Ashley's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:00:32 -0700 60 Ashley's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life]]> 17160008
He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species—such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar, and gray whales—and explores astonishing evidence that certain species, not just humans, have the power to shape the physical landscape. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world.]]>
256 George Monbiot 0670067172 Ashley 0 to-read 4.16 2013 Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life
author: George Monbiot
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
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<![CDATA[Creep: Accusations and Confessions]]> 101161160 A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.

A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it.

Creep is Myriam Gurba’s informal sociology of creeps, a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions that plague the United States and create the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. Through cultural criticism disguised as personal essay, Gurba studies the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly distribute suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. Yet identifying individual creeps, creepy social groups, and creepy cultures is only half of this book’s project—the other half is examining how we as individuals, communities, and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us.

With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.]]>
331 Myriam Gurba 198218647X Ashley 5
Gurba unveils how these “creeps� embody many unsuspecting forms, from your well respected teacher, beloved grandfather, exalted author, or polished politician, often hiding in plain sight. Individuals and groups who we would be even less inclined to label or recognize as “creeps� are so enmeshed and beholden to their institutions (academic, religious, political, the nebulous “media�, criminal justice system) that they essentially sell their souls to exonerate and defend these criminals. She eloquently highlights how the language we use to describe both sides of the conflict (perpetrator and victim) propagate stereotypes, preserve the patriarchy, and normalize pathological behavior, sometimes blatant, sometimes inadvertent, but persistently harmful. This rhetoric encompasses headlines shifting the blame from the human to the inanimate object utilized (ie, gun), painting minorities, women, as one-dimensional objects, or framing antisocial behavior as a practical joke, patriotism, or purely literary inspiration. I think on a surface level this book can seem haphazard or unstructured, but once you recognize the core themes, you will see how it is all connected quite seamlessly. ]]>
4.33 2023 Creep: Accusations and Confessions
author: Myriam Gurba
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
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Incredible book I will be thinking about for a long time. Essentially “Creep� is about how various institutions protect and defend men, even in unequivocally evil, immoral circumstances like rape and murder. Sometimes these institutions go to great lengths to smother the truth, but often our society lets them get away with merely a casual dismissal, brushing it under the rug with a minimizing, condescending remark coupled with a sly grin; gaslighting on a mass scale. Texts like this reinforce how incredibly naive I was for the majority of my adult life to how deeply embedded misogyny, racism, and xenophobia still are in American culture. Depending on your sensitivities, this book may be a slow and difficult read, as many have already mentioned. However, I overall felt that the trauma and macabre were sufficiently interspersed with humor and levity to balance the read, helping to maintain your stamina. The essays are an interesting blend of memoir, literary criticism, culture, and history (largely Mexican & Californian).

Gurba unveils how these “creeps� embody many unsuspecting forms, from your well respected teacher, beloved grandfather, exalted author, or polished politician, often hiding in plain sight. Individuals and groups who we would be even less inclined to label or recognize as “creeps� are so enmeshed and beholden to their institutions (academic, religious, political, the nebulous “media�, criminal justice system) that they essentially sell their souls to exonerate and defend these criminals. She eloquently highlights how the language we use to describe both sides of the conflict (perpetrator and victim) propagate stereotypes, preserve the patriarchy, and normalize pathological behavior, sometimes blatant, sometimes inadvertent, but persistently harmful. This rhetoric encompasses headlines shifting the blame from the human to the inanimate object utilized (ie, gun), painting minorities, women, as one-dimensional objects, or framing antisocial behavior as a practical joke, patriotism, or purely literary inspiration. I think on a surface level this book can seem haphazard or unstructured, but once you recognize the core themes, you will see how it is all connected quite seamlessly.
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<![CDATA[Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City]]> 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 Ashley 0 currently-reading 4.47 2016 Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.]]> 33381433 We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., "bitches gotta eat" blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette--she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"--detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms--hang in there for the Costco loot--she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.

Chapter titles:

My Bachelorette application --
A blues for Fred --
The miracle porker --
Do you guys pay your fucking bills or what? --
You don't have to be grateful for sex --
A Christmas carol --
Happy birthday --
A case for remaining indoors --
A total attack of the heart --
A civil union --
Mavis --
Fuck it, bitch. Stay fat --
Nashville hot chicken --
I'm in love and it's boring --
A bomb, probably --
The real housewife of Kalamazoo --
Thirteen questions to ask before getting married --
Yo, I need a job --
Feelings are a mistake --
We are never meeting in real life]]>
275 Samantha Irby 1101912197 Ashley 0 currently-reading 3.90 2017 We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.
author: Samantha Irby
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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Meaty 35952943 The widely beloved, uproarious, first essay collection and the basis for the upcoming FX Studios series from smart, edgy, hilarious, and unabashedly raunchy Samantha Irby.

Samantha Irby exploded onto the printed page with this debut collection of essays about trying to laugh her way through failed relationships, taco feasts, bouts with Crohn's disease, and more. Every essay is crafted with the same scathing wit and poignant candor thousands of loyal readers have come to expect from visiting her notoriously hilarious blog.]]>
272 Samantha Irby 0525436162 Ashley 4 3.79 2013 Meaty
author: Samantha Irby
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
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<![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]>
464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Ashley 0 to-read 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic]]> 28212 By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments.

Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
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660 Randy Shilts 0312241356 Ashley 0 to-read 4.36 1987 And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
author: Randy Shilts
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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<![CDATA[101 Tips for a Zero-Waste Kitchen]]> 199454339 256 Kathryn Kellogg 1682688925 Ashley 3 3.39 101 Tips for a Zero-Waste Kitchen
author: Kathryn Kellogg
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.39
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rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The 9.9 Percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture]]> 56898095 A “brilliant� (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive� (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves.In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit� to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account� (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.]]> 352 Matthew Stewart 1982114185 Ashley 0 currently-reading 3.66 The 9.9 Percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture
author: Matthew Stewart
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.66
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Mean 34381333 Mean turns what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, funny, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.

We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating.

Being mean isn't for everybody.

Being mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form.

These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. They're queers.

Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. She's the author of Dahlia Season (2007, Manic D) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Wish You Were Me (2011, Future Tense Books), and Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015, Manic D). She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders.]]>
175 Myriam Gurba 1566894913 Ashley 0 to-read 4.27 2017 Mean
author: Myriam Gurba
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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<![CDATA[When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution]]> 12230940 When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women’s Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s.

Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is "to the revolution�---to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground and Angela Davis, exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement.

By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era---ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives---with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the 70s, and for those who weren’t around but still ask, "What was it like?", Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today.

With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.]]>
456 Jeanne Cordova 1935226517 Ashley 0 to-read 4.05 2011 When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
author: Jeanne Cordova
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
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I'll Have What She's Having 217927684
There’s a woman I want to become, Chelsea Handler thought as a child. She’ll be strong and confident. She’ll light up a room and spread that light to make others feel better. She’ll make a living being herself. She’ll be a survivor.

At ten years old, Chelsea opened a lemonade stand and realized she’d make more money if the drinks were spiked. So she added vodka to her recipe and used her earnings to upgrade herself to first-class on a family vacation—leaving her parents and siblings in coach. She moved to Los Angeles and got fired from her temp job when she admitted she didn’t know how to transfer calls. She’s played pickleball with the scions of an American dynasty. She’s sexted a governor. She shared psychedelics with strangers in Spain. When she accidentally ended up at dinner with Woody Allen, she was not going to leave the table without asking him a very personal pointed question. She went on national television and talked about having threesomes. She's never been one to hold back.

But this life of adventure and absurdity is only part of her story. Chelsea knows what it is to truly show up for her family—canine and human, biological and chosen. She’s discovered how to spend time with herself, how to meditate, how to be open to love, and how to end a relationship with dignity. She is a sister to the many women who rely on her.

Surprisingly vulnerable and always outrageous, Chelsea Handler captures the antic-filled, exhilarating, and joyful life she’s built—a life that makes the rest of us think, I’ll have what she’s having.]]>
320 Chelsea Handler 0593596579 Ashley 0 to-read 4.23 I'll Have What She's Having
author: Chelsea Handler
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.23
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date added: 2025/03/10
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<![CDATA[Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen]]> 36544614 Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,� tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.

“This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book––at its core––is not about immigration at all.This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home.

After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.�

—Jose Antonio Vargas, fromDear America]]>
256 Jose Antonio Vargas 0062851365 Ashley 4 4.29 2018 Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
author: Jose Antonio Vargas
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
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The Bluest Eye 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]>
216 Toni Morrison Ashley 0 to-read 4.13 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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<![CDATA[The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness]]> 6792458
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.]]>
290 Michelle Alexander Ashley 0 to-read 4.52 2010 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
author: Michelle Alexander
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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<![CDATA[Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life]]> 35180998 New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays—funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls� and women’s progress (or lack thereof) in what Orenstein once called a “half-changed world.�

Named one of the �40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years� by Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls� sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.

Don’t Call Me Princess, Orenstein’s most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless—they have, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate.

Don’t Call Me Princessoffers a crucial evaluation of where we stand today as women—in our work lives, sex lives, as mothers, as partners—illuminating both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.]]>
400 Peggy Orenstein 0062799487 Ashley 0 to-read 3.79 2018 Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life
author: Peggy Orenstein
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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<![CDATA[They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us]]> 142601047
How do we understand ourselves when the story about who we are supposed to be is stronger than our sense of self? What do we stand to gain—and lose—by taking control of our narrative? These questions propel Prachi Gupta’s heartfelt memoir and can feel particularly fraught for immigrants and their children who live under immense pressure to belong in America.

Prachi Gupta’s family embodied the American a doctor father and a nurturing mother who raised two high-achieving children with one foot in the Indian American community, the other in Pennsylvania’s white suburbia. But their belonging was predicated on a powerful that Asian Americans have perfected the alchemy of middle-class life, raising tight-knit, ambitious families that are immune to hardship. Molding oneself to fit this perfect image often comes at a steep but hidden cost. In They Called Us Exceptional, Gupta articulates the dissonance, shame, and isolation of being upheld as an American success story while privately navigating traumas invisible to the outside world.

Gupta addresses her mother throughout the book, weaving a deeply vulnerable personal narrative with history, postcolonial theory, and research on mental health, to show how she slowly made sense of her reality and freed herself emotionally and physically from the pervasive, reductive myth that had once defined her. But, tragically, the act that liberated Gupta was also the act that distanced her from those she loved most. By charting her family’s slow unraveling and her determination to break the cycle, Gupta shows how traditional notions of success keep us disconnected from ourselves and one another—and passionately argues why we must orient ourselves toward compassion over belonging.]]>
288 Prachi Gupta 0593442989 Ashley 0 to-read 4.35 2023 They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us
author: Prachi Gupta
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/28
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<![CDATA[All the Parts We Exile: A Memoir]]> 216136052 From a queer Muslim woman and artist, a generous, insightful memoir that traces her journey toward radical self-acceptance and of exile from her ancestral home.

As the youngest of three daughters, and the only one born in Canada soon after her parents' emigration from Iran, Roza Nozari began her life hungry for a sense of belonging. From her early years, she shared a passion for Iranian cuisine with her mother and craved stories of their ancestral home. Eventually they visited and she fell in love with its sights and smells, and with the warm embrace of their extended family. Yet Roza sensed something was amiss with her mother's happy, well-rehearsed story of their original departure.�  �
As Roza grew older, this longing for home transformed into a desire for inner understanding and liberation. She was lit up by the feminist texts in her women’s studies courses, and shared radical ideas with her mother—who in turn shared more of her past, from protesting for the Islamic revolution to her ambivalence about getting married. In this memoir, Roza braids the narrative of her mother’s life together with her own on-going story of self, as she arrives at, then rejects, her queer identity, eventually finds belonging in queer spaces and within queer Iranian histories, and learns the truth about her family’s move to Canada.
All the Parts We Exile is a memoir of mother and daughter, home and away, shame and self-acceptance, conflict and peace, love and pain—and the stories that exist within and between them. In sharp, emotionally honest and funny prose, Roza tenderly explores the grief around the parts we exile and the joy of those we hold close in order to be true to our deepest selves.]]>
256 Roza Nozari 1039007066 Ashley 0 to-read 4.48 All the Parts We Exile: A Memoir
author: Roza Nozari
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.48
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The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]>
188 Han Kang 0553448188 Ashley 0 currently-reading 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
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<![CDATA[Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times]]> 52623750 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593189481.

An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.]]>
241 Katherine May Ashley 4 3.82 2020 Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
author: Katherine May
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/02/25
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<![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 Ashley 5 4.52 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
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Quietly Hostile: Essays 62052300
The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had.

Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, she goes to therapy and tries out Lexapro, gets healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.]]>
290 Samantha Irby 0593315693 Ashley 4 3.66 2023 Quietly Hostile: Essays
author: Samantha Irby
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us]]> 15797397
In Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how this happened. Featuring examples from some of the most recognizable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century--including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, Capri Sun, and many more--

Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, often eye-opening research. He goes inside the labs where food scientists use cutting-edge technology to calculate the "bliss point" of sugary beverages or enhance the "mouth feel" of fat by manipulating its chemical structure. He unearths marketing techniques taken straight from tobacco company playbooks to redirect concerns about the health risks of products. He talks to concerned executives who explain that they could never produce truly healthy alternatives to their products even if serious regulation became a reality.

Simply put: the industry itself would cease to exist without salt, sugar, and fat.]]>
480 Michael Moss 1400069807 Ashley 0 to-read 3.99 2013 Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
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<![CDATA[Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses]]> 87040 Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses. Robin Wall Kimmerer's book is not an identification guide, nor is it a scientific treatise. Rather, it is a series of linked personal essays that will lead general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings, from salmon and hummingbirds to redwoods and rednecks. Kimmerer clearly and artfully explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.

Drawing on her diverse experiences as a scientist, mother, teacher, and writer of Native American heritage, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.

Gathering Moss will appeal to a wide range of readers, from bryologists to those interested in natural history and the environment, Native Americans, and contemporary nature and science writing.

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168 Robin Wall Kimmerer 0870714996 Ashley 0 to-read 4.39 2003 Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
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<![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]>
112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Ashley 0 to-read 4.38 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
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<![CDATA[Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others]]> 193780889
Many unscientific and inaccurate ideas about motivation persist because they seem so logical, simple, or appealing. For example, we may say that someone else’s “lazy� or “unmotivated� behavior is just part of their personality, whereas in reality it’s more likely that their actions are related to their situation or environment.

This book reveals the scientific truth about motivation. Readers will learn toidentify and debunk ten persistent myths about motivation—for example, that visualizing success leads to success, or that competition and rewards increase motivation—and replace those myths with accurate knowledge that will help them take positive steps toward their goals.

Each chapter uses cutting-edge psychological research and theory to offer proven strategies for boosting motivation in a variety of contexts including school, career, health, and parenting.]]>
357 Wendy S. Grolnick 1433841673 Ashley 0 on-hiatus, to-read 4.33 2024 Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others
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name: Ashley
average rating: 4.33
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<![CDATA[Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir]]> 49985046
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy.

Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women’s rights.

She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer—books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.]]>
256 Rebecca Solnit 0593083334 Ashley 0 to-read 4.22 2020 Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir
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<![CDATA[Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America]]> 53056522 From the author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, a history of white male America and a scathing indictment of what it has cost us socially, economically, and politically

After the election of Donald Trump, and the escalation of white male rage and increased hostility toward immigrants that came with him, New York Times-bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo found herself in conversation with Americans around the country, pondering one central question: How did we get here?

In this ambitious survey of the last century of American history, Oluo answers that question by pinpointing white men's deliberate efforts to subvert women, people of color, and the disenfranchised. Through research, interviews, and the powerful, personal writing for which she is celebrated, Oluo investigates the backstory of America's growth, from immigrant migration to our national ethos around ingenuity, from the shaping of economic policy to the protection of sociopolitical movements that fortify male power. In the end, she shows how white men have long maintained a stranglehold on leadership and sorely undermined the pursuit of happiness for all.]]>
278 Ijeoma Oluo 1580059511 Ashley 0 to-read 4.40 2020 Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
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<![CDATA[Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness]]> 52863291 Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis.

When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity.

In this memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She interweaves these parts of her past with an immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.]]>
242 Catherine Cho 1250623715 Ashley 0 to-read 4.23 2020 Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness
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name: Ashley
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Fascism: A Warning 35820413 A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of America’s most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state

A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”�

The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.

Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II. The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, whichhistorically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions. In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left. Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.

Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times. Written by someone who has not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past.]]>
289 Madeleine K. Albright 0062802186 Ashley 0 to-read 4.21 2018 Fascism: A Warning
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average rating: 4.21
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<![CDATA[This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate]]> 21913812
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate.

You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.

It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.]]>
566 Naomi Klein 1451697384 Ashley 0 to-read 4.15 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
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<![CDATA[Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism]]> 50155421 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor, and historian offers an expert guide to understanding the appeal of the strongman as a leader and an explanation for why authoritarianism is back with a menacing twenty-first century twist.

Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else.

People, she argues, are not just ideological; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunistic. They worry about their families, their houses, their careers. Some political systems offer them possibilities, and others don't. In particular, the modern authoritarian parties that have arisen within democracies today offer the possibility of success to people who do not thrive in the meritocratic, democratic, or free-market competition that determines access to wealth and power.

Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.]]>
224 Anne Applebaum 0771005857 Ashley 0 to-read 3.87 2020 Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
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name: Ashley
average rating: 3.87
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<![CDATA[Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math]]> 16131048 Born on a Blue Day.

Thinking In Numbers is the book that Daniel Tammet, bestselling author and mathematical savant, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes, everyday examples, and ruminations on history, literature, and more, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions, and equations underpin all our lives.

Inspired by the complexity of snowflakes, Anne Boleyn's eleven fingers, or his many siblings, Tammet explores questions such as why time seems to speed up as we age, whether there is such a thing as an average person, and how we can make sense of those we love. Thinking In Numbers will change the way you think about math and fire your imagination to see the world with fresh eyes.]]>
288 Daniel Tammet 0316187372 Ashley 0 to-read 3.53 2012 Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math
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name: Ashley
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2012
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<![CDATA[Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language]]> 6417951 In Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing, Tammet goes back in time to London to explore the numeric language of his autistic childhood; in Iceland, he learns why the name Blær became a court case; in Canada, he meets one of the world's most accomplished lip readers. He chats with chatbots; contrives an "e"-less essay on lipograms; studies the grammar of the telephone; contemplates the significance of disappearing dialects; and corresponds with native Esperanto speakers - in their mother tongue.

Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing explores the way communication shapes reality.]]>
262 Daniel Tammet 0316353051 Ashley 0 to-read 3.90 2017 Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing: Encounters with the Mysteries and Meanings of Language
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average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
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<![CDATA[Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum]]> 207590442
Nine Minds delves into the extraordinary lives of nine neurodivergent men and women from around the globe. From a Fields Medal-winning mathematician to a murder detective, a pioneering surgeon to a bestselling novelist, each is remarkable in their field, and each is changing how the world sees those on the spectrum.

Exploding the tired stereotypes of autism, Daniel Tammet - acclaimed author and an autistic savant himself - reaches across the divides of age, gender, sexuality and nationality to draw out the inner worlds of his subjects. Telling stories as richly diverse as the spectrum itself, this illuminating, life-affirming work of narrative nonfiction celebrates the power and beauty of the neurodivergent mind, and the daring freedom with which these individuals have built their lives.]]>
Daniel Tammet Ashley 0 to-read 3.61 Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum
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<![CDATA[Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child]]> 845075 272 Alissa Quart 1594200955 Ashley 5 3.25 2006 Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child
author: Alissa Quart
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard]]> 43212849 Bringing Nature Home, sparked a national conversation about the link between healthy local ecosystems and human well-being. In Nature's Best Hope, he takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots, home-grown approach to conservation.

Nature's Best Hope advocates for homeowners everywhere to turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. This home-based approach doesn’t rely on the federal government and protects the environment from the whims of politics. It is also easy to do, and readers will walk away with specific suggestions they can incorporate into their own yards.

Nature's Best Hope is nature writing at its best—rooted in history, progressive in its advocacy, and above all, actionable and hopeful. By proposing practical measures that ordinary people can easily do, Tallamy gives us reason to believe that the planet can be preserved for future generations.
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256 Douglas W. Tallamy 1604699000 Ashley 4 on-hiatus 4.36 2019 Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard
author: Douglas W. Tallamy
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]>
450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Ashley 0 currently-reading 4.18 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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Love, Pamela 61812427 To live and dream is a wicked dance.

My dreams often come true -- a curse, and a blessing.

Pamela Anderson's blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands during a Canadian football game, she was quickly launched into superstardom, becoming Playboy's favorite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sex appeal. Yet the Pamela Anderson we think we know was created through happenstance rather than careful cultivation. Love, Pamela brings forth her true story: that of a small-town girl getting tangled up in her own dream.

Growing up on Vancouver Island, the daughter of young, wild, and unwittingly stylish parents, Pamela lived a hardscrabble childhood but developed a deep love for nature, populating her world with misfits, apparitional friends, and injured animals. Eventually overcoming her natural shyness, Pamela's restless imagination propelled her into a life few can dream of, from the beaches of Malibu to the coveted scene at the Playboy Mansion. As her star rose, she found herself a fixture of tabloid fodder, at the height of an era when paparazzi tactics were bent on destroying a person's image and self-esteem.

Pamela forged ahead with grace, finding sanctuary in her love of art and literature, and emerged a devoted mother and activist. Now, having returned to the island of her childhood, after a memorable run starring as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, Pamela is telling her story, a story of an irrepressible free spirit coming home and discovering herself anew at every turn. With vivid prose interspersed with bursts of original poetry, Love, Pamela is a pensive, layered, and unforgettable memoir.]]>
256 Pamela Anderson 0063226561 Ashley 4 3.80 2023 Love, Pamela
author: Pamela Anderson
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence]]> 44774807 "Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured." --New York Times

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book

A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's mental travelogue is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.]]>
464 Michael Pollan 0735224153 Ashley 5 4.41 2018 How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
author: Michael Pollan
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2018
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<![CDATA[Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick]]> 30653955
Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with experts within and outside the medical establishment, and personal stories from regular women to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today. In addition to offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its effects, she suggests concrete steps we can take to cure it.]]>
400 Maya Dusenbery 0062470809 Ashley 0 to-read 4.17 2018 Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick
author: Maya Dusenbery
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
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<![CDATA[Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection]]> 157981748 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593243916.

Who and what are supercommunicators? They're the people who can steer a conversation to a successful conclusion. They are able to talk about difficult topics without giving offence. They know how to make others feel at ease and share what they think. They're brilliant facilitators and decision-guiders. How do they do it?

In this groundbreaking book, Charles Duhigg unravels the secrets of the supercommunicators to reveal the art - and the science - of successful communication. He unpicks the different types of everyday conversation and pinpoints why some go smoothly while others swiftly fall apart. He reveals the conversational questions and gambits that bring people together. And he shows how even the most tricky of encounters can be turned around. In the process, he shows why a CIA operative was able to win over a reluctant spy, how a member of a jury got his fellow jurors to view an open-and-shut case differently, and what a doctor found they needed to do to engage with a vaccine sceptic.

Above all, he reveals the techniques we can all master to successfully connect with others, however tricky the circumstances. Packed with fascinating case studies and drawing on cutting-edge research, this book will change the way you think about what you say, and how you say it.]]>
320 Charles Duhigg Ashley 4 4.00 2024 Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
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name: Ashley
average rating: 4.00
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<![CDATA[The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power]]> 554986 A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful.

They are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a "leadership led by God," to be won not by force but through "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the cold war, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"

Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism's new frontiers. No other book about the right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it.]]>
454 Jeff Sharlet 0060559799 Ashley 0 to-read 3.77 2008 The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
author: Jeff Sharlet
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average rating: 3.77
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The Price of Salt 52258 The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by an erotic epiphany - the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to stalk the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol in a choice between her daughter and her lover.]]> 262 Claire Morgan 0393325997 Ashley 0 to-read 4.03 1952 The Price of Salt
author: Claire Morgan
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1952
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<![CDATA[Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language]]> 41716694
Amanda Montell, feminist linguist and staff features editor at online beauty and health magazine Byrdie.com, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women form gaining equality. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women use the word “like� as a filler? Or why certain gender neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or even how linguists have historically discussed women’s speech patterns? Wordslut is no stuffy academic study; Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound.]]>
304 Amanda Montell 006286887X Ashley 0 to-read 4.26 2019 Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
author: Amanda Montell
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
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<![CDATA[Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love]]> 33784294 The story of a young man fighting to recover from a devastating psychotic break and the mother who refuses to give up on him

Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.

So begins the story of Zack's freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often darkly funny struggle to claw his way back to sanity. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world.

Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a woman who can love him back, bipolar and all.

Written with raw emotional power, humor, and tenderness, GORILLA AND THE BIRD is a bravely honest account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.]]>
274 Zack McDermott 0316315141 Ashley 0 to-read 4.19 2017 Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love
author: Zack McDermott
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.19
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Whiskey Tender: A Memoir 158649919 An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * A The New Yorker "Best Book out now" * An Esquire "Best Book (so far)" * A Zibby Mag "Most Anticipated Book" * An Elle "Best Book" * A Washington Post "Book to Read this Summer" * Publishers Weekly "Top 10 Memoir and Biography" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book to Cozy Up With" * A Publishers Weekly "Memoirs & Biographies: Top 10" * The Millions "Most Anticipated" * An Electric Lit “Books By Women of Color to Read" * An Amazon Editors "Best Book of the Month"

“We have more Native stories now, but we have not heard one like this. Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn’t know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history. It pulses and it aches, and it lifts, consistently. It threads together so much truth by the time we are done, what has been woven together equals a kind of completeness from brokenness, and a hope from knowing love and loss and love again by naming it so.� � Tommy Orange, National Bestselling Author of There There

Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.

Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.�

Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian� status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.

Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot� of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.]]>
304 Deborah Jackson Taffa 0063288516 Ashley 0 to-read 4.11 2024 Whiskey Tender: A Memoir
author: Deborah Jackson Taffa
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<![CDATA[Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion]]> 199663007 Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies).

Nostalgia is a social and political emotion, vulnerable to misuse, and one that reflects the anxieties of the age. It is one of the many ways we communicate a desire for the past, dissatisfaction with the present and our visions for the future. Arnold-Forster’s fascinating history of this complex, slippery emotion is a lens through which to consider the changing pace of society, our collective feelings of regret, dislocation and belonging, the conditions of modern and contemporary work, and the politics of fear and anxiety. It is also a clear-eyed analysis of what we are doing now, how we feel about it and what we might want to change about the world we live in.]]>
269 Agnes Arnold-Forster 1529091373 Ashley 0 to-read 3.60 2024 Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion
author: Agnes Arnold-Forster
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.60
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<![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]>
320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Ashley 4 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.03
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem 424 The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.

It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

It contains Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That".]]>
238 Joan Didion Ashley 0 to-read 4.20 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem
author: Joan Didion
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1968
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Who’s Afraid of Gender? 127282429 From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.

Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender� that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements� that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization―and even “man� himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.

The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender� has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender� collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory� and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.

An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless―a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.]]>
320 Judith Butler 0374608229 Ashley 0 to-read 4.02 2024 Who’s Afraid of Gender?
author: Judith Butler
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The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]>
232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Ashley 0 to-read 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.51
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<![CDATA[Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout]]> 197773418 Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity� is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,� a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.]]>
244 Cal Newport 0593544854 Ashley 0 to-read 3.65 2024 Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
author: Cal Newport
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<![CDATA[A Very Private School: A Memoir]]> 176442861 In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.]]>
304 Charles Spencer 1668046385 Ashley 0 to-read 3.94 2024 A Very Private School: A Memoir
author: Charles Spencer
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.94
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<![CDATA[NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity]]> 22514020
Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger’s syndrome, whose “little professors� were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences.]]>
477 Steve Silberman 158333467X Ashley 0 to-read 4.27 2015 NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
author: Steve Silberman
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
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<![CDATA[Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men]]> 224552
He says he loves you. So...why does he do that?

You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn

•The early warning signs of abuse
� The nature of abusive thinking
•Myths about abusers
•Ten abusive personality types
•The role of drugs and alcohol
•What you can fix, and what you can’t
•And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely

“This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health]]>
408 Lundy Bancroft 0425191656 Ashley 0 to-read 4.47 2002 Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
author: Lundy Bancroft
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2002
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<![CDATA[Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics]]> 199798813 This tour de force of investigative journalism—in the vein of The Next Civil War and Why We’re Polarized—depicts the United States of America as a country at a crossroads with the battle between the right and left spilling out from the darkest corners of the internet into the real world with often tragic consequences. Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and probing interviews under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups. At the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right. This ongoing battle, long fought mainly on the internet, has spilled out into the real world with greater and greater frequency, culminating in the attempted coup on January 6th. Combining her years of on-the-ground reporting, Reeve clearly illustrates this shocking sweep of violence, where this cultural shift came from, and where it is going. She also introduces us to a shocking but powerful cast of characters, such as the creator of 8chan—an online hub for conspiracies and misogynistic rhetoric—and the white power leader who is still pulling the strings from a prison cell. Uncovering the hidden links between these events and how we can prevent further upheavals of this nature, Black Pill is a necessary read for any supporter of democracy.]]> 304 Elle Reeve 1982198885 Ashley 4 4.18 2024 Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
author: Elle Reeve
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.18
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rating: 4
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<![CDATA[A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy]]> 195790788
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.�

Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.� So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.]]>
304 Tia Levings 1250288282 Ashley 0 to-read 4.31 2024 A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
author: Tia Levings
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.31
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Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]>
340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Ashley 5 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures]]> 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 Ashley 5 4.34 2020 Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why]]> 18626535 292 Richard E. Nisbett 1439106673 Ashley 4 3.97 2003 The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why
author: Richard E. Nisbett
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life]]> 29938031
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on the morning of December 31, 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year’s Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, her doctors informed her that she had had a stroke.

For months afterward, Lee outsourced her memories to a journal, taking diligent notes to compensate for the thoughts she could no longer hold on to. It is from these notes that she has constructed this frank and compelling memoir.

In a precise and captivating narrative, Lee navigates fearlessly between chronologies, weaving her childhood humiliations and joys together with the story of the early days of her marriage; and then later, in painstaking, painful, and unflinching detail, the account of her stroke and every upset—temporary or permanent—that it caused.

Lee illuminates the connection between memory and identity in an honest, meditative, and truly funny manner, utterly devoid of self-pity. And as she recovers, she begins to realize that this unexpected and devastating event has provided a catalyst for coming to terms with her true self—and, in a way, has allowed her to become the person she’s always wanted to be.]]>
277 Christine Hyung-Oak Lee 0062422170 Ashley 0 to-read 3.58 2017 Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life
author: Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2017
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<![CDATA[The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Detective Max Rupert, #1)]]> 20758175
As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?]]>
304 Allen Eskens 1616149981 Ashley 0 to-read 4.06 2014 The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Detective Max Rupert, #1)
author: Allen Eskens
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
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Mina's Matchbox 202102049 From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, here is a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.

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

In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’s experience of the second world war, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.]]>
282 Yōko Ogawa 0593316088 Ashley 4 3.74 2006 Mina's Matchbox
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/02
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A Little Life 25852828 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]>
816 Hanya Yanagihara 0804172706 Ashley 0 to-read 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TܰԱ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]>
129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Ashley 5 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 5
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The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]>
208 Aldous Huxley Ashley 5 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine]]> 66087028 Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book.� —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times- bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.]]>
304 Uché Blackstock 0593491289 Ashley 5 4.44 2024 Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
author: Uché Blackstock
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir]]> 61875316
The Girl in the Yellow Poncho is Zook’s coming-of-age tale about what it means to be biracial in America. Throughout, she grapples with in-betweenness, childhood sexual assault, economic insecurity, and multiple generations of alcoholism and substance abuse on both the black and white sides of her family. Her story is one of strong black women—herself, her cousin, her mother, and her grandmother—and the generational cycles of oppression and survival that seemingly define their lives.

Setting out on an inner journey that takes her across oceans and continents, Zook tells the story of a little girl who never gives up on love, even long after it seems to have been destroyed. In the end she triumphs, reconciling with her father and mother to create the family of her dreams through forgiveness and sheer force of will. A testament to the power of settling into one’s own authentic identify, this book tells a story of a daughter’s lifelong yearning, a mother’s rediscovery of lost love, and the profound power of atonement and faith to heal a broken family.]]>
224 Kristal Brent Zook 1478017198 Ashley 0 to-read 3.91 2023 The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir
author: Kristal Brent Zook
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey]]> 57771211 From “America’s illustrator in chief� (Fast Company), a stunning graphic memoir of a childhood in Cuba, coming to America on the Mariel boatlift, and a defense of democracy, here and there

Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. Now for the first time, he draws his own life, revisiting his childhood in Cuba and his family’s passage on the infamous Mariel boatlift.

When Edel was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or “worms,� leave the country. The faltering economy and Edel’s family’s vocal discomfort with government surveillance had made their daily lives on a farm outside Havana precarious, and they secretly planned to leave. But before that happened, a dozen soldiers confiscated their home and property and imprisoned them in a detention center near the port of Mariel, where they were held with dissidents and criminals before being marched to a flotilla that miraculously deposited them, overnight, in Florida.

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a boyhood in the midst of the Cold War, a family’s displacement in exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist, who, witnessing American’s turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the immigrants, maligned and overlooked, who guard and invigorate American freedom.
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304 Edel Rodriguez 125075397X Ashley 0 to-read 4.57 Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
author: Edel Rodriguez
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<![CDATA[The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality]]> 176443264 Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant� first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

“Magical thinking� can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect� cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy� can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.]]>
259 Amanda Montell 1668007975 Ashley 4 3.45 2024 The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
author: Amanda Montell
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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Role Models 7243316

Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich--and happily horrify readers everywhere.

Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities--some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis--these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.

Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.

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304 John Waters 0374251479 Ashley 0 to-read 4.07 2010 Role Models
author: John Waters
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis]]> 57751566
Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain.

Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of mental illness has been promoted by successive governments and big business � and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.]]>
400 James Davies 1786499843 Ashley 0 to-read 4.24 2021 Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
author: James Davies
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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Poverty, by America 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]>
304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Ashley 5 4.27 2023 Poverty, by America
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction]]> 55277277
Drug overdoses now kill more Americans annually than guns, cars or breast cancer. But we have tried to solve this national crisis with policies that only made matters worse. In the name of “sending the right message,� we have maximized the spread of infectious disease, torn families apart, incarcerated millions of mostly Black and Brown people—and utterly failed to either prevent addiction or make effective treatment for it widely available.

There is another way, one that is proven to work. However, it runs counter to much of the received wisdom of our criminal and medical industrial complexes. It is called harm reduction. Developed and championed by an outcast group of people who use drugs and by former users and public health geeks, harm reduction offers guidance on how to save lives and improve health. And it provides a way of understanding behavior and culture that has relevance far beyond drugs.

In a spellbinding narrative rooted in an urgent call to action, Undoing Drugs tells the story of how a small group of committed people changed the world, illuminating the power of a great idea. It illustrates how hard it can be to take on widely accepted conventional wisdom—and what is necessary to overcome this resistance. It is also about how personal, direct human connection and kindness can inspire profound transformation. Ultimately, Undoing Drugs offers a path forward—revolutionizing not only the treatment of addiction, but also our treatment of behavioral and societal issues.]]>
384 Maia Szalavitz 0738285765 Ashley 5 4.53 Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction
author: Maia Szalavitz
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.53
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<![CDATA[Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments]]> 71419832
"If I had two wishes, it would be that D. Watkins spend an entire book writing through the terrifying wonder of Black boyness in America, and for every human to read and share this book. I am shaken. Black Boy Smile changed my relationship to writing and me." � Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal

At nine years old, D. Watkins has three concerns in picking his dad’s Lotto numbers, keeping his Nikes free of creases, and being a man. Directly in his periphery is east Baltimore, a poverty-stricken city battling the height of the crack epidemic just hours from the nation’s capital. Watkins, like many boys around him, is thrust out of childhood and into a world where manhood means surviving by slinging crack on street corners and finding oneself on the right side of pistols. For thirty years, Watkins is forced to safeguard every moment of joy he experiences or risk losing himself entirely. Now, for the first time, Watkins harnesses these moments to tell the story of how he matured into the D. Watkins we know today—beloved author, college professor, editor-at-large, and devoted husband and father.

Black Boy Smilelays bare Watkins’s relationship with his father and his brotherhood with the boys around him. He shares candid recollections of early assaults on his body and mind and reveals how he coped using stoic silence disguised as manhood. His harrowing pursuit of redemption, written in his signature street style, pinpoints how generational hardship, left raw and unnurtured, breeds toxic masculinity. Watkins discovers a love for books, is admitted to two graduate programs, meets with his future wife, an attorney—and finds true freedom in fatherhood.

Equally moving and liberating, Black Boy Smile is D. Watkins’s love letter to Black boys in concrete cities, a daring testimony that brings to life the contradictions, fears, and hopes of boys hurdling headfirst into adulthood. Black Boy Smile is a story proving that when we acknowledge the fallacies of our past, we can uncover the path toward self-discovery. Black Boy Smile is the story of a Black boy who healed.]]>
256 D. Watkins 030692398X Ashley 4 4.28 2022 Black Boy Smile: A Memoir in Moments
author: D. Watkins
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/31
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Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]>
368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Ashley 4 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD: An 8-Step Program for Strengthening Attention, Managing Emotions, and Achieving Your Goals]]> 13091350

•Have trouble paying attention and staying on task?

•Suffer from disorganization, procrastination, or forgetfulness?
•Have difficulty with restlessness or trouble managing strong feelings such as anger and frustration?
•Struggle with self-doubt and difficulty following through?
•In a way that causes problems in your relationships or your work?




If so, you may have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)—like an estimated 8 million adults in this country. Physician-researcher Dr. Lidia Zylowska has created an 8-step program for using mindfulness practice (attention and awareness training) to overcome the symptoms of ADHD. The program includes practices such as sitting meditation, body awareness, thoughtful speaking and listening, development of self-acceptance, mindful self-coaching, cultivation of a balanced view of thoughts and emotions, and more. Dr. Zylowska educates readers about ADHD, helping them to understand how their ADHD brain works and how they can use mindful awareness to work with their challenges. She also explains how the mindful approach can be combined with other treatments, including medications, to boost self-improvement.

This book is accompanied by an audio program of guided mindfulness exercises for successfully managing ADHD.]]>
256 Lidia Zylowska 1590308476 Ashley 0 to-read 4.09 2012 The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD: An 8-Step Program for Strengthening Attention, Managing Emotions, and Achieving Your Goals
author: Lidia Zylowska
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams]]> 34466963 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.]]>
368 Matthew Walker Ashley 4 4.37 2017 Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
author: Matthew Walker
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/03/21
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<![CDATA[Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire]]> 150247408 Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms.

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.

But don't worry: there's still sex to consider—and the numerous ways sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Plunge between these pages and you'll also find disabled sexual discovery, disabled love stories, and disabled joy. These twenty-five stunning original pieces—plus other modern classics on the subject, all carefully curated by acclaimed activist Alice Wong—include essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and a full spectrum of the dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal realities of a wide range of beautiful bodies and minds. Disability Intimacy will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.]]>
384 Alice Wong 0593469739 Ashley 0 to-read 4.28 2024 Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire
author: Alice Wong
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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Drinking: A Love Story 73965
Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anorexia and alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: she found inspiration in Pete Hamill's 'A Drinking Life' and sobered up. Her tale is spiced up with the characters she has known along the way.

A journalist describes her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic, explaining how she used alcohol to escape personal relationships and the realities of life until a series of personal crises forced her to confront her problem.]]>
286 Caroline Knapp 0385315546 Ashley 4 4.08 1996 Drinking: A Love Story
author: Caroline Knapp
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/11
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<![CDATA[A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story]]> 222890 She tells of her fight to keep Temple in the mainstream of family, community, and school life, how Temple responded and went on to succeed, as Ms. Cutler puts it, beyond my wildest dreams. Ms. Cutler also explores the nature of the autism disorder as doctors understand it today, and how its predominant characteristics reflect our own traits in an exaggerated form.
Insightful chapters And Baby Makes Three As the Twig Is Bent Childhood The Separate Worlds Begin Things Fall Apart
And Start All Over Again The End of Childhood Then What Happened? Looking for the Source The Legacy of Genes What It Means to Be Human]]>
228 Eustacia Cutler 1932565167 Ashley 3 3.82 2004 A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story
author: Eustacia Cutler
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/02/04
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<![CDATA[Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]]> 27161156 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062300546.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.


Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.]]>
264 J.D. Vance Ashley 3 3.81 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
author: J.D. Vance
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
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<![CDATA[The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way]]> 49100630 Learn to make every moment a once-in-a-lifetime experience with this definitive guide to the Japanese art of ichigo ichie, from the bestselling authors of Ikigai.

Ikigai urges individuals to simplify their lives by pursuing what sparks joy for them� (Marie Kondo)

Every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever-an idea captured by the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie. Often used to convey that the encounter is unique and special, it is a tenet of Zen Buddhism and is attributed to a sixteenth-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or ‘ceremony of attention�, whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment.

From this age-old concept comes a new kind of mindfulness. In The Book of Ichigo Ichie, you will learn to use all five senses to anchor yourself in the present.

Every one of us contains a key that can open the door to attention, harmony with others, and love of life. And that key is ichigo ichie.]]>
208 Héctor García 1529401291 Ashley 0 to-read 3.96 2018 The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way
author: Héctor García
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/13
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Women Who Run With the Wolves 241823
In "Women Who Run With the Wolves," Dr Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairytales and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.]]>
537 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 0345409876 Ashley 0 to-read 4.12 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves
author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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The Man Who Couldn't Stop 20930755
David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece; or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness.

Told with fierce clarity, humour and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare, and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.]]>
304 David Adam Ashley 4 3.90 2014 The Man Who Couldn't Stop
author: David Adam
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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Hijab Butch Blues 61111274 A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: when Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?

From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own--ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life.]]>
284 Lamya H. 0593448766 Ashley 0 to-read 4.47 2023 Hijab Butch Blues
author: Lamya H.
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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In the Dream House 43317482 251 Carmen Maria Machado 1644450038 Ashley 5 4.41 2019 In the Dream House
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/05
date added: 2024/01/05
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Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

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

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]>
352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Ashley 0 to-read 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression]]> 83667451
“The seasons and cycles of nature have incredible power to affect everything in our lives―especially our creativity,� says poet Jacqueline Suskin. “The Earth shows us when our creative reserves might wax and wane. When we listen and follow nature’s lead, we tune in to an inexhaustible source of imagination, inspiration, and beauty.� With A Year in Practice , this inspiring teacher shares holistic practices to help creatives of all sorts access the limitless potential that flows with the rhythms of nature.

Set in sync with the progression of the seasons, A Year in Practice is a program of techniques and journaling prompts to guide the creative seeker all year long. Four seasonally themed chapters keep you connected to natural phases of creative contraction and

� Winter invites restoration so you can come back to your craft with renewed energy
� Spring is a time of balance, focusing on the magic of emergence while embodying discretion
� Summer is the season of togetherness, instilling confidence to bring our creations into the light
� Autumn asks us to turn back toward ourselves as we prepare for another winter of introspection

Used regularly, you will move through creative blocks, deepen your capacity for self-reflection, expand imaginative growth, and find new levels of inspiration and contentment.

“It’s crucial that we spend time dreaming, crafting, and resting in a state of reverie,� says Suskin. Here she offers practical tools and creative customs to help you tune in to the energies of each season―to enrich your creativity through playfulness, emotional expression, explorative whimsy, and ever-deepening levels of imagination.]]>
240 Jacqueline Suskin 1649631340 Ashley 0 to-read 3.64 A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression
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name: Ashley
average rating: 3.64
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<![CDATA[Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior]]> 13058637 The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

Your preference in politicians, the amount you tip your waiter—all judgments and perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how the subliminal mind affects the way we live.

Employing his trademark wit and lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.]]>
260 Leonard Mlodinow 0307378217 Ashley 4 on-hiatus 4.04 2012 Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior
author: Leonard Mlodinow
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/01/01
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Pure 25016018 Pure is the true story of her life with intrusive sexual thoughts � a rampant but little-known symptom of the disorder. It tracks her farcical ten-year path to redemption, from the time she was first seized by graphic mental images to her eventual recovery through therapy, acceptance and love.

The book describes her obsessive questioning of her identity and her compulsive search for an answer: driving across the world in a double-decker bus; debating the respective erotic allure of Cherie and Tony Blair; watching Jake Gyllenhaal's face turn into a chubby vagina... Eventually, after stepping back from the iron railings of a snow-swept balcony in east London, she finds joy in the inescapable truth that when it comes to who we are, there are no neat conclusions.

At its core, Pure is about uncertainty and insecurity, and how trying to banish these things in the pursuit of happiness will paradoxically make us unhappy. It's about finding beauty in greyness, and embracing the unfathomable weirdness of the human mind.]]>
288 Rose Bretécher 1783521120 Ashley 0 to-read 4.06 2015 Pure
author: Rose Bretécher
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
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<![CDATA[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism]]> 55338982
What makes “cults� so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.� But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,� revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish� everywhere.]]>
309 Amanda Montell 0062993151 Ashley 5 3.82 2021 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
author: Amanda Montell
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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<![CDATA[Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry]]> 22675850
Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public.

But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening book, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth.

In Shrinks , Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity � beginning after World War II � as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field � from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel � Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.

“A lucid popular history...At once skeptical and triumphalist. It shows just how far psychiatry has come.� —Julia M. Klein, Boston Globe]]>
352 Jeffrey A. Lieberman 0316278866 Ashley 0 to-read 4.09 2015 Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
author: Jeffrey A. Lieberman
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy]]> 42771901 232 Jenny Odell 1612197493 Ashley 5 3.68 2019 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
author: Jenny Odell
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/15
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A Case of Hysteria: Dora 16673370 A new translation of one of Freud's most important and intriguing texts, A Case of Hysteria, popularly known as the Dora Case, affords rare insight into how Freud dealt with patients and interpreted what they told him. As the 18-year-old "Dora" underwent psychoanalysis, Freud uncovered a remarkably unhappy and conflict-ridden family, with several competing versions of their story, and his account of "Dora's" emotional travails is as gripping as a modern novel. The narrative became a crucial text in the evolution of his theories, combining his studies on hysteria and his new theory of dream-interpretation with early insights into the development of sexuality.

This landmark work is freshly translated by Britain's leading translator of German literature, Anthea Bell, while leading authority Ritchie Robertson provides a fascinating introduction which sets the work in its biographical, historical, and intellectual context. Robertson sheds light in particular on the unwitting preconceptions and prejudices with which Freud approached his patient, highlighting both his own blindness and the broader attitudes of turn-of-the-century Viennese society. The book also features explanatory notes that highlight the literary and critical allusions that Freud worked into his text, plus an up-to-date bibliography that helps the reader to explore the topic further.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]>
176 Sigmund Freud 0199639868 Ashley 0 on-hiatus, to-read 3.02 1905 A Case of Hysteria: Dora
author: Sigmund Freud
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.02
book published: 1905
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Outliers: The Story of Success]]> 3228917 Learn what sets high achievers apart � from Bill Gates to the Beatles � in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.]]>
309 Malcolm Gladwell 0316017922 Ashley 0 to-read 4.19 2008 Outliers: The Story of Success
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/09
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Wow, No Thank You.: Essays 49960031
Irby is turning forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and is courted by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife and two step-children in a small white, Republican town in Michigan where she now hosts book clubs. This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "skinny, luminous peoples" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," and hides Entenmann's cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow.

Into the gross --
Girls gone mild --
Hung up! --
Late-1900s time capsule --
Love and marriage --
Are you familiar with my work? --
Hysterical! --
Lesbian bed death --
Body negativity --
Country crock --
A guide to simple home repairs --
We almost got a fucking dog --
Detachment parenting --
Season 1, episode 1 --
Hollywood summer --
$$$ --
Hello, 911? --
An extremely specific guide to publishing a book]]>
319 Samantha Irby 0525563482 Ashley 4 3.81 2020 Wow, No Thank You.: Essays
author: Samantha Irby
name: Ashley
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/06
date added: 2023/12/06
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Thinking, Fast and Slow 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]>
499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Ashley 0 to-read 4.17 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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Paris: The Memoir 61812425 Behind Paris Hilton's meteoric rise from Upper West Side club kid to household name lies her self-proclaimed "superpower" of ADHD and a hidden history that traumatized and defined her. Shocking, funny, and surprisingly profound, Paris is the deeply personal memoir of the ultimate It Girl and a stunning inside view of a pop culture phenomenon.

Until, in a revealing documentary, Paris Hilton disclosed that her childhood was shattered by two years of strip searches, isolation, beatings, restraint, and brainwashing within the now infamous "troubled teen industry," Paris Hilton was simply the billionaire heiress America had watched grow up on television, on the internet, and in tabloids. But there was always more to Paris Hilton than met the eye. Yes, she is the media personality, DJ, entrepreneur, model, singer, actress, and icon beloved all over the globe. And yet...

Paris is the story people have always wanted Paris Hilton to tell--the story of who she really is. In this revealing and thought-provoking book, Hilton will separate the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, and show the woman who grew up with incredible privilege but was also trapped in a world of unreasonable expectation at a moment when young women were humiliated for sport in a gossip economy on steroids. Paris recounts her perilous journey through pre-#METOO sexual politics with grace, generosity, and plenty of fun, rising above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love, and a life of meaning and purpose.

The parallel story arcs in Hilton's braided narrative come to full bloom as a watershed portrait of the Aughts, challenging each of us to question our role in her story and her role in ours. The result is an intimate and unexpected memoir about persona and personification, the price of being young and disobedient, and the complexity of manifesting your dreams after watching part of yourself disappear.]]>
336 Paris Hilton 0063224623 Ashley 4 4.21 2023 Paris: The Memoir
author: Paris Hilton
name: Ashley
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/18
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