en-US Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:05:16 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the â€�80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Mika 0 to-read 4.39 2017
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Mika
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/21
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]]> 59344312
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.

Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.]]> 336 Colleen Hoover 153872474X Mika 0 to-read 4.29 2018
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Mika
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/21
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]]> 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Mika 0 to-read 4.35 2018
author: Delia Owens
name: Mika
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Mika 0 to-read 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Mika
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/21
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]]> 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Mika 0 to-read 3.76 2019
author: Kiley Reid
name: Mika
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/27
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]]> 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Mika 0 to-read 4.11 2020
author: Brit Bennett
name: Mika
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/27
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]]> 64222
It was a tough decision.

But he has to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Maybe it'll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it's a death sentence either way.

Or perhaps there's a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who's prepared to push the envelope...]]> 394 Terry Pratchett 0060502932 Mika 0 to-read 4.40 2004
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Mika
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/27
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]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Mika 2 4.00 2015
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Mika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 2
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date added: 2020/08/27
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]]> 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Mika 0 to-read 4.35 2017
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Mika
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Mika 0 to-read 4.32 2013
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Mika
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25743 Four years after the Chmielnicki massacres of the seventeenth century, Jacob, a slave and cowherd in a Polish village high in the mountains, falls in love with Wanda, his master's daughter. Even after he is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. Racked by his consciousness of sin in taking a Gentile wife and by the difficulties of concealing her identity, Jacob nonetheless stands firm as the violence of the era threatens to destroy the ill-fated couple.
]]> 320 Isaac Bashevis Singer 0374506809 Mika 0 to-read 4.23 1962
author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
name: Mika
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 51901147
The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 541 Suzanne Collins Mika 0 to-read 3.99 2020
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Mika
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43708884
Here, you will find them together in this book of Charlie's most-loved drawings, adventuring into the Wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all.]]> 128 Charlie Mackesy 1529105102 Mika 0 to-read 4.56 2019
author: Charlie Mackesy
name: Mika
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 27071490 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.]]> 305 Yaa Gyasi Mika 5 4.48 2016
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Mika
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/05/31
date added: 2020/06/01
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]]> 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Mika 4 3.94 2005
author: Joan Didion
name: Mika
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2020/05/31
date added: 2020/06/01
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]]> 5113 ‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.â€�

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Frannyâ€� and ‘Zooeyâ€� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooeyâ€�, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]> 201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Mika 0 to-read 3.97 1957
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Mika
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/14
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]]> 36742986 Hard-hitting divorce lawyer James Sexton shares his insights and wisdom from the front lines of divorce to keep you out of his office and improve your relationship.

If You're in My Office, It's Already Too Late. James Sexton knows this. After dealing with more than a thousand clients whose marriages have dissolved over everything from an ill-advised threesome with the nanny to the uneven division of carpool duties, he also knows all of the what-not-to-dos for couples who want to build--and consistently work to preserve--a lasting, fulfilling relationship. Described by former clients as a "courtroom gunslinger" and "the sociopath you want on your side," Sexton tells the unvarnished truth about relationships, diving straight into the most common marital problems. These usually derive from dishonest--or nonexistent--communication. Even when the alleged reason for separation is one spouse's new "personal trainer," there's likely a communication problem that predates the fitness kick. Symptom and root cause get confused all the time.

Sexton has spent his career working with spouses-to-be-no-longer. Reverse engineering a relationship can help to identify and fix what does not work. Ever feel like you're holding back criticism of your spouse because you just can't have that fight right now? Sexton will tell you to "Hit Send Now." Maybe you aren't as adventurous as you used to be, or need some "you time," but for some reason it seems weird or exhausting to change up the routine now. Sexton knows where that mentality leads and offers viable alternative paths to take. Though he deals constantly with the heartbreak of others, he still believes in romance and the transformative power of love. This book is his opportunity to use what he has learned to help couples that aren't so far gone get back on track.]]> 288 James J. Sexton 1250130778 Mika 0 to-read 4.22 2018
author: James J. Sexton
name: Mika
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/06
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]]> 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 Mika 0 currently-reading 4.36 2014
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Mika
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/03/31
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 23167692
In an honest, direct, and engaging way, these role models describe the obstacles they faced, the setbacks they endured, and the vital lessons they learned. They dispense not only essential and practical career advice, but also priceless wisdom applicable to life in general.

Getting There is for everyone—from students contemplating their futures to the vast majority of us facing challenges or seeking to reach our potential.

Mentors include Warren Buffett, Kathy Ireland, Frank Gehry, David Boies, Ian Schrager, Anderson Cooper, Leslie Moonves, Wendy Kopp, Graydon Carter, Marina Abramović, Laird Hamilton, Rachel Zoe, J. Craig Venter, John Paul DeJoria, Jeff Koons, Tom Scott, Muhammad Yunus, Stacey Snider, Helene Gayle, Matthew Weiner, Jeff Kinney, Craig Newmark, Nitin Nohria, Jillian Michaels, Sara Blakely, Gary Hirshberg, Hans Zimmer, Daniel Boulud, Jim Koch, and Michael Bloomberg.

“Kudos to Gillian Zoe Segal for assembling this remarkable group of visionaries and helping them all tell their stories without filters or false bravado. Getting There is both empowering and illuminating.â€� —Piper Kerman, New York Times bestselling author of Orange Is the New Black

“For life-changing, real-world advice.â€� â€� Vanity Fair]]> 208 Gillian Zoe Segal 1419715704 Mika 4 4.07 2015
author: Gillian Zoe Segal
name: Mika
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/31
date added: 2020/03/31
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]]> 37570546 From a psychotherapist, and national advice columnist comes a thought-provoking new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world -- where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.]]> 415 Lori Gottlieb 1328662055 Mika 5 4.36 2019
author: Lori Gottlieb
name: Mika
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/03/16
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]]> 20910174
How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm?

One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking" to rethink convention and break "rules" that aren't rules.

In Smartcuts , Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.

From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter--and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.]]> 272 Shane Snow 0062302450 Mika 0 to-read 3.86 2014
author: Shane Snow
name: Mika
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> 37826520 52 Small Changes for the Family provides a road map to a better life for the whole family.]]> 368 Brett Blumenthal 1452169586 Mika 0 to-read 3.57
author: Brett Blumenthal
name: Mika
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Mika 0 to-read 4.34 2011
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Mika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Mika 4 3.79 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Mika
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/12/15
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]]> 297673
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.]]> 335 Junot DĂ­az 1594489580 Mika 3 3.89 2007
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Mika
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2019/01/20
date added: 2019/01/20
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Mika 4 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Mika
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/07/12
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]]> 1971304
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.]]> 258 David Benioff 0670018708 Mika 4 4.28 2008
author: David Benioff
name: Mika
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2018/07/10
date added: 2018/07/10
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]]> 36137570 Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes.

I call you "neighbor" because I don’t know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, "neighbor" might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dream, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?

Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy." In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East.

This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide.

Halevi’s letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.]]> 229 Yossi Klein Halevi 0062844938 Mika 0 to-read 4.09 2019
author: Yossi Klein Halevi
name: Mika
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/06/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 34068481 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with “dignity.â€�

Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-onesâ€� bones from cremation ashes.

With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning—including a glowing-Buddha columbarium in Japan and America’s only open-air pyre—and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.]]> 248 Caitlin Doughty 0393249891 Mika 3 4.28 2017
author: Caitlin Doughty
name: Mika
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/06/21
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]]> 22571757 It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her singular calling.

Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name for herself.

Addario finds a way to travel with a purpose. She photographs the Afghan people before and after the Taliban reign, the civilian casualties and misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against women in the Congo and tells the riveting story of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.

Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless. She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear.

As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys� club of a profession. Rather than choose between her personal life and her career, Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become her husband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take away from it, and as a new mother, she gains an all the more intensely personal understanding of the fragility of life.

Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It’s What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war.]]> 368 Lynsey Addario 159420537X Mika 5 4.33 2015
author: Lynsey Addario
name: Mika
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Mika 5 4.44 2007
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Mika
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/06/20
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]]> 4982 224 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mika 2 4.16 1959
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mika
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1959
rating: 2
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date added: 2018/04/15
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]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Mika 5 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Mika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/04/15
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]]> 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 Mika 5 4.47 2016
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Mika
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> 27833670 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 342 Blake Crouch 1101904224 Mika 0 to-read 4.13 2016
author: Blake Crouch
name: Mika
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/01/11
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]]> 5479 Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class. This powerful work of speculative fiction sheds a blazing critical light on the present and is considered to be Aldous Huxley's most enduring masterpiece.

The non-fiction work Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958, is a fascinating work in which Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy envisioned in Brave New World, including the threats to humanity, such as over-population, propaganda, and chemical persuasion.]]> 340 Aldous Huxley 0060776099 Mika 2 4.17 1958
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Mika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1958
rating: 2
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]]> 18749 A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,â€� Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.]]> 435 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 1400044162 Mika 5 4.34 2006
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Mika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/01/10
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]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Mika 5 4.18 2000
author: Michael Chabon
name: Mika
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/08/08
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]]> 5470 328 George Orwell Mika 3 4.15 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Mika
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 3
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date added: 2017/08/08
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]]> 4381 158 Ray Bradbury 0307347974 Mika 2 3.96 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Mika
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1953
rating: 2
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]]> 350 NAME: Valentine Michael Smith
ANCESTRY: Human
ORIGIN: Mars

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love.]]> 525 Robert A. Heinlein Mika 3 3.93 1961
author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Mika
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1961
rating: 3
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date added: 2017/08/08
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]]> 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Mika 5 3.94 2001
author: Ian McEwan
name: Mika
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/08/08
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]]> 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.â€�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mika 5 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mika
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/12/18
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]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Mika 5 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Mika
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/03/01
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Mika 0 to-read 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Mika
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/11
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]]> 7613
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals � inspired by his philosophy of Animalism � plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]> 129 George Orwell Mika 0 to-read 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Mika
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/11
shelves: to-read
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]]>