the story of how, through sheer will, talent, and fearlessness, she forced herself into a male-dominated industry, became part of a movement that changed music, and inspired a generation of female rockers.

After forming The Flowers of Romance with Sid Vicious in 1976, Albertine joined The Slits and made musical history in one of the first generations of punk bands. The Slits would go on to serve as an inspiration to future rockers, including Kurt Cobain, Carrie Brownstein, and the Riot Grrrl movement in the 1990s. This is the story of what it was like to be a girl at the height of punk: the sex, the drugs, the guys, the tours, and being part of a brilliant pioneering group of women making musical history. Albertine recounts helping define punk fashion, struggling to find her place among the boys, and her romance with Mick Jones, including her pregnancy and subsequent abortion. She also gives a candid account of what happened post-punk, beyond the break-up of The Slits in 1982, including a career in film, surviving cancer, and making music again, twenty-five years later.

A truly remarkable memoir told in Viv’s frank, irreverent, and distinctive voice, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. is a raw, thrilling story of life on the frontier.]]> 421 Viv Albertine 0571297757 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.29 2014
author: Viv Albertine
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53205888 Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.]]> 376 T.J. Klune 1250217342 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.11 2021
author: T.J. Klune
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 31574739 A chilling literary horror novel about a young couple who purchase and live in a haunted house. Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It tells the eerie story of a young couple haunted by their new home.

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.

Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an enthralling, psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.]]> 276 Jac Jemc 0374536910 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.17 2017
author: Jac Jemc
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17290747 Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn’t include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names."

The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.]]> 445 Marilynne K. Roach 0306821206 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.41 2013
author: Marilynne K. Roach
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35238287 The definitive history of the supernatural in Nazi Germany, exploring the occult ideas, esoteric sciences, and pagan religions touted by the Third Reich in the service of power

The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.]]> 336 Eric Kurlander 0300190379 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.70 2017
author: Eric Kurlander
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 69136 The Book of Lost Things.

Taking readers on a vivid journey through the loss of innocence into adulthood and beyond, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.]]> 339 John Connolly 0743298853 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.96 2006
author: John Connolly
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56644004
Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.
��
At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience?
��
By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.
��]]> 237 Leigh Cowart 154179804X Lauryl 0 to-read 4.10 2021
author: Leigh Cowart
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59611493 518 Ken Babbs 0989446298 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.23
author: Ken Babbs
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58783802 A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.]]> 367 Kelly Barnhill 0385548222 Lauryl 0 to-read 3.79 2022
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.21 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36755779 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018
A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018

Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.

With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice--a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago--with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.]]> 299 Elizabeth Rush 1571313672 Lauryl 0 4.17 2018
author: Elizabeth Rush
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/15
shelves: currently-reading, ecology, journalism
review:

]]> 25852784 Evicted, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America's most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.]]> 418 Matthew Desmond 0553447432 Lauryl 0 currently-reading 4.47 2016
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born �� a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam �� and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Lauryl 0 to-read 4.05 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53152636
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 320 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0525620788 Lauryl 4 fiction, horror 3.66 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/08
shelves: fiction, horror
review:

]]> 39978


With no money����and no home to retum to, they are forced to stay.����And paradise park takes them in--in more ways than����one. Barnie and Teresa spend their days and nights����in the climate-controlled consumer paradise of a����large department store. And just when they think����they can live there unnoticed forever, Teresa and����Barnie find that even Paradise Park has its secrets.����Even in the dead of night, they are far from����alone....


From the Paperback edition.]]> 192 Richard Peck 0440402700 Lauryl 0 children-s-books 3.64 1978
author: Richard Peck
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/03
shelves: children-s-books
review:

]]> 15797848
Makani Young thought she'd left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She's found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn't far behind.

Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets.]]> 287 Stephanie Perkins 0525426019 Lauryl 3 3.39 2017
author: Stephanie Perkins
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/03/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 52486773
Author Tea Krulos tells the story of one man, Richard McCaslin, who’s fractured thinking made him the ideal consumer of even the most arcane of conspiracy theories. Acting on the daily rants of Alex Jones and his ilk, McCaslin takes matters into his own hands to stop the unseen powers behind the world’s disasters who congregate at conspiracy world’s Mecca- The Bohemian Grove. It all goes wrong with terrible consequences for the man who styled himself-The Phantom Patriot.

McCaslin is not alone, as conspiracy-driven political action has bubbled its way up from the margins of society to the White House. It’s no longer a lone deranged kook convinced of getting secret messages from a cereal box, now its slick videos and well-funded outrage campaigns ready to peddle the latest innuendos and lies in hopes of harnessing the chaos for political gain. What is the long term effect on people who believe these barely believable stories? Who benefits, and who pays the price?

Krulos investigates and explains the power of conspiracy and the resulting shared madness on the American psyche.]]> 256 Tea Krulos 1627310967 Lauryl 4 4.30
author: Tea Krulos
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/11
date added: 2022/03/11
shelves: cultural-studies, current-events, journalism, currently-reading
review:

]]> 38362811 In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

THIS IS A WITCH HUNT.
WE’RE WITCHES,
AND WE’RE HUNTING YOU.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.��

We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.]]> 260 Lindy West 0316449881 Lauryl 4 essays, gender-studies 4.10 2019
author: Lindy West
name: Lauryl
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/03/11
shelves: essays, gender-studies
review:

]]> 4835987 352 Peter Hook 1847371353 Lauryl 4 memoir, music-boox 3.82 2008
author: Peter Hook
name: Lauryl
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/03/11
shelves: memoir, music-boox
review:

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